The Suburban Approach Won’t Help Us Out of the Housing Trap
(Source: Avi Waxman on Unsplash)
I have been watching the zoning reform efforts coming out of the Connecticut Legislature to address housing affordability and availability in the state. These efforts have been led by planning advocates and the Connecticut chapter of the American Planning Association, which require cities to zone higher-density residential near transit stations. These efforts are intended to reform state and local zoning laws that restrict diverse and affordable housing production.
This top-down approach may be celebrated by YIMBY groups or housing advocates as a win, but they are actually making it much more difficult for us to develop.
These code reforms are being mandated in local communities, and these local communities are pushing back. Like every other community, there is a very loud NIMBY voice that is opposing change and dominating the debate. The administrators of these communities are also raising concerns that the existing infrastructure (such as water and sewer) cannot accommodate these grand visions.
Over the past several months, the Connecticut Legislature has added new language to a bill that would require most communities to plan and construct a sewer system that can accommodate higher-density residential such as apartments. This mandate is necessary to support the unintended consequences of the previous mandate. Again, the administrators of these systems are raising concerns because they are being asked to invest in the planning and construction of a system in advance of development. These are communities that have aging systems with deferred maintenance because the current customers do not generate enough revenue to support the long-term obligations of the system.
This is a familiar pattern that has emerged in our cities, where we borrow from the future on the promise of growth. Over a life cycle, a city frequently receives just a dime or two of revenue for each dollar of liability — a ridiculously low level of financial productivity. Connecticut’s cities are not alone in this dilemma. Most American cities find themselves caught in a development pattern wherein they have, at some point in recent decades, experienced a modest short-term illusion of wealth in exchange for enormous long-term liabilities.
The flaws in this top-down approach are not initially evident because most North American cities have been following the same approach to development for the past eight decades. We have made huge public investments in our communities in anticipation of growth. We then adopt complicated systems as a natural response to achieve order. This one-dimensional thinking does not grasp the complexity of our human habitats. At Strong Towns, we describe this approach as the suburban development pattern.
The suburban development pattern has resulted in our communities getting trapped in a never-ending cycle that requires increasingly large subsidies and makes "affordable" housing more and more expensive. All of these outcomes are counter to our goal.
Connecticut is caught in the housing trap. Lots of well-intentioned ideas are being put forward, but they're all formulated with the mindset of the suburban development pattern. We need to break out of this trap and explore a completely different approach that includes many responses that can be repeated at scale. These responses will not come from state mandates but through coordination at the most local level.
An example of a local response could be allowing the next increment of development by right. For example, the next smallest increment of development on a single-family lot would be allowing for the addition of a backyard cottage or allowing a renovation to convert a bedroom into a small apartment. These units use the same capacity of water and sewer already calculated for the existing home, so they do not require an expansion of treatment facilities or the upsizing of pipes. This type of incremental development yields a more efficient use of our existing systems without the need for millions of dollars spent on planning and construction for projects we cannot afford.
In many of these communities, there may also be empty lots where the development costs for one single-family detached home may exceed the appraisal. Allowing the next increment of development (such as a duplex or triplex unit) on those vacant lots would change the math to support the financing of this housing. This type of infill development utilizes existing infrastructure and does not require an external subsidy from the city or the state.
This type of thickening of our urban areas and existing town centers allows us to leverage the infrastructure we already have and the money that we have already invested to support the development of additional housing in Connecticut.
Communities in Connecticut can be very successful and smart in their response to the housing crisis. These communities don’t need to accept a cycle of constant legislative action designed to address the issues the last legislation created. We can escape the housing trap through responses at the local legislative level (such as a city council) or the neighborhood level (for instance, the scale of a block). These are the levels where we can quickly adapt to any struggle within our complex human habitat.
Edward Erfurt is the Director of Community Action at Strong Towns. He is a trained architect and passionate urban designer with over 20 years of public- and private-sector experience focused on the management, design, and successful implementation of development and placemaking projects that enrich the tapestry of place. He believes in community-focused processes that are founded on diverse viewpoints, a concern for equity, and guided through time-tested, traditional town-planning principles and development patterns that result in sustainable growth with the community character embraced by the communities which he serves.