Housing

Foreclosure Crisis (http://www.cleveland.com/foreclosure/) is a series of articles from the Cleveland Plain Dealer that documents how the recent credit crisis has affected Northeast Ohio; a region among the hardest hit in the country by foreclosures. The site also includes an index of other foreclosure-related stories from the Plain Dealer.

From Cyburbian Dan: In this thread, I describe a phenomenon I call feelgood planning.

"Projects with poor cost-benefit ratios that are destined to fail or at least underwhelm, but which are promoted and implemented because they bring a feeling of hope to the surrounding community, and possibly because their proponents are in denial about the inevitable outcome. "At least they're doing something." Such projects include new subsidized infill housing in blighted urban prairie areas, pocket parks in rough neighborhoods, and seasonal banners."

From Cyburbian ezlevin: I only recently stumbled upon this site-- it's great. I'm very impressed with how you community members are able to turn to one another for planning/policy/professional advice. I'll get to my question, but some disclosure: I'm not a planner. I'm an amateur policy guy at best. But I am doing best practices research on policies to end homelessness for a city.

So. I'm not looking at affordable housing supply-- it's outside the scope of my study/report/analysis/whatever you want to call it. Ignoring that elephant in the room, I'm looking at the service the system-- gaps in services, barriers to service, possible partnerships to provide/ease provision of services, etc. Access/impediments to affordable housing might be on this list, but not the actual housing supply.

Design Matters (long URL) is a catalog of well-designed affordable housing projects located throughout the United States, compiled by the City Design Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The catalog is intended to show that affordable housing doesn't have to be plain or utilitarian, and that quality design can be affordable.

From Cyburbian TrianglePlanner99: I have recently moved into a small town near the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill) in North Carolina.

This town has a terrific historic downtown, with 1 and 2-story storefronts dating from the early part of the 20th century. Many have ground floor level retail tenants, though almost none of the second stories are occupied. Most of these second story spaces were historically home to offices, and can be accessed from doors on the street.

The owners of the buildings, for their part, are happy to collect retail rents and not use this second story space, however. Further, most of these owners are reluctant to invest in this vacant space, though I believe these spaces would make a great candidates for new loft apartments. Which brings me to my question:

The Affordable Housing Design Advisor (http://www.designadvisor.org) brings together experience and ideas from successful affordable housing projects all over the country, and the people who developed, designed and built them. The site was developed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in cooperation with the American Institute of Architects, the Enterprise Foundation, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, the National Congress for Community Economic Development and the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation

From Cyburbian islander: Avalon, Catalina Island, California: so I am back after failing to stall a ridiculously large condo development plan at the FEIR stage. We are now in the development plan phase in which I was told we would iron out the many faults of the mitigation measures that in my eye do very little to offset the massive social and economic impacts that were not even given consideration in the FEIR. This development will stress our town in terms of parking and traffic congestion as well as eat up the scarce resources of precious water and sewage treatment that should be going to developments that need to be created to address our ABSENCE of affordable housing.

From Cyburbian ruralplanner: A few years ago, while looking through old subdivision files, I came across a proposed rural subdivision that incorporated conservation subdivision design principles. This plat was in the mid-seventies. The plat covered about 300 acres of varied land features including woods, wetlands, streams, and steep ravines. There was also a map that identified ideal locations for community gardens, which seemed to incorporate aspects of the permaculture idea. The map went so far as to identify what would best grow in these areas. I think that there were about 30 small home-sites that would have been located on their own lots with the rest of the land being owned communally.

Knowledgeplex (http://www.knowledgeplex.org) provides data, documents, news feeds, publications and other resources to practitioners, grantors, policy makers, scholars, investors, and others involved or interested in affordable housing and community development.

The Intentional Communities web site (http://www.ic.org) provides others with information and resources to find, create, maintain and support intentional communities of all kinds; ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, alternative communities and so on.

From Cyburbian 2plan: I am wondering if any of you good people have any suggestions regarding incentives for developers to provide rental housing. We are in the early stages of a community plan amendment that would allow for the redevelopment of a fairly low-income area of the community, which is currently primarily made up of low-rise, walk-up apartment buildings, many of which provide low-cost rental housing. The plan amendment would allow for development at a much higher density in the form of high rise apartment buildings. The goal is to replace the rental housing at a 1:1 ratio with this redevelopment. We currently use density bonusing in exchange for amenity provision, which can take the form of affordable housing – but density bonusing won’t provide enough funds for a 1:1 replacement, and at this point we are looking at providing market rental housing, not necessarily affordable rentals. Social housing is the Federal government’s job here, and our Council isn’t particularly enthusiastic to spend municipal funds on affordable housing…

Does anyone have any success stories regarding rental housing, or suggestions of places to check out for further information? Really appreciate your help!

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From Cyburbian TOFB: There is good research about infill design standards when small houses are to be replaced with larger ones, but what about the opposite? In our community, Habitat for Humanity and other social service agencies have a tendency to pick up vacant parcels in older neighborhoods that contain large homes. The 1100 sq. ft. ranch doesn't blend in with the two story Victorians very well. Any success stories out there?

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From Cyburbian HeartlandCityBoy: I've been wondering for a while, how do we deal with projects? I remember reading in the Death and Life of Great American cities that they need to be woven into the urban fabric of surrounding neighborhoods, but that doesn't solve the crime and social problems that occur in them.

Personally, I think most of the buildings in the projects need to be demolished. The roads need to be torn down, and rebuilt to connect w/ surrounding neighborhoods. New development (once desirability rises) will be included on the land occupied by the project. A few buildings would be left intact for public housing. However, the residents would not be kicked out once they reach a certain income level, their rent will increase as their income increases, and eventually the rent will stop rising once their income hits a certain level. Moving out will be left up to the residents. Also, participation in crime could also get you to lose your residency in the public housing area.

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From Cyburbian Juliea: I hope I am not repeating earlier discussions but I did a search and did not see where this had been covered in detail.

I live in Atlanta where we have had some conflict over so-called McMansions -- i.e., large houses being built in neighborhoods of smaller homes. One of our city council members is circulating an ordinance which would impose various limitations on the size of houses which could be built, mainly by limiting FAR's and maximum building height. Needless to say, there are strong opinions going both ways.

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From Cyburbian KSharpe: Mobile homes are kind of a big deal around here. We don't consider them single family dwellings, and they are only allowed in mobile home parks. A lot of farmers want them, plus poorer people like to buy like three acres of land and plop them out there. We also differentiate mobile homes from manufactured homes, which ARE considered single family dwellings. Question- how are they handled in your area?