Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]

 

As we saw in yesterday’s post, Accessory Dwelling Units (commonly known as ‘in-law apartments’) have a symbiotic relationship to their host property (usually a single-family home) in that they take advantage of the installed trunk infrastructure – streets, utilities – as well as the site infrastructure – the driveway, garage, lot layout – so that they naturally bud out as polyps from larger structures. 

 

Sprouting new housing: an in-law apartment being laid out

 

As presented in a little briefing primer, Accessory Dwelling Units: Case Study, prepared for HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research, ADUs are a hardy and self-propagating form of low-tech affordable housing (alongside mobile homes and triple-deckers) that is inherently informal.

 

And it was on that concept of informality … seeping into the most pristine of formalized environments that I started thinking about ADUs in a quite different way. 

 

As HUD’s report puts it:

 

At the height of the suburbanization of the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, high-density development became undesirable. Instead, communities favored low-density development defined by large-lot single-family homes.  Accessory apartments that were once a common feature in many homes were excluded from zoning ordinances.

 

Even as zoning seeks to be destiny, ADUs are a workaround against two-acre snob zoning, an affluent suburban spontaneous community that springs up, like our friends the tree-hugging mushroom conks, in the shade of larger single-family homes.

 

Look at all that informal biota!

 

The intrinsic informality of ADUs and the consequences of that informality are ideas latent and undeveloped in HUD’s report:

 

Allowing ADUs facilitates efficient use of existing housing stock, helps meet the demand for housing, and offers an alternative to major zoning changes that can significantly alter neighborhoods.

 

‘Alternative to major zoning changes’ = infiltration. 

 

Teams of dedicated homeowners are sneaking ADUs into the neighborhood

 

Growing demand for affordable housing (coupled with the limited amount of land available for development in many communities) has led to changing attitudes about the use and development of accessory apartments.

 

We’ve already seen that landlocked or land-limiting communities drive up the price of housing and create a vast workforce housing affordability gap. As they zone themselves blue in the states, these communities find that overly restrictive development practices are a neck tourniquet, one whose pressure they have to ease:

 

An increasing number of communities across the nation are adopting flexible zoning codes within low-density areas in order to increase their affordable housing supply.  Page 7.

 

In fact, it appears that hardly had the suburbs been bedroom-zoned into uniformity than their inhabitants, in an evolving ecosystem, discovered they needed to create these smaller flats and apartments, interspersing them into places where they had been deliberately zoned out:

 

In the late 1970s to the 1990s, some municipalities adopted ADU programs to permit the use and construc­tion of accessory units.  Many of these programs were not very successful, as they lacked flexibility and scope.  Although a number of communities still restrict devel­opment of accessory dwelling units, there is a growing awareness and acceptance of ADUs as an inexpensive way to increase the affordable housing supply and address illegal units already in existence.

 

The HUD study cites several sample communities, all of them similar in that they are well located in leafy attractive coastal areas, and really affluent.  Let’s start with the home of the Banana Slugs:

 

And proud to be a slug!

 

Santa Cruz

 

Santa Cruz, California is a seaside city with a population of 54,600; it is one of the most expensive cities in the country in which to live.  In 2006, the median price for a single-family home in Santa Cruz was $746,000, which only 6.9% of the city residents could easily afford.

 

The HUD study cites several sample communities, all of them similar in that they are well located in leafy attractive coastal areas, and really affluent.  Let’s start with the home of the Banana Slugs:

 

In spite of the high cost of living, the city continues to be a desir­able destination on account of its scenic location and prox­imity to San Francisco and the Silicon Valley.

 

Santa Cruz, 1943; the way the locals liked it

 

Desirable places that restrict new supply – either because of natural barriers like the Pacific Ocean or man-made barriers like freeways or NIMBYism – always develop a high cost of living

 

The location of a campus of the University of California — the area’s largest employer — also adds to the demand for housing in Santa Cruz. Another contributing factor is the limited amount of land allowed for development within the city’s greenbelt.  

 

Santa Cruz sought to preserve its small-town character by ruling certain development out of bounds.  But just as Portland, Oregon’s smart growth policies didn’t stop growth, merely displacing it, Santa Cruz’s policies led to rising home prices, creating even more economic pressure to develop mushroom-like accessory or informal apartments:

 

In order to preserve the greenbelt while accom­modating new growth, promoting public transportation, and increasing the supply of affordable housing, the city adopted a new ADU ordinance in 2003.

 

In other words, Santa Cruz decided it needed more housing, and higher de facto density, so it opted to allow ADUs on lots already developed into single-family homes – in effect, individualized infill:

 

This ordinance sets forth regulations for the location, permit process, deed restrictions, zoning incentives, and design and development standards for ADUs.

 

A sound principle of political economics is that what you can’t prohibit entirely you should channel by licensing and taxing. 

 

Any idea how much tax you could raise on that?

 

That’s what Santa Cruz has done:

 

Accessory dwelling units are permitted in designated residential zones on lots that are at least 5,000 square feet in area.

 

By limiting ADUs to lots above 1/9 of an acre, in effect the law routes around minim lot-size zoning.  How  novel!

 

No more than one ADU per lot is allowed.

 

To try to prevent clandestine apartments popping up.

 

The property owner must occupy the primary or accessory dwelling unit.

 

At least at the development stage, although more than likely this rule is unenforceable once the property is built.

 

ADUs that do not meet the permitting requirements stipulated in the ordinance must undergo a public hearing process.

 

Locally known as trial by taste police.

 

Now, sirrah, can you defend your architectural plans?

 

Development fees are waived for ADUs made available for low- and very-low-income households.  Page 4

 

Whether this is political optics (to neutralize NIMBY opposition by offering a counterbalancing liberalizing force) or response to a workforce housing shortage, either way it’s a sensible policy.  And it’s been effective, as seen by Santa Cruz’s rise in permitted ADUs:

 

 

On the other side of the country, but in a no less shingled and tony part of the coastline, something similar has arisen in Wellfleet, on Massachusetts‘ Cape Cod:

 

Wellfleet is located in Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Located on Cape Cod, Wellfleet is a tourist town with a year-round population of 3,500, which increases to 17,000 in the summer months. Sixty-one percent of the land area in Wellfleet is part of the Cape Cod National Seashore and about 70% of the entire land area is protected from development.

 

As with Santa Cruz, we have the pattern of affluence, geography, and severe restrictions on development, leading to a huge need for smaller-scale and more affordable apartments, including for the aging parents of the rich homeowners:

 

Wellfleet also has a growing concentration of elderly residents 65 years and older. A housing needs assessment study conducted by the town in 2006 recom­mended the adoption of an affordable ADU program to meet elderly housing needs and to increase the supply of affordable multifamily rental units.

 

Between sea and sand … Wellfleet

 

Like Santa Cruz, Wellfleet has geographic boundaries and developmental boundaries, and both have rendered Wellfleet unaffordable, and also inhospitable for the elderly parents of the homeowners who pay the property taxes that keep the place beautiful.  So, in deference to those owners, Wellfleet went the ADU route:

 

To encourage participation in the ADU program, Wellfleet has instituted a new affordable accessory dwelling unit loan program. 

 

Sixteen units have been approved since the start of the program in November 2006. 

 

This may seem like few to you – and it is – but it’s sixteen more than would otherwise exist.

 

Wellfleet offers tax exemptions to homeowners on the portion of the property that is rented as an affordable unit.

 

The program offers interest-free loans for homeowners to develop affordable accessory units.

 

The funds can also be used by homeowners to bring their ADU up to code.  Page 7.

 

Up to code?  Does that mean these ADUs used to be … illegal?

 

Or did the law win?

 

[Continued tomorrow in Part 3.]

 

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