Affordable Housing Institute : US

 

[Continued from yesterday's Part 2 and the previous Part 1.]

 

To legitimize a thing, give it a more respectable name.  In our modern era, we reinvented the flophouse or rooming house as the SRO (single-room occupancy), and the in-law apartment (or granny flat) as the Accessory Dwelling Unit:

 

In-law apartment, Connecticut suburb: note the connecting passage and apartment over garage

 

In the act of renaming these spaces as ADUs, we crate an opportunity for the state to take judicial cognizance of the informal reality that has crept up on it during the night, as mentioned in passing in a HUD Office of Policy Development & Research primer, Accessory Dwelling Units: Case Study:

 

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.

 

That couldn’t possibly be illegal, could it?

Wellfleet home with interior ADU

 

‘Illegal units already in existence’?  That sounds like an informal settlement to me – and indeed, the Turkish word for informal housing, gecekondu, means ‘mushroom housing’ for its tendency to crop up at night.  That’s where they came from, fifty years ago, in the Postwar boom of brand-new communities:

 

Suburbs continued to be a prevalent form of housing development throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The rapid growth of suburbs reinforced the high demand for lower-density development, and ultimately led most local jurisdictions to prohibit ADU construction. In spite of zoning restrictions, illegal construction of ADUs con­tinued in communities where the existing housing stock was not meeting demand; San Francisco was one such community.

 

Communities bloomed just south of San Francisco in places like Daly City, made mockingly famous by Pete Seeger singing a song by Malvina Reynolds:

 

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,

There’s a pink one & a green one
And a blue one & a yellow one
And they are all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Maligned in folk song: Daly City, CA

During World War II, the Bay Area experi­enced a defense boom that created a high demand for workforce housing –

 

‘Demand for workforce housing’?  Sounds strikingly contemporary to me. 

 

– resulting in a large number of illegally constructed second units.

 

Markets work.  Demand will find its supply.  If the formal housing will not accommodate the exploding demand, then the market will create informal housing.  

 

Informal housing (favelas) in Guarapiranga, Sao Paulo, 2008

 

By 1960, San Francisco housed between 20,000 to 30,000 secondary units, 90% of which were built illegally.  Page 1

 

A community that acquired nearly 30,000 apartments, 90% of them illegal?  Shades of today’s Sao Paulo, Istanbul, Cairo, Johannesburg … and Barnstable ?!?

 

Where Wellfleet was Cape Cod’s wrist, Barnstable is the tricep

 

Like all our other case-history towns, Barnstable is beautiful, coastal, affluent, and anti-growth.  It therefore has a massive workforce-housing problem, and an equally massive shortage of elderly apartments.

 

With seven villages within its boundaries and a total population of 47,821, the town of Barnstable is the largest community in both land area and population on Cape Cod.

 

Demographic inevitability being the mother of judicial amnesty, Barnstable developed an ADU zoning program:

 

Approved in November 2000, Barnstable’s Accessory Affordable Apartment or Amnesty Program is a component of its Affordable Housing Plan.

 

That word again – amnesty. 

 

“You keep using that word.”

 

You wouldn’t think of American suburbs as hotbeds of illegal and informal housing, but they are, and it’s not the poor who are building the housing, it’s their rich patrons and relatives surreptitiously converting spare rooms into bedrooms and wings into suite.

 

The program guides creation of affordable units within existing detached structures or new affordable units within attached struc­tures.

 

As we’ve seen, once you build a multi-room house, it’s mainly a case of labeling that defines whether it’s single-family with an extension, or multifamily with an ADU. 

 

Change the labels and it’s just a family room

 

Eligibility for the program is limited to single-family properties that are owner-occupied and multifamily prop­erties that are legally permitted.

 

The continuing emphasis on ‘occupied homeownership’ is doubtless aimed at both discouraging apartment blocks (God, no!) and kowtowing to the political reality that rich homeowners pay the real estate taxes that drive the city’s budget.

 

Barnstable’s amnesty program is seen as a way to bring the high number of existing illegal ADUs into compliance with current requirements.

 

That’s a remarkable concession.  Evidently illegal in-law apartments are sufficiently prevalent in Barnstable that to condemn them or seek to shut them down would provoke a political firestorm.  When a community becomes large enough, it becomes a constituency, a vote bank – and a political reality that compels the judicial reality to bend.

 

“The law does not bend”

 

Nevertheless, those granting the amnesty – that word again – cover themselves with a political fig leaf of public purpose:

 

In order to bring a unit into compliance, the property owner must agree to rent to low-income tenants — those earning 80% or less of the area median income — with a minimum lease term of one year.

 

Isn’t that nice – and convenient, since anybody we want to rent to will be low income.  It’ll be everybody’s mother or grandmother, long retired, or our friends’ domestic workers, who make low wages.  Either way, we cheerfully agree to the condition because it has no practical binding effect on our initial tenancy – and once it’s built, who’s to say what our tenant’s income will be?

 

Ask me no questions …

 

Nevertheless, those granting the amnesty – that word again – cover themselves with a political fig leaf of public purpose:

 

The amnesty program offers fee waivers for inspection and monitoring of units and designates town staff to assist homeowners through the program’s admin­istrative process.

 

Translation: we want you to rationalize your apartment, because it’s too much of a problem if you don’t.

 

The town can access Community Devel­opment Block Grant funds to reimburse homeowners for eligible costs associated with the rehabilitation or upgrade of an affordable ADU.

 

Housing built with legal informality is usually physically informal as well.  That becomes a health hazard or a fire hazard.  The community wants the housing regularized in civic self-defense.

 

According to Building Commissioner Tom Perry, “The benefit to this program is twofold. It is increasing the affordable housing supply and it also makes units, that before were unsafe and illegal, safe and legal.”

 

Homeowners are also offered tax relief to offset the negative effects of deed restrictions that preserve the affordability of the units.

 

That’s a very deft concession. 

 

What means ‘deft’?

 

Since we’re going to put a deed restriction on the (currently illegal!) apartment, we’ll give you a charitable deduction or real estate tax break for ‘diminishing’ the value of your property by rationalizing its existence!

 

Through its Amnesty Program, the town of Barnstable has successfully brought many of its illegal accessory units into compliance –

 

I should think so!  It’s paid the owners to come forward.

 

If you wave money, they will come

 

– with the added benefit of increasing the supply of affordable housing.

 

The visible supply, that is.

 

How do you like my accessories?

 

“When in-law apartments are outlawed, only outlaw in-laws will have apartments.”

– Bumper sticker from the National Relatives Accommodation Association (NRAA)