On Common Ground: Winter 2007

2 ON COMMON GROUND WINTER 2007

Census Bureau figures tell us that ournation is becoming more diverse and inmany places there is no longer a majori-

ty population. Communities across the nation, wellbeyond larger metropolitan areas and immigrationgateways, are becoming more diverse as theirAfrican-American, Hispanic and Asian populationsincrease.

In the nation’s fastest growing metropolitanareas, from 2000 to 2004, minority groups con-tributed to the majority of population gains.National growth centers such as Las Vegas,Atlanta, Orlando and Phoenix are now prominentcenters of minority population growth.

Yet in spite of the increasing overall diversity ofour cities and suburbs, when we view the nation ona local neighborhood scale, America’s minoritypopulations are still largely segregated from themajority white population. Growth planning inmany communities can reduce the choices peoplehave about where they live. Communities that usezoning to exclude apartments will have fewer

young families and fewer moderate-income people.Likewise, large-lot zoning results in large, expen-sive houses targeted toward a narrow range of thepopulation. More generally, zoning combined withmarketing methods have resulted in the “one pricepoint” subdivision, segregating families by income.

An often discussed, but seldom pursued, aspectof Smart Growth is its value as a tool toward inclu-sion and increased social equity for disadvantagedminorities. For most of the 20th century, develop-ment patterns, from urban disinvestment to subur-ban sprawl encouraged by single-use zoning, rein-forced Americans’ tendency to live among otherslike themselves—similar income level, same racialgroup, maybe even the same ages or householdtype. Increasingly, many people are seeing SmartGrowth as an approach that can increase the diver-sity of our neighborhoods. But diversity will nothappen automatically.

Some Smart Growth methods may naturallyachieve more inclusion—mixed-use zoning couldbe used to provide a wider range of housing types

&SmartGrowthDiversity

WINTER 2007 ON COMMON GROUND 3

and prices, which could encourage a greater mix-ing of household incomes and sizes. Transportationoptions, such as better transit and better facilitiesfor pedestrians and bicyclists, would allow thosewithout the means to own or operate a car the abil-ity to fully participate in economic and socialopportunities. Reducing sprawl can bring neededreinvestment to disadvantaged older neighbor-hoods, bringing a range of incomes and new oppor-tunities to former pockets of poverty. But without aserious focus on inclusion and diversity, SmartGrowth development, whether it takes the form ofnew “greenfield” towns or redevelopment or infillin older neighborhoods, could result in more of thepredominant pattern of segregation in America.

People who care about inclusion and diversityare viewing Smart Growth, which supports agreater diversity and connectivity in the physical

pattern of growth, as one tool to bring peopletogether across racial and class lines. Coupled withpolicies and approaches that reduce racial barriersand provide increased economic opportunities forminorities, Smart Growth can get us closer to ourideal of one America.

For more information on NAR and Smart Growth, go to www.realtor.org/smartgrowth.

On Common Ground is published twice a year by the Government Affairs office of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (NAR), and is distributed free of charge. The publication presents a widerange of views on Smart Growth issues, with the goal of encouraging a dialogue among REALTORS®, electedofficials and other interested citizens. The opinions expressed in On Common Ground are those of the authorsand do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policy of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®, itsmembers or affiliate organizations.

EditorJoseph R. Molinaro Manager, Smart Growth ProgramsNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®

500 New Jersey Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20001

DistributionFor more copies of this issue or to be placed on our mailing list for future issues of On Common Ground,please contact Ted Wright, NAR Government Affairs, at (202) 383-1206 or [email protected].

Special Issue Co-EditorFred UnderwoodManager of Diversity Programs NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®

500 New Jersey Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20001


When many Americans look at their neighbors, theysee themselves. Same skin. Same income. Same—more or less—house.

Sometimes it’s by choice. Other times it’s due to lack ofchoice. Either way, it’s segregation based on race and class.And in many communities, it remains a fact of life.

“There are a lot of willing integrationists in American socie-ty, but when you try to find a stable, racially integrated neigh-borhood, there’s not a lot of choice there,” said Sheryll Cashin.

Cashin, a law professor at Georgetown University, is theauthor of “The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class areUndermining the American Dream.” Segregation may not bethe law of the land, said Cashin, but after decades of policiesand practices that sanctioned and promoted it, segregationbased on race and class still dictates housing patterns in manycommunities. Changing that, she said, will take a consciouseffort.

“There’s been a high degree of intentionality around [segre-gation] and I don’t think you can counter that by accident,” shesaid. “If you want inclusion … you have to have policies thatreflect that.”

As inclusion advocates pursue their agenda, Cashin believesthey have a natural—if not always recognized—potential allyin supporters of Smart Growth. And vice versa.

“The goals of Smart Growth align with the goals of peoplewho care about creating inclusion,” she said. “It’s not alwaysobvious these people should work together, but they should.”

Smart Growth is most often viewed as a tool to addresssprawl, congestion and wasteful consumption of land andresource. Can Smart Growth also address issues of race andclass in housing patterns?

“I think that it has the potential to do so, but the whole issueof race and class has to be part of the discussion at the begin-ning,” said Carlton Eley, a member of the Planning and BlackCommunity Division of the American Planning Association.“It can’t be an afterthought.”


HeadingtowardDiversity

Smart Growthaddresses race and class issuesBy Brad Broberg

Over the next 25 to 30 years, the U.S. will needan estimated 45 million new housing units. At thesame time, the U.S. is moving toward the daywhen it will become a majority minority country.The question, said Xavier de Souza Briggs, is howwill America grow—together or apart?

Briggs is an associate professor of sociology andurban planning at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology and author of “The Geography ofOpportunity: Race and Housing Choice inMetropolitan America.” He considers the need toexpand housing choice “the most important invis-ible policy issue in America today.”

Briggs calls it an invisible problem because“most white Americans don’t think housing dis-crimination is much of a problem anymore andmany black Americans are ambivalent about inte-gration.” Much, however, is at stake, said Briggs.“What kind of a democracy can we be if we’re seg-

regated?” he said. “You wall yourself off andmaybe I do the same.”

Given the gains achieved by the civil rightsmovement, segregated housing patterns are nolonger about blatant denial of rights. They’reabout lack of choice. Everybody—in theory—isfree to live wherever they want. In reality, choicesare limited by what’s affordable. If the only afford-able housing for low-income populations—typical-ly disproportionately minority—is concentrated inspecific neighborhoods, that’s segregation.

“I think we still have to work at this experimentwe call civil rights and inclusion and diversity,”said Eley. “It’s all about choice.”

It’s not just about choices denied, though. It’salso about choices made. As people climb the lad-der, said Cashin, the holy grail of housing is tocontinually “buy into the best neighborhood youcan afford”—neighborhoods typically located far-

If you want inclusion … you have to have policies that reflect that.



ther and farther from the city and filled with hous-es of similar price and people of similar class.“Most people think of [segregation] as the naturalstate of the real estate market.”

In any discussion about segregation, there’s anelephant in the room that many people pretendisn’t there. “Fear of black people in numbers is acontributor to sprawl,” said Cashin, herself anAfrican American. “People don’t want to admit it,but I think that drives a lot of outward movement.Any metropolitan area that has a black populationapproaching 20 percent has … very strict patternsof racial segregation.”

Briggs agrees. “That fear is there,” he said.“Everybody is comfortable with some diversity. It’sjust a question of where the threshold is.”

Out-and-out racism is not necessarily drivingthe fear. In fact, Briggs calls young white renters“the market’s great integrators.” They appreciatethe affordability, diversity and energy found ininner-city neighborhoods—which is also wherelow-income and minority populations tend to beconcentrated, he said.

Everything changes, however, when rentersstart thinking about buying a home and raising afamily. That’s when things like property valuesand school test scores begin to drive their housingdecisions. “It’s a bit of a confidence game playedout on a grand level,” said Briggs. “People say, I’mnot prejudiced, but I’m going to [choose a neigh-borhood] based on what other people’s prejudicesmight be.”

In the past, the institutional forces shaping seg-regated housing patterns were blunt. For example,

the Federal HousingAdministration (FHA)once instructed allprivate lenders whooffered FHA-backedloans that it was “nec-essary that propertiescontinue to be occu-pied by the same spe-cial and racial class-es,” said Cashin.

Today, that wouldbe against the law, yetmany neighborhoodsstill suffer the conse-quences of that formof segregation, saidCashin. Meanwhile, ahost of other policiesand practices contin-ue to perpetuate seg-regation. They include zoning codes that precludeaffordable housing, lack of public and privateinvestment in low-income neighborhoods and thesteering of black and Latino buyers to “appropri-ate” areas, said Cashin.

If that’s the how-come of segregated housingpatterns, what is the why-care?

“If you think about what America stands for—freedom, equality, everybody who works hardshould be able to progress—our best view ofAmerica is never going to come to pass if we don’tachieve racial and economic inclusion,” saidCashin.

The nitty-gritty is this, said Briggs. Segregatedhousing patterns limit access to opportunities for

The goals of Smart Growth alignwith the goals of people who careabout creating inclusion.

Kentlands in Gaithersburg, Maryland


low-income and/or minority populations. By limit-ing choice in housing, segregation limits choice ineducation, employment and overall quality oflife—all of which lag where poverty dominates.“What’s at stake is the ability of people to functionin healthy ways,” he said.

Count Cashin among those who consider SmartGrowth a possible remedy—“if it’s done wisely andwith a degree of intentionality,” she said. “I knowwhat Smart Growth stands for, but the results canvary on the ground.”

With its emphasis on density, infill develop-ment, access to public transportation and—mostimportantly—diverse housing types, Smart Growthbrings a lot to the inclusion table. Rather than cre-ating neighborhoods for a single class of people—be it high-income or low-income—Smart Growthcreates neighborhoods where choices exist forboth.

In some cases, Smart Growth creates affordablechoices in affluent communities. In others, it cre-ates upscale choices in less affluent communities.Either way, it fosters a less segregated housingmarket. Dhiru Thadani can point to successfulexamples of each.

Thadani, a principal with Ayers/Saint GrossArchitects and Planners in Washington, D.C.,helped design Kentlands, a New Urban communi-ty in Gaithersburg, Md., and Beall’s Hill, a rede-velopment project in Macon, Ga. Both feature avariety of housing choices—not just in the samecommunity but on the same block.

In Kentlands, $500,000 homes sit next to$225,000 homes. That’s a small step towardexpanding choice. A bigger one is “granny flats”—

auxiliary units built over the garages or at the rearof full-size homes—that rent for as little as $750 amonth, said Thadani. “They’re referred to as aTrojan Horse to increase density,” he said.Auxiliary units add affordable housing toKentlands without changing the look and feel ofthe neighborhood from the street, Thadani said.

Beall’s Hill is an old residential neighborhoodnext to Mercer University. To boost the supply ofwalking-distance housing for university staff/fac-ulty and employees of a nearby medical center, theuniversity and the city of Macon enlistedAyers/Saint Gross to create a master plan for theneighborhood that would renovate old homes andbuild new ones. The university is offering a sub-sidy to employees—17 percent of the final closingprice of a home up to a maximum of $15,000.

Many Beall’s Hill homes sat on 200-feet-deeplots with vast back yards. To create more density,the lots were split into 100-foot-deep parcels andnew streets built between the subdivided lots. Theresult is a neighborhood where carefully designednew homes of 600 to 2,800 square feet blend seam-lessly with renovated historic mansions of 3,000square feet. “We were very conscious of not beingable to tell from the street level that this house wasdifferent than that house,” said Thadani.

Kentlands and Beall’s Hill show it’s possible forSmart Growth to provide economic inclusion in thehousing market. At the end of the day, however,people are still free to make up their own mindsabout where they want to live. “Just because youexpand choice doesn’t mean people will availthemselves of that choice,” said Briggs.

That’s especially true for racial inclusion. “Idon’t know how you can encourage one racialgroup over another,” said Thadani.

It definitely can’t be mandated, said Cashin.“No way constitutionally or philosophically wouldit make sense to set aside [private] housing specif-ically for racial or ethnic groups,” she said. “Theonly way you get racial inclusion is through thecollaborations you build.”

The goals of advocates pushing racial inclusionand those promoting Smart Growth represent “aconvergence of self-interests” that should motivatethem to become close allies, said Cashin. SmartGrowth—at least on paper—expands choice in thehousing market. Meanwhile, inclusion—or rather

You get racial inclusion through the collaborations you build.

Beall’s Hill in Macon, Georgia

the “racially identifiable populations” the move-ment serves—expands Smart Growth’s politicalsupport for the land-use policies it requires.

“I think we still have to work at fostering asense of parity across communities,” said Eley.“Civil rights is often viewed as a means to an end.Financial literacy is another important tool. In theend, it’s all about choice.”

That’s exactly what the Coalition for LivableCommunities is doing in Memphis, Tenn. Thecoalition is a community-based network that ispromoting Smart Growth “from an equity perspec-tive,” said Emily Trenholm, executive director ofthe Community Development Council of GreaterMemphis. “People in low-income neighborhoodsare very focused on neighborhood issues,” saidTrenholm. “They don’t step back and think abouthow some of the these bigger issues affect theirneighborhoods.”

Take, for example, sprawl. It isn’t just a blight onthe landscape or a strain on infrastructure. It steersinvestment, development and people away frominner-city neighborhoods, which suffer according-ly. “I would say that they’re the biggest victims ofsprawl, yet they don’t have a voice in developmentpatterns at all,” said Trenholm. “We really feel likethese groups … need to be represented in some ofthe policy decisions happening here.”

Inclusion is not just the right thing, it’s whatmany people want, said Cashin. “Right now,there’s more demand for racially integrated neigh-borhoods than neighborhoods to fill the demand,”she said. “If you build it, they will come. You maynot get everybody, but there’s a lot of people whowant their children to grow up in diversity.”


There’s a lot of people who want their children to grow up in diversity.

Brad Broberg is a Seattle-based freelance writer special-izing in business and development issues. His workappears regularly in the Puget Sound Business Journaland the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.

Is it the blueprint for neighborhood improvement

or displacement?By Heidi Johnson-Wright

WINTER 2007 ON COMMON GROUND 1312 ON COMMON GROUND WINTER 2007

Gentrif ication


For some, it can signify many positives:affordable, unique housing stock witheye-catching architectural details, funky

little boutiques and delightful ethnic eateries, brag-ging rights about a cool zip code.

For others, it means nothing but negatives: ris-ing rents, a sense of invasion, changing neighbor-hood identity and an uncertain future.

Gentrification is one of those words that can trig-ger a variety of reactions and opinions, though itsmost basic definition is very simple: “people ofhigher income moving into a neighborhood.”

It can come in var-ious forms and indis-putably signalschange, but just whatthose changes areand whom they affectcan range across avery broad spectrum.

“Urban change is always a traumatic process,and is part and parcel of cities themselves. Theissues become: what is the rate of change? Who arethe losers, and do they have ways of adapting?”said Benjamin Grant, planner, urban designer,writer and teacher in the Urban and RegionalPlanning Program at San José State.

Looking to his own stomping ground—the SanFrancisco Bay area—Grant references the SanFrancisco Mission District as an example.

“This type of gentrification involves an immi-grant neighborhood of residents who are primarilyrenters. Before gentrification, it’s a thriving neigh-borhood with jobs, access to transit, commercial

activity and a sense of community. This scenariohas a heavy impact on the residents. Political linesare drawn and strange bedfellows come together.Urban pioneers move in—the privileged, the edu-cated, artistic types—attracted by a variety of hous-ing options, access to transit, cultural aspects, theenergy, the funkiness.”

“The people who move in—the artists, then thehipsters, then the yuppies and the very affluent—are attracted to the same things that drew the orig-inal residents, but they are less dependent uponthem. What are amenities to those who move inwere necessities for those who were displaced,”said Grant.

But not everyone agrees on the phenomenon ofdisplacement.

Lance Freeman, professor in the urban planningprogram at Columbia University, believes that dis-placement is not always an automatic, pejorativeresult of gentrification.

“Some people claim to find high amounts of dis-placement, and you would think this is pretty wide-spread. But the studies I’ve seen don’t seem toshow a lot of displacement,” said Freeman.

In Freeman’s recent book, “There Goes the‘Hood,” which focuses on black, inner-city neigh-borhoods, he states that “… indigenous residentsdo not necessarily react to gentrification accordingto some of the preconceived notions generallyattributed to residents of these neighborhoods.Their reactions are both more receptive and opti-mistic, yet at the same time more pessimistic anddistrustful than the literature on gentrificationmight lead us to believe.”

Freeman doesn’t dispute that negative thingscan sometimes result from gentrification, yet hecites communities—Boston’s Dudley Street anddowntown Brooklyn—that have employed success-ful programs and mechanisms to turn the negativesinto positives.

In a 2005 issue of Poverty & Race, published bythe Poverty & Race Research Action Council, for-mer Berkeley, Calif., Mayor Gus Newport wroteabout his tenure as the director of Boston’s DudleyStreet Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI.) His con-tention is that, in the long run, public affordablehousing resources speed up gentrification and dis-placement. Therefore, community land trusts(CLTs) are a better solution.

“Through a series of policy firsts, DSNI becamethe first community nonprofit organization in thecountry to be awarded eminent domain powersover vacant land in a 1.3-square-mile area of thecity of Boston,” wrote Newport.

“The CLTs long-term interest in the land andproperty assures that this balance of interests ismaintained and community wealth is retained. The

Before

After

Martindale on the Monon,Indianapolis, Indiana


value of public subsidies used to develop theaffordable housing is permanently tied to the hous-ing, thus recycling subsidy dollars from owner toowner, assuring long-term affordability and com-munity benefit.”

“Through the community-controlled land trust,the residents were able to create a vibrant multicul-tural community, developing hundreds of afford-able homes and providing an opportunity for resi-dents to personally benefit from the communityrevitalization they themselves planned,” Newportwrote.

Atlantic Yards, a proposed mixed-use FrankGehry and Laurie Olin-designed development indowntown Brooklyn, will include housing, offices,retail and a boutique hotel surrounded by seven-plus acres of public open space, plus an arena forBrooklyn’s NBA franchise, the Brooklyn Nets.While it has yet to be built, Atlantic Yards hassparked substantial controversy.

The development’s potential affects upon thelocal community have caused a hue and cry, andserved as a catalyst for a deal that’s been struckbetween the developer, Forest City Ratner andACORN, the Association of CommunityOrganizations for Reform Now, the nation’s largestcommunity organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justiceand stronger communities.

“When Atlantic Yards was originally proposed, itcontained only market-rate rental housing and con-dominiums. Between 1990 and 2000, the AfricanAmerican population of the area surroundingAtlantic Yards decreased by 17.2 percent. For morethan a decade, we had seen new high-rise condo-miniums popping up across the downtownBrooklyn skyline—pushing out longtime residentsand exacerbating the area’s housing affordabilitycrisis,” said Bertha Lewis, executive director ofNew York ACORN.

Residents were able to create a vibrant multicultural community.


“Through months of negotiations we arrived atNew York City’s first legally binding CommunityBenefits Agreement and a groundbreakingMemorandum of Understanding between ACORNand Forest City Ratner about the housing compo-nent of the project.”

Lewis said under the agreement, half of AtlanticYards’ 4,500 rental units will be offered at afford-able rates. Unlike many NYC affordable apart-ments that have a limited range of unit types, thisdevelopment will have different apartments thatcan accommodate household sizes from one to six.All 4,500 units, including the 50 percent madeaffordable, will be rent stabilized.

“More than anything, in an era of increasinghousing segregation, Atlantic Yards will be one ofthe only neighborhoods in Brooklyn where familiesof all backgrounds will be able to really live andgrow together,” she said.

Eric S. Friedman, a REALTOR® and developer inSt. Louis, Mo., believes in the importance of maintaining diversity in creating a real community.

“What happens when we don’t have a sense ofcommunity? It does something to the fabric of oursociety when we must drive everywhere instead ofwalking. This affects everything, from crime rightdown to one’s personal health,” said Friedman.

“When you have diversity, it brings new energyand an improved economy to a community. Thishelps people to take advantage of the value ofdiversity. To attract diversity, it helps to have rangeof types and prices of housing in a community.”

Friedman has been very involved in getting a25-percent state historic tax credit and other taxincentives passed in Missouri.

“We’ve been a throwaway society. Look at howwe treat natural resources. The same applies tobuildings. The (historic tax credit) program canbring great economic rewards. The program sup-ports the renovation of historic properties andbuildings in a historic district and includes homeownership, multifamily housing, rental housingand requires high renovation standards. The taxcredit goes to developers as incentives to renovate,especially in a high construction cost market,

Neighborhood clean-up day,Indianapolis, Indiana

When you have diversity,it brings new energy andan improved economy to

the community.


where there can be extra costs likeasbestos abatement and environ-mental issues,” Friedman said.

As Friedman points out, gentri-fication doesn’t always equate totearing down buildings in oldneighborhoods and replacingthem with out-sized monolithicstructures, as sometimes hap-pened during the first wave ofAmerican urban renewal. With taxcredit programs and creativeredevelopers, restabilizing aneighborhood can include pre-serving its character and scale.

As a former four-term mayor ofIndianapolis, author and UrbanLand Institute Joseph C. Canizaro Chair for PublicPolicy, William H. Hudnut, III understands a thingor two about gentrification and effective approach-es to it.

“Cities are becoming more sensitive to theseissues. You don’t just go in and slash and burn. Yougo in and save,” said Hudnut.

“The government has an obligation, as well asdevelopers, to work with people and appropriatelyrelocate them in the same neighborhood, if theirhomes must be taken in creating permanentlyaffordable housing or other development projects.If redevelopment allows for homes to be saved,then there needs to be partnerships with communi-ty development corporations or other nonprofits toprocure grant funds for restoring the properties.”

Hudnut’s advice to communities facing theseissues is to employ patience and respect for theresidents.

”As the mayor of Indianapolis, my mantra was‘avoid the acute angle.’ Don’t let things degenerateinto a ‘me versus you’ situation. Come to the tableand see what we can work out,” he said.

Regarding the emotional chord that gentrifica-tion can strike, Hudnut thinks that it’s gotten abum wrap.

“People start wailing and weeping and gnashingtheir teeth. I think you can say ‘three cheers forgentrification,’ especially when it serves to coun-teract abandonment, increase the tax base and sta-bilize a neighborhood.”

As a good example of a project that utilizesSmart Growth principles to achieve these goals,Hudnut points to Martindale on the Monon, arevival of a historic downtown Indianapolis neigh-borhood with new single-family housing.

The first 15 home sales happened to be made towhite young professional trendsetters moving intoa neighborhood comprised largely of AfricanAmerican senior citizens.

When Martindale developer Mike Higbeearrived on the scene four years ago, he saw a oncethriving community with strong history of homeownership blighted with abandoned cars, trash andovergrown weeds. But he knew things could turnaround without displacing those who wanted tostay. The key was the approach.

“It took us two years to assemble the land, whichhad enough empty lots to re-knit the fabric of theneighborhood. Then we had to earn the trust of theexisting homeowners. We went door to door tellingthe residents that no one would be uprooted; noone’s home would be taken. We also brought in acommunity development corporation to get fundsto rehabilitate some of the homes,” said Higbee.

Since those early days when the median housevalue was $26,000, they’ve built 22 houses whichhave caused the average area home value to jumpto $185,000. Of the new homes built, 40 percent areaffordable and 60 percent are market rate.

With each successive year, they hope to beadding 40 to 50 more. Townhomes, apartments, anda live/work district are also planned. Some folkshave already moved in to this neighborhood near abike/hike trail, and they include lawyers, artistsand an airline mechanic.

Said Higbee: “We’re not building housing; we’rein the business of building a neighborhood.”

Restabilizing a neighborhoodcan include preserving itscharacter and scale.

Heidi Johnson-Wright frequently writes about SmartGrowth and sustainable communities. She and her husband live in a restored historic home in the heart ofMiami’s Little Havana. Contact her at: [email protected].

Indianapolis Mayor, Bart Peterson, looks onas Navonda Adams, lifelong resident ofMartindale on the Monon, speaks in supportof the neighborhood gentrification.


By Christine Jordan Sexton

The Key toThe Key toFamily HousingFamily Housing

Smart Growth opens thedoor for affordable familyhousing options

Smart Growth opens thedoor for affordable familyhousing options


Homes are where jobs go at night. It’s nota saying California REALTOR® anddeveloper Jim Hamilton originally

coined, but it is a turn of phrase that has helpedguide his belief that family housing is the fabric ofa diverse, thriving, well-planned community.

In short, without family housing a community’ssocial and economic success are at risk.

The reason is simple, says Hamilton, vice presi-dent and manager of Alain Pinel REALTORS®

branch in Los Altos and 2005 president of theCalifornia Association of REALTORS®. Withoutaffordable housing options for their employees,employers will relocate their firms. When the jobsleave, the workers and their families will follow.

“One thing families create and children create isthe future,” Hamilton said. “Who is going to fillinto the community and take over the communityas we get older and retire if we don’t have childrenin the environment? Who is going to be there?”

Yet resistance to including family housing incommunities is commonplace. Exclusionary zoningrequirements like oversized lots block affordableoptions from being built. They also drive up thecosts of the home and contribute to widespread andill use of land. Exclusionary zoning essentiallyundermines the efforts to build high-density,mixed-use developments that offer a variety ofhousing options to meet different income levels.

Consider Massachusetts. It is the only state tolose population the last two years and it ranks inthe bottom five nationally in housing production. Itis considered the most expensive housing marketin the nation, and it is a prime example of an areawhere affordable family housing is slipping away.

Through exclusionary zoning requirements—namely large lot requirements—communities therehave routinely opposed the inclusion of affordablefamily housing for the local school teacher and hisfamily of four or the area firefighter and her threechildren.

Communities cite any number of reasons foropposing family housing options, such as moretraffic congestion, increased demand on infrastruc-ture and increased local taxes to pay for schools.

A January 2006 study conducted by theMassachusetts Housing Partnership and the MITCenter for Real Estate indicates that half of the30,387 new single-family homes built between1998 and 2002 were built on lots of nearly an acreor larger. In the Western United States, the studyindicates, the typical new house is built on about

Without family housing,a community’s social

and economic successare at risk.


one-quarter of an acre of land and in the South thetypical new home lot is one-third of an acre.

The study notes only one out of four communi-ties outside the metropolitan area had any multi-family developments of five or more units duringthe same four-year period.

It’s startling statistics like that which helpedlead to the passage of 40 S and 40 R, new regula-tions in Massachusetts that deal with growth andfamily housing in a New Urbanism, Smart Growthcontext.

The first of the new laws—40 R—pays a commu-nity willing to build housing in high density areas.The community gets paid an incentive for zoningthe units and then gets state Smart Growth incen-tive money again when the buildings are complete.

40 S is an incentive to pay for any additionaleducational costs related to school-age childrenwho come from the 40 R produced housing.

Thirty-five communities are actively working onimplementing Smart Growth zoning districts underchapter 40 R and as of October 3, six Smart Growthzones had been approved by local governing bod-ies, said Eleanor White, president of HousingPartners, Inc., an affordable housing consultingfirm based in Massachusetts.

40 R incentive dollars—which range from a lowof $10,000 for 20 new units to a high of $600,000 formore than 500 units—can begin flowing to thecommunities almost immediately. An additional“one time density bonus payment,” set at $3,000

per new or rehabbed unit—also will be paid to thedeveloper once the permit for the new or rehabbedis issued.

40 S is meant to work more like an insurancepolicy and won’t trickle into the community unlessthe school district incurs a deficit due to an influxof 40 R housing.

Thirty-five years before the new Smart Growthlaws, the Massachusetts Legislature passedChapter 40 B, or the comprehensive permit law. Itencourages communities to have 10 percent oftheir housing stock available for households whoseincome is 80 percent or less of median for the area.When communities don’t meet those standards,developers can apply locally for streamlined “com-prehensive” permits to build mixed-income hous-ing so long as they are willing to commit at least 25percent of the units for residents with below-aver-age incomes.

Nonetheless, when developers try to overridelocal zoning under Chapter 40 B, “communitiesoften fight tooth and nail, except for age-qualified,(55 and older) projects that don’t produce chil-dren,” said David Wluka, president of theMassachusetts Association of REALTORS®. The

In order to maintain successful family housing

in developed areas, people need to abandonthe conventional ideas.


rejected project is then sent to the state HousingAppeals Committee for review which takes prece-dent over local rules.

In the battle to provide affordable housing, 40 Bhas been described by many as the stick. 40 R and40 S are seen as the carrots.

That’s a description that Wluka considers“unfortunate,” because he believes that 40 B is asmart planning tool when applied properly withcommunity support. Either way, Wluka said townsin Massachusetts need to be more involved withbetter managing their growth.

“You can take command of what’s going on, oryou can sit back and let it happen to you; but ‘noth-

ing happening’ is not an option. People tend not tounderstand.”

In California, Hamilton and his partner, DanNiemann, developed the $25 million El CentroLorento, a community housing center developedalong with the not-for-profit organization Search toInvolve Filipino Americans. Although the buildingwas allowed under zoning requirements, it was metwith a firestorm of opposition from neighborhoodsmore than one mile away. Today there is a waitinglist for the residences.

“The day it opened it was filled to capacity,” saidHamilton, who also is a partner in NeimannProperties.

In order to maintain successful family housingin developed areas, people need to abandon theconventional ideas in favor of flexible zoning mod-els. Family housing could be built near the oversizeparking lots employers are willing to build to easeparking woes or even over the parking lots if zon-ing was more forward thinking. Employers wouldhave to start playing a role in order for scenarioslike that to play out, Hamilton said, adding thatcommunities and municipalities also would need towork with the employers to help make it all hap-pen.

“That takes an awful lot of players gettinginvolved,” Hamilton said.

Developer businessman Cortez Carter givesChicago high marks for prioritizing family housingin the redevelopment projects occurring there.

Carter is the president of the Chicago-basedQuest Development Group, a fully integrated con-struction firm with expertise in affordable housing,among other things. He recently built 25 two-unitfamily homes in Auburn Gresham and the sur-rounding area. The homes there consist of a two-story, three-bedroom owner’s unit as well as a two-bedroom, ground-level rental unit. Both theowner’s and the renter’s unit are self contained.

Carter holds the units out not only as familyhousing, but stresses that units like those alsoencourage home ownership. And it is a way to

One thing familiescreate and childrencreate is the future.

make home ownership more affordable for manyfamilies. The self-contained renter’s unit can beleased to a family member, Carter says, noting thatpooling funds with a family member divides up thefamily’s financial burdens. Additionally, therenter’s unit could be rented to a non-family mem-ber and rental income comes in to offset the costs ofthe mortgage.

Carter says homes such as the ones in AuburnGresham offer families “new forms of home owner-

ship.” The majority of those buying homes fromQuest Development are former tenants who livedin family housing. “It’s not about who is buying,”says Cortez. “It’s about buying and bringing freshpeople in.”

Christine Jordan Sexton is a Tallahassee-based freelancereporter who has done correspondent work for theAssociated Press, the New York Times, Florida MedicalBusiness and a variety of trade magazines, includingFlorida Lawyer and National Underwriter.


Thirty-five communities [inMassachusetts] are actively

working on implementingSmart Growth zoning districts.

A Balance of

WINTER 2007 ON COMMON GROUND 25Oak Hill, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania24 ON COMMON GROUND WINTER 2007

One of the hallmarks of a healthy commu-nity is a balanced mix of housingoptions at a variety of price points,

which in turn encourages economic diversityamong its residents. In the late 19th and early 20thcentury, this diversity was the default setting inmost American neighborhoods. But as use-basedzoning took hold after World War II, it graduallymorphed into the current default system, whichoften segregates residential areas by price point,effectively creating pods of wealthy homeowners,middle-class homeowners and those less fortunate.

Today, mixed-income neighborhoods—both newand revitalized—that follow the tenets of SmartGrowth and New Urbanism are beginning todemonstrate the wisdom of returning to a moreincome-integrated development model. While thejury is still out regarding how much healthiermixed-income neighborhoods are as compared totheir segregated, conventional suburban counter-parts, anecdotal evidence and a growing body ofempirical studies seem to point to certain realities:

• Mixed-income neighborhoods alleviate theadverse effects of high concentrations ofpoverty, including negative behavior; and

• Mixed-income neighborhoods offer more lifechances and encourage positive, upwardlymobile behaviors.

“There are two categories of responses whenaddressing the question of the necessity of mixed-

income housing,” says Emily Talen, associate pro-fessor of urban and regional planning at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Thefirst addresses the fairness of it: Mixed-incomehousing should be developed as a broader socialgoal because doing so provides a more equitabledistribution of resources. You’re not concentratingone group in one area with limited resources, whileconcentrating another group in another area with aseparate group of resources. It’s the geography ofopportunity, equity, fairness; you want to promote‘the American Way.’ In doing so, you build toler-ance because there is daily contact among neigh-bors.

“The other response takes the approach ofurbanist Jane Jacobs. Neighborhoods with an equi-table mix of housing options help to foster innova-tion, creativity and economic growth. These neigh-borhoods provide fertile media for cross-fertiliza-tion of cultures and ideas.”

But these assertions—which are the backbone ofproponents’ arguments for mixed-income hous-ing—are not supported by all housing policyexperts. According to the findings of a 2002 reportby Alastair Smith, who wrote the paper as a Masterof Public Policy candidate at the Kennedy School ofGovernment of Harvard University, mixed-incomehousing doesn’t necessarily alleviate poverty andthe effects typically associated with it. While admit-ting to a scarcity of empirical data to support either

Mixed-income housing provides a place for every economic background

A Balance of

By Jason Miller

OpportunityOpportunity

camp’s assertion, Smith’s report references studiesthat are inconclusive at best with regard to the rolethat mixed-income housing plays in healing the riftbetween the haves and the have-nots in Americatoday:

• One study addressed a deteriorating public-housing project in Chicago, which was rede-veloped into Lake Parc Place; only moderatelevels of interaction were found among resi-dents after redevelopment;

• Various developments in New York City,Boston, Chicago and the Bay Area ofCalifornia were studied; interaction betweenincome groups was “unclear” or “difficult forthe authors to gain;” and

• Seven other mixed-income developments inBoston, New Haven, Conn., San Francisco,Oakland, Montgomery County, Md., and

Kansas City were studied, each with a differ-ent mix of incomes; residents interviewed gen-erally described “low or very low levels ofneighboring, even lacking the ability to nametheir immediate neighbors.”

It should be noted that the above studies werenot performed in comparison to conventional sub-urban developments (CSDs); i.e., no interviewswere conducted to demonstrate the level of interac-tion among neighbors in the same regions’ CSDs.

Few Smart Growth or New Urban practitionerswould claim that mixed-income housing is a silverbullet that will solve the ills of the ever-wideningincome gap in the U.S. Indeed, any type of housingproject often takes years, even decades, to comeinto its own and become the best—or the worst—itcan be. But a growing number of projects fundedwith a wide range of public and private moneys areproviding environments that encourage economic,social, mental, physical and even spiritual well-being for their residents.

Tools of the tradeCreating this income diversity comes at a cost.

“The idea of mixed-income housing goes againstthe land market in America; it’s radically different,”says Talen. “We can’t just expect that if we buildfree-market housing, things will work out [for low-income families]. Most of the time, mixed-incomehousing is accomplished using outside money.”

That funding can come in dozens of forms,including city funds, local or housing authorities,corporations, private foundations, housing advoca-cy groups and other related nonprofits, low-incomehousing tax credits, or a federal source, such as theHOPE VI program, which aims to fund projectsthat provide a mix of public housing, affordablehousing and market-rate housing. Mixed-incomehousing projects that don’t use some form of public

funds areextremely rare;even those thatpurport to bepurely market-based usuallyhave benefitedfrom some formof taxpayerfunding duringtheir financingstage.

Mixed-income housing should be developed as a broader social goal.

Theseneighborhoodsprovide cross-fertilization of

cultures and ideas.


Oak Hill, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Crawford Square, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania


Playing by the “rules” of the marketBut market-based projects do exist; from the

small to the large. Throughout our nation’s housing history, the

individual homeowner had the right idea.Homeowners knew their neighborhood and theircommunity’s housing market. They knew how totap into their property value—that if they convert-ed their houses’ upper floors into affordable apart-ment flats or built an additional unit over thegarage, there were plenty of people willing to rentfrom them. These accessory dwelling units (ADUs),traditionally known as granny flats, supplementedincome and made for a nice retirement income dur-ing the 1940s and 50s. ADUs naturally promotedmixed housing and offered affordable housing forworking-class families. Today, these types of unitsare making a comeback. Homeowners still find theextra income appealing and developers are includ-ing them in Smart Growth plans. Communities andcities across the country are finding these units anappealing option to meet higher-density require-ments and to promote the diverse neighborhoodsmany homebuyers would like to see return andnow seek out.

Market–based, mixed-income projects exist on alarger scale as well. One such effort, StatewayGardens, developed by Stateway Associates LLC, islocated on the western edge of Chicago’sBronzeville community. The 33-acre Stateway sitewas originally built in 1958, and consisted of 1,644public housing units in eight high-rise buildings.Only two of these buildings are left; they currentlyhouse about 600 residents and will eventually bedemolished. The first six buildings to be demol-ished will be replaced by a lower density, mixed-income community.

The redevelopment plan for Stateway Gardens isdivided into four phases and will take up to six

years to com-plete. Themaster planfor this proj-ect calls for diverse housing types that includetownhouses; three, four, five and six flats; and mid-rise buildings. More than 1,300 units will be builtas part of the plan for Stateway redevelopment. Inthe end, Stateway Gardens will offer 439 units atmarket rate, 437 units as affordable housing and439 public housing units.

Power of partnershipDeveloper and property manager McCormack

Baron Salazar (MBS), based in St. Louis, Mo.,takes a “team” approach when building and revi-talizing mixed-income neighborhoods. For morethan 20 years, the firm has worked with residents,neighborhood groups, financial institutions, foun-dations, state and local governments and federalagencies, pulling together funds and nurturingpolitical will to create better neighborhoods thatbring together residents from virtually every eco-nomic stratum.

“From a market perception, it’s developmentwhere almost anybody can live,” says ExecutiveVice President Vince Bennett. “[The mix of housingoptions] helps us to avoid the perception that adevelopment is only affordable product. Plus, all ofour units have market-rate amenities, so the conti-nuity of quality is maintained throughout thedevelopment.”

McCormack Baron Salazar developed the firstHOPE VI project, Centennial Place, in the down-town commercial district of Atlanta, Ga., using amix of funds from HOPE VI, local city/state funds,private equity and a first mortgage. Begun in 1996Centennial Place is nearing completion with four ofits five phases out of the ground. It replaces the

It’s development wherealmost anybody can live.

aged Techwood Homes (built in 1936) with aneighborhood that provides 40 percent of its hous-ing to market-rate buyers, 40 percent to publichousing residents and 20 percent to tax-creditinvestors—investors who purchase tax credits fromthe original holder of those credits, often a develop-er, for a to-be-determined sum on the dollar. Forexample, a brokerage firm could be a tax-creditinvestor. The tax credits generate equity in a deal;the investor purchases the credits by putting capi-tal—i.e., cash—into the partnership.

“We typically go into difficult-to-develop areas,”says Bennett. “That’s our niche.”

One such project is Pueblo del Sol, a mixed-income housing development in Los Angeles, Calif.A joint effort between MBS, The RelatedCompanies of California, The Lee Group, Inc. andthe Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles,Pueblo del Sol marked a turning point in the his-toric east Los Angeles neighborhood of BoyleHeights. Previously occupied by the Aliso Village

public housing complex, thesite had deterioratedbeyond repair. Pueblo delSol now offers an attractivemixed-income communityconsisting of 377 rentalunits and 93 home owner-ship units. On the rentalside, 60 percent is publichousing; 40 percent fallsunder the tax credit andaffordable housing umbrel-la. On the housing for-salefront, 70 percent is marketrate and 30 percent is pub-lic. The neighborhood alsoincludes two communitycenters, plus proximity to anelementary school and afuture MTA Gold Line (lightrail) stop and a proposednew high school.

Democratic treasures“Mixed-income housing provides choices for

persons of all incomes and stages of life to live in acommunity from childhood to retirement,” saysDonald Carter, president of Urban DesignAssociates (UDA) in Pittsburgh, Pa. “They are ahistoric American tradition and a democratic treas-ure. They work.”

That passionate philosophy has played out intwo UDA projects in particular. Pittsburgh’sCrawford Square is one of many steps towardrebuilding Pittsburgh’s Lower Hill District. A suc-cessful rebuilding of a residential neighborhood,Crawford Square is a low-income housing tax cred-it project that is 50 percent tax credit and 50 per-cent market rate. Even though more than 50 per-cent of the units are subsidized, no visual distinc-tion is apparent in either the architecture or thecharacter of the neighborhood. A total of 500 unitsof mixed-income housing have been built here,including a mix of rental and for-sale units, with awide range of prices.

In Louisville, Ky., the Park DuValle neighbor-hood is an even more visually arresting story. Oncedominated by 1,100 public housing units, vacantland and abandoned houses, Park DuValle hasbecome a stable, mixed-income community. A totalof 513 units of mixed-income/mixed-finance rentalunits and 341 home ownership units have beenbuilt or are under construction.

Mixed-incomehousing provideschoices for personsof all incomes andstages of life.

Park DuValle, Louisville, Kentucky

Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.



Park DuValle has attracted a wide range ofincome levels. Market-rate units are immediatelyadjacent to rental houses, with a high percentage oflow- and very-low-income families. But mostimportantly, the development has changed theimage of the larger area in which it is located, fromone of abandonment and decay to that of a vital anddesirable neighborhood. As a result, adjacentneighborhoods are experiencing revitalization,and, for the first time in generations, new retail andcommunity services are being attracted to the area.

This kind of success doesn’t just happen, saysCarter. “A mixed-income project requires multiplesources of financing, including traditional bankfinancing, tax credits, state housing loans, and phil-anthropic grants and loans. In terms of management,the two principal concerns are high-level mainte-nance of the property and screening of residents.”

Transforming the troublemakersAllequippa Terrace was Pittsburgh’s largest and

most troubled housing project. Its original 1,799units were one-third vacant, physically deteriorat-ing and crime-ridden. Enter Corcoran JennisonCompanies (CJC), a Boston-based developer thatpartnered with Beacon Companies and theAllequippa Terrace Resident Council to redevelopthe community. The result: Oak Hill, whichincludes mixed-income family rental housing and amajor reconfiguration of the street plan, whichopens the community to the surrounding neighbor-hood. Additional off-site home ownership opportu-nities for residents help to reinforce the city’s effortsto stabilize neighboring communities by improvingthe existing housing stock for occupancy.

Funded in part by a HOPE VI grant, the city ofPittsburgh, low-income housing tax credits and theUrban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, the82-acre project will offer 816 rental units and 275home ownership units at its completion. By the endof 2006, a new community center will be complet-ed in cooperation with the Pittsburgh HousingAuthority.

In Washington, D.C., CJC transformed the for-mer Ellen Wilson public housing project into 134limited-equity, cooperative residential units calledThe Townhomes on Capitol Hill. Located in the his-toric neighborhood of Capitol Hill, the Ellen Wilsonproject was condemned in 1988. In 1991, a group ofneighbors and business people formed the EllenWilson Community Development Corporation andbegan the site’s redevelopment in 1997. With $26million of HOPE VI grant money, CJC undertookthe project as development advisor and handledthe construction, marketing and management ofthe community.

The Townhomes on Capitol Hill vary from two tofour stories, which maintains architectural consis-tency with the range of building dimensions in theCapitol Hill Historic District. And the project,designed by Weinstein & Associates architecturalfirm, based in Washington, D.C., looks as good as itlives. Its handsome brick facades earned it theAmerican Institute of Architects’ Honor Award forUrban Design Excellence and the Urban LandInstitute Award for Excellence.

The final measurePresently, the promise of mixed-income housing

has not yet been fully realized. We don’t knowbeyond a reasonable doubt how much better designand integrated price points contribute towardimproved behavior, interpersonal connectivity andupwardly mobile economic positions in life.

However, urbanism is not a quick fix. Often, itcan take decades to plot a new course and steer ina new direction the massive machinery of develop-ment and social detriments it sometimes brought.After all, it took decades to get it moving on its cur-rent course. Still, having seen and experiencedwhat the first attempts at public housing haveengendered, revisiting a mixed-income model ofdevelopment seems the wisest approach, one thatwill help to reintroduce an element that has been inshort supply in low-income housing projects fordecades: hope.

They [mixed-incomeneighborhoods] are a historic American traditionand a democratic treasure.

Jason Miller is a freelance writer, editor and publishingconsultant based in Concrete, Washington.

Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.

Working as a firefighter, school teacher, retailsalesperson or entry-level professional has neverbeen considered dishonorable in America.

Wanting to live in a healthy community with access to thebest jobs, schools, cultural activities, transit and more hasalways been viewed as a worthy pursuit in this nation.

But with a vast number of jobs offering middle to lowwages and a great amount of new housing being built inprice ranges reachable by only the middle and upper class,the gap between workforce wages and desirable neighbor-hood affordability is widening each day.

From large urban centers to new growth areas, the policeofficer and the other backbones of the workforce cannotbegin to dream of buying even a one bedroom condo or asmall cottage.

To try to level the playing field, hundreds of cities havecreated inclusionary zoning (also known as inclusionaryhousing) as a way to create a percentage of affordable unitsintermingled with the market-rate units and their skyrock-eting price points.

Inclusionary zoning has dozens of forms, but most typi-cally a development with a certain threshold of units—often10 or more—is required to offer affordable units—usually 15percent—to households earning roughly between 60 to 120percent of the area median income.


Smart Growth experts debateinclusionary zoning strategiesin an effort to win diverseaffordable neighborhoodsBy Steve Wright


ProsVS.CONS


Quite often, such mandatory inclusionary hous-ing requirements come along with developerincentives such as increased density, expeditedpermitting and reduced or waived inspection fees.

To some, inclusionary zoning is the means topreserving a healthy mix of diverse incomes, eth-nicities and workforces in increasingly priceymunicipalities.

To others, inclusionary zoning is an impedimentto growth, an interference with the free market andan exceedingly expensive cost-per-unit way of inte-grating lower incomes into high land-value areas.

Susannah Levine and Adam Gross of Chicago’sBusiness and Professional People for the PublicInterest believe in the power of inclusionary hous-ing.

“Inclusionary housing is an extraordinarily effec-tive and efficient way for cities to create affordablehousing,” they said. Author, consultant, former mayorof Albuquerque David Rusk has calculated that if the100 largest metropolitan areas in the United Stateshad adopted typical inclusionary housing programs(a 15 percent set-aside on 10 or more units), between1980 and 2000 those 100 programs would have pro-duced 2.6 million affordable units. That’s almosttwice as many units as were built using the most pro-ductive federal affordable housing program, the LowIncome Housing Tax Credit. Montgomery County,Md., which has the longest-running inclusionaryhousing program in the country, has created more

than approximately 11,000 affordable units since itsprogram began in 1974.”

Derek Camunez, president elect of the DenverBoard of REALTORS®, is not sure inclusionary zon-ing mandates are addressing the affordable hous-ing problem.

“We believe that mandating affordable housingis not nearly as effective as providing builderincentives such as tax breaks, creative zoning forhigher densities and speeding up the permittingprocess for providing access to affordable housing,”he said.

“Denver’s annual report on the inclusionaryBuilding Ordinance is finding that the affordablehousing stock is not significantly increasing.Moreover, the city is discovering that they are notgetting the desired cross-cultural families takingadvantage of this housing stock that they hadhoped.”

Thomas M. Menino, serving his fourth term asmayor of Boston, believes inclusionary zoning isworking in his historic, densely-developed andvery pricey city. Since 2000, Boston has used inclu-sionary zoning to foster economic diversity throughaffordable housing.

“Neighborhoods accept them well and they arewell scattered about,” Geoffrey Lewis, a projectmanager with the Boston Redevelopment Authority,said of market-rate buyers’ willingness to haveaffordable units created next to them.

Inclusionary zoning is the means to preserving a healthy mix of diverse incomes,

ethnicities and workforces.

Sacramento, California


“Our mayor wanted economic diversity through-out the neighborhoods,” he added. “They (cityleaders) realize a strong middle class is going to beimportant to the continued vitality of Boston. Thepolitical leadership has been very strong. It under-stands that if we don’t get housing costs under con-trol, it will be detrimental to our economy.”

Lewis cautioned that inclusionary zoningrequires a strong housing market to make it work,noting “if the market isn’t strong, developers willlook at inclusionary as the thing that’s killing theproject.”

In Housing Supply and Affordability: “DoAffordable Housing Mandates Work?” published bythe Reason Public Policy Institute and funded by agrant from the Home Builders Association ofNorthern California, researchers Benjamin Powelland Edward Stringham found data that suggestsinclusionary zoning is a failure in NorthernCalifornia because it:

• Produces few units. “The 50 Bay area citieswith inclusionary zoning have produced fewerthan 7,000 units.”

• Has high costs. “The total cost for all inclu-sionary units in the Bay area to date (is) $2.2billion.”

• Makes market-priced homes more expensive.“In high market-rate cities … inclusionaryzoning adds more than $100,000 to the price ofeach new home.”

• Restricts the supply of new homes. “In the 33cities with data for seven years prior and sevenyears following inclusionary zoning, 10,662fewer homes were produced during the sevenyears after the adoption ofinclusionary zoning.”

• Costs government revenue.“The total present value oflost government revenuedue to Bay area inclusionaryzoning ordinances isupwards of $553 million.”

Although some builders andresearchers are skeptical of inclu-sionary zoning’s impact on thefree market, more cities areenacting inclusionary ordinanceseach year. While the SanFrancisco Bay area homebuildersare chafing at the affordablehousing requirements, anotherurban center in California ischampioning its inclusionaryhousing model.

In Sacramento, where the percentage of afford-able homes fell from a high of 70 percent to a recentrock-bottom low of less than 10, inclusionary zoningis applauded. Desmond Parrington, a planner withthe city of Sacramento, said nearly 2,000 affordablehouses and rental units have been created throughthe capital city’s inclusionary legislation.

The city’s Mixed Income Ordinance, created in2000, seeks to “prevent segregated communitiesthrough economic integration.” It also “aims toprovide affordable housing that fits the character ofmarket-rate neighborhoods.” The ordinance

City leaders realize a strong middle class is going to be important to the continued vitality of Boston.

Hollywood Palms,San Diego, California


requires thatany new resi-dential devel-opment of 10or more unitsinclude ana f f o r d a b l ecomponent.

“[The pro-gram] hasbeen success-ful at creatingnew mixed-

income communities that might not otherwise becreated when new housing is built, due to the highprice of land and construction costs in California,”Parrington reported.

“It ensures that there are lower-income unitsthat are part of market-rate developments and thatthose units are built concurrently with the rest ofthe project.”

John McIlwain, a senior fellow at the UrbanLand Institute, believes inclusionary zoning is apiece of the puzzle, but not the complete solution.He agrees with homebuilders that more affordablehousing is created through density bonuses thanstrict inclusionary requirements alone.

“It won’t produce the amount of affordable hous-ing that’s needed by a long shot, but it’s still a veryvaluable tool if it’s done right,” he said of inclusion-ary zoning.

McIlwain said cities start with the premise thatinclusionary zoning will provide affordable hous-ing without hurting the market. He said that is truein two circumstances:

1. A market so strong, that inclusionary housingcan be imposed on developers and they willstill make a lot of money.

2. The more likely scenario that the city givesdevelopers something in return to offset theloss of profits associated with selling unitsbelow market price.

“In most cases, bonus density is the key. That’sone way a city can do it without spending money,”he said.

McIlwain said because high-rise condominiumsare so expensive to build, it is often difficult to createaffordable units within them. He also cautioned thata low-income family will not be able to keep up withthe high monthly fees levied by high-rise condos.

“The biggest pitfall is pushing income limitsdown too low,” McIlwain said. “The advice I cangive is [to use inclusionary zoning] for workingpeople, the workforce earning 80 to 100 percent ofarea median income. Some other program can thenbe created to address affordable housing needs ofpeople below 80 percent of median income.”

Most experts agree that it is more difficult tomake inclusionary housing work in dense urbanareas that are mostly built out. If the city is desir-able and rapidly redeveloping, the premium onbuildable land drives the price up so high that it isvery difficult to squeeze in affordable housing. Ifthe city is stagnant or perceived as undesirable,any additional requirements, such as inclusionaryzoning, may serve as a deterrent to much-neededurban reinvestment.

Inclusionary requirements work best in newurban growth areas, producing the success storiesof Montgomery County, Md., and more recently, inSouthern California.

In San Diego, a voter-approved initiative madeaffordable housing a big part of the developmentplan for the urban growth area to the north of thecore city. In that low-rise growth area, which start-ed being developed in 2003, 20 percent of the hous-ing must be affordable.

Todd Philips, director of the San Diego HousingCommission’s Policy and Public AffairsDepartment, said the inclusionary zoning programfor the north growth area has created nearly 1,000affordable units and has a goal of creating another1,000 before build out is completed.

The program has been successful at creating newmixed-income communities.

Rancho Del Norte, San Diego, California


He said affordable is mixed with market rate inthe new developments. Typically, single familyhomes are market rate and a pair of developersteam up to make garden-style apartment condo-miniums to fulfill the affordable requirement.

“We look at comparability with the market rateand the affordable. Not that if the market rate hasgranite, the affordable has to too. But we do wantthe housing to be comparable in quality andappearance,” he said.

In 2003, San Diego created a requirement of 10percent affordable units in the infill redevelopmentareas in the old city, but that phase endured a bru-tal legal battle before developers settled on a for-mula to calculate payments in lieu of buildingaffordable units.

Despite the challenges, Philips counsels politi-cians, planners, REALTORS® and others interestedin creating inclusionary zoning in their hometownsto “shoot for the moon.”

“Even a 10-percent fee probably isn’t enough.We need to truly address what it costs to house aworking-class person.”

Ted Koebel, professor of urban planning atVirginia Tech, is not opposed to inclusionary zon-ing, but believes the affordable housing gap wouldbe better closed by citywide or regional zoning thatallows for all ranges of housing price points andneeds in several neighborhoods.

“Very few cities allow mixed-density, mixed-usedevelopment and if you want to do something cre-ative, you slam into a wall of discouraging regula-

tions,” he said. “We don’t do enough comprehen-sive planning to create applications of zoning thatwould allow you to do more complex development.Developers can do master planned developmentsand have them be very well representative of allhousing needs.”

Koebel said American planning comes from ahistory of segregation of uses. Mixed-use andmixed-density development requires so many vari-ances and zoning changes that developers throw inthe towel before trying to serve a diverse markethere.

“European zoning allows for mixed use by right.What they review are issues around massing ofbuildings, the relationships of building to its sur-roundings, how growth fits the transportation sys-tem,” said Koebel, noting that European citiesmaintained a mix of affordable housing for cen-turies.

Koebel said the idea that housing has to be seg-regated by income “is flat out wrong.”

“This is not social experimenting. Developers cancreate a well-planned, mixed product, but most zon-ing regulations demonize mixed-income, mixed-usedevelopment. Our local regulations speak to onemarket—middle income and above. True inclusion-ary housing starts with regulations that allow devel-opers to build more diverse products.”

True inclusionary housing starts with regulations that allow developers to

build more diverse products.

Steve Wright frequently writes about Smart Growth andsustainable communities. He and his wife live in arestored historic home in the heart of Miami’s LittleHavana. Contact him at: [email protected].

Cristamar at Santa Monica, California


By John Van Gieson

In older communities on Chicago’sSouthwest Side, in the neighborhood sur-rounding an abandoned Pittsburgh steel mill

and on an Indian reservation in New Mexico, com-bining economic development with Smart Growthis a smart idea.

The term economic development appears infre-quently in New Urbanist and Smart Growth litera-ture. It is, however, recognized by implication as anessential tool in combating sprawl by redevelopingblighted inner cities and poor rural areas.

In August, the International EconomicDevelopment Council (IEDC) released a studytitled “Economic Development and Smart Growth”which used eight case studies, including redevelop-ment of Pittsburgh’s South Side, to explore the“connections between Smart Growth developmentand jobs, wealth and quality of life in communities.”

“As results from long-term projects develop, theconnections between Smart Growth and economicdevelopment have become more pronounced,” theIEDC study said. “Economic development organi-zations and local governments are realizing that byharmonizing these approaches they can create andretain jobs, enhance the tax base and improve qual-ity of life in the communities they serve.”

The executive directors of the community devel-opment organizations serving the Chicago Lawnand Englewood neighborhoods on the SouthwestSide of Chicago agree but have their own ideas ondeveloping inner-city neighborhoods.

Southwest Chicago’s Economic Shift: The Cookie Factor

Jim Capraro, executive director of GreaterSouthwest Development Corp. (GSDC) based inChicago Lawn, said economic development ofdepressed areas depends on exporting somethingfrom them to bring increased value back to them.He said the exports can be labor, goods, retail sales,cultural or ethnic experiences, information or intel-lectual programs. In Chicago Lawn’s case, it hap-pened to be an existing neighbor in the form ofOreo cookies.

Vincent J. Barnes, executive director of theRebirth of Englewood Economic DevelopmentCorp. (ROEEDC), said community developmentorganizations must shift fromemphasizing social service pro-grams, a traditional focus, to eco-nomic development.

“You have to identify whatmoves the economy and whatmakes the economy attractive toan outside investor,” Barnes said.“What has hurt communities likeEnglewood was the fact that theylooked like they weren’t going toyield a return on investment.”

Once working-class whiteneighborhoods, Chicago Lawnand Englewood are trying toreverse decades of decline.Chicago Lawn has a growingpopulation comprised mostly ofAfrican Americans and

You have to identifywhat moves the economyand what makes theeconomy attractive.


Chicago Lawn, Chicago, Illinois

Chicago Lawn, Chicago, Illinois


Hispanics, with a Muslim minority. Englewood, 98percent African American, has lost thousands ofresidents.

Greater Southwest and Rebirth of Englewoodare working with the Local Initiative SupportCorporation/Chicago’s New CommunitiesProgram, which sought input from hundreds of res-idents in developing plans to bring new life to theirtired old neighborhoods. The No. 1 strategy forredeveloping Englewood is “Attract new industriesand service firms that create living-wage jobs whilepreparing residents for regional employmentopportunities,” according to Teamwork Englewood,which organized the planning process for the NewCommunities Program.

Greater Southwest has an economic base as theneighborhood borders Midway Airport and theSouthwest Industrial Corridor. The biggest prob-lem, Capraro said, was keeping employers fromleaving the area—specifically the Nabisco plantthat bakes 22 million Oreo cookies a day andemploys 1,800 workers.

When Nabisco executives were pondering thefate of the Chicago plant in the 1990s, Capraro tookthem on a tour of the business district communityadvocates are redeveloping along 63rd Street andWestern Avenue.

“They wanted to know what’s happening aroundus, and that helped to sell the neighborhood toNabisco,” he said. “They saw for themselves that

this place is not declining, it’s being reborn, andtheir whole perspective kind of changed. Nabiscoloved the labor base here.”

Nabisco decided to invest $300 million in thebakery and agreed to procure services such as roof-ing and gardening from community businesses. Thecity created a tax-increment financing district andan enterprise zone with GSDC training workers andteaching English to Mexican immigrants.

Capraro’s organization is involved in rehabilitat-ing the neighborhood’s 1920s bungalows and devel-oping plans to build a Town Center and mixed-usebuildings featuring residential and retail.

He said community advocates worked hard toinvolve Muslims in community building, and theeffort paid off when Muslim physicians announcedplans to open a new health clinic this fall.

In Englewood, Barnes’ organizationhas focused on providing residents withjob training, home ownership programsand affordable housing. He said youthcenters serve a purpose, but they do notdevelop the neighborhood’s economy.

ROEEDC formed a partnership witharea employers to teach workforce skillsto neighborhood residents. The goal isto train workers for jobs paying about$5,000 more than the $19,000 medianincome; enough to put them in the mar-ket for affordable housing. By the end ofsummer, Barnes said, ROEEDC hadplaced 311 workers in jobs paying $7.1million a year.

A year ago, ROEEDC and the localcongressman, U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush,

The No. 1 strategy ...‘Attract new industriesand service firms thatcreate living-wage jobs.’

Jim CapraroChicago, IllinoisPhoto by Eric Young Smith

announced plans to build 550 affordable homesselling in the $165,000 range over the next fiveyears. Other organizations are developing plans for500 more new homes. ROEEDC and Rush havelaunched a 10-week program to prepare residentswho never had them to qualify for mortgages.

In 2005, the Congressional Black Caucus pre-sented ROEEDC with its With Ownership, WealthProgram of the Year Award in recognition of thehome ownership program’s accomplishments.Barnes said his organization has offered trainingon home ownership programs in about a dozenother cities, including Los Angeles and Miami.

In addition, a $200 million Kennedy-KingCollege campus is under construction inEnglewood’s business district, once second only todowntown Chicago for business activity. Futureplans call for development of Englewood Center, amixed-use commercial/residential area near thecollege, and a transit-oriented developmentaround the Green Line station at 63rd andAshland. The results are evident that these effortsin Chicago’s Southwest Side are shifting the econ-omy for the better.

From Steel Mills to an Economic Hub: TheChanging Face of Pittsburgh’s South Side

The International Economic DevelopmentCouncil report also cited the turnaround along EastCarson Street in Pittsburgh’s South Side as asuperb example of what can be accomplished whenpublic officials, economic development organiza-tions and private developers work together toimplement a good plan. The report said local gov-ernment and private developers have invested$487 million over 20 years into revitalizing thedilapidated Victorian storefronts lining the Carsonshopping area and converting the old steel mill intoa mixed-used development featuring commercial,residential and office buildings.

“We pulled that off through 20 years of hardwork in neighborhood revitalization,” said RickBelloli, executive director of the South Side LocalDevelopment Corp. “It’s not one size fits all. Everyneighborhood knows what it needs better thansomeone from the outside.”

Belloli said his organization attempted to bal-ance the interests of the longtime residents, manyfrom Eastern European immigrant families, with

The SouthSide Works project on the site of theold steel mill is projected to create 5,000 jobswhen it’s complete.


Southside of Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaPhoto by S. Rick Armstrong


the young professionals flocking to the area forentertainment, jobs and housing.

“One of the things I’ve heard is that CarsonStreet caters to both of the blue hairs—the bluehairs with Mohawks and the blue-hairedgrannies,” he said.

The economic benefits of the South Side rede-velopment program are impressive. The IEDCreport said per capita income doubled in 10 years,and Belloli said property values in the Slopes, ahilly residential area, have tripled.

He said the SouthSide Works project on the siteof the old steel mill is projected to create 5,000 jobswhen it’s complete, or more than twice the numberof steel workers who once labored there. The cloth-ing company American Eagle has agreed to moveits headquarters from the suburbs to a new buildingat SouthSide Works—reversing the usual trend ofsuburbs uprooting inner-city jobs.

Already occupying gleaming new buildings atSouthSide Works are the University of PittsburghMedical Center Sports Medicine Facility, thePittsburgh Steelers and Pitt Panthers football prac-tice fields, and the regional offices of the FederalBureau of Investigation and U.S. Immigration andCustoms Enforcement. Trendy bars and restaurantsare proliferating on Carson Street and at the oldsteel works.

It’s Not Just Casinos Any More: New Mexico’sTribal Economic Development

In New Mexico, the Ohkay Owingeh are work-ing to overcome the gritty reality of reservation life.Two years ago, the Environmental ProtectionAgency (EPA) presented a National Award forSmart Growth achievement to the tribe, which islocated at a pueblo 25 miles north of Santa Fe. TheEPA called the tribe’s master land-use plan “the firstSmart Growth model for Native American tribes.”

The tribe opened its first land-use plan project in2003, the 40-unit Tsigo Bugeh apartment complex.Tomasita Duran, director of the Ohkay OwingehHousing Authority, said the buildings weredesigned to blend in with the traditional adobebuildings. The apartments are occupied, but plansto build 10 new homes have run into problems,Duran said.

“In terms of future development, I see it movingvery slowly unless we can figure out an easier wayto develop,” she said.

In February of 2004, the pueblo and a companythat builds airplanes announced a preliminaryagreement to build an 80,000-square-foot assemblyplant on the reservation. The agreement committedthe tribe to invest $11 million in the company andupgrade its airport.

The deal eventually fell through. However, theOhkay Owingeh have made significant progress indeveloping jobs that will reduce the tribe’s eco-nomic dependence on its gambling casino. Its eco-nomic development agency, Tsay Corporation,operates Tsay Construction and Services, a demoli-tion and rehabilitation company that contracts withLos Alamos National Laboratory and a Navy basein Seattle.

Tsay Corp. Director Ron Novato said the compa-ny has about 600 employees in Northern NewMexico, many of whom are members of the tribe.

“We have adopted more of a diversification strat-egy,” Novato said. “We’re actually pursuing bigopportunities away from the reservation.”

He said the tribe is also investing $3.5 million inthe airport and other infrastructure improvementsto boost its appeal to potential investors. The eco-nomic growth and Smart Growth of the Pueblo hasstarted, although slowly, and it’s an attraction toinvestors, tribe members and developers alike.

John Van Gieson is a freelance writer based inTallahassee, Florida. He owns and runs Van GiesonMedia Relations, Inc.

The Ohkay Owingeh have made significantprogress in developing jobs that will reducethe tribe’s economic dependence on its gambling casino.

Tsigo Bugeh Village, New Mexico


Home sweethome today …

Eminent domain can play a

role in economic development,

but past abuses make communities wary

HOME SEIZED HOME TOMORROW

In reality, eminent domain is not such aslam-bam process. Yet it can feel like apunch in the gut to those caught in its path.

“There’s a pretty broad recognition that eminentdomain is one of the strongest powers governmenthas, and it has to be used sparingly,” said JasonJordan, a consultant with the American PlanningAssociation (APA).

Few would disagree. However, many disagreeover whether eminent domain—which often hitslow-income and minority neighborhoods hardest—is used sparingly enough.

“The planning community views eminentdomain … as an extremely valuable tool because incertain instances it’s the only way to achieve a pub-lic good,” said Jordan.

If the public good is defined as roads or schools

or utilities, then eminent domain is indeed anappropriate tool, said Mindy Fullilove, a professorof clinical psychiatry and public health atColumbia University. However, if the goal is eco-nomic development, then private gain, not publicgood, is often the underlying motive.

“I personally think most of the economic devel-opment I’ve observed has been much more aboutlining the pockets of developers as opposed to eco-nomic development for all the people in the city,”she said.

Eminent domain—the government’s right totake private property for public use—became apolitical hot potato last year after the U.S. SupremeCourt affirmed that it can indeed be applied in thename of economic development if state law soallows.


By Brad Broberg

Kelo v. City of New London involved a group ofConnecticut property owners who objected to thecity taking their land as part of a redevelopmentplan for their neighborhood. In a 5-4 decision, thecourt ruled that the economic benefits of the rede-velopment, including the creation of jobs and taxrevenues, represented a “public purpose” andtherefore was constitutional and consistent withConnecticut state law.

According to Jordan, no one should have beenshocked by the ruling. “There’s a lot of angst out

there about this, [but] frankly Ithink it’s a misunderstanding ofwhat Kelo does,” he said. “It sim-ply affirms … previous rulingsand precedents.”

Nevertheless, the ruling hastriggered an avalanche of legis-lation—some enacted and somepending—that clarifies, modifiesand in some cases nullifies theuse of eminent domain for eco-nomic development purposes.According to the APA, variousversions of eminent domainreform have been adopted orconsidered in 45 states.

Congress also is getting intothe act. The House passed a bill(HR 4128) that would withholdall federal economic develop-ment funds from states that alloweconomic development as arationale for property seizures.

Oklahoma City Mayor MickCornett doesn’t dispute thatthere may be room to reform theway eminent domain is practicedin some states, including howpeople are compensated. Butreforming state law and impos-ing a federal law are two differ-ent things, he said. “We think thefederal government ought to stayout of it and it should be debatedby state and local governments,”said Cornett.

Cornett chairs the UrbanEconomic Planning Committeefor the U.S. Conference ofMayors. The organization hasgone on record opposing HR4128—not only because it usurpsstates’ rights, but because it


Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

handcuffs cities in their efforts to create jobs, gen-erate revenue and revive ailing neighborhoods. “Itwould be very damaging,” said Cornett.

Oklahoma state law allows the use of eminentdomain for economic development purposes, butonly if the targeted area is deemed “blighted,” saidCornett. “I think we here in Oklahoma City havebeen very responsible in our use of eminentdomain,” he said, citing redevelopment of thecity’s Bricktown entertainment district. “It’s not ashort process and it’s not a private process. It’s veryopen and there are several steps along the way.”

Cornett believes flawed coverage of the Kelodecision sparked an unwarranted uproar. “Themedia so misrepresented what happened inConnecticut that it created a furor in the public andCongress is under the impression that it has to dosomething and the states are under the impressionthey have to do something,” he said.

Some believe the uproar is totally justified. Soonafter the Kelo decision was announced, HilaryShelton, director of the Washington, D.C., Bureauof the NAACP, criticized the ruling before a con-gressional subcommittee.

“By allowing pure economic developmentmotives to constitute public use for eminentdomain purposes, state and local governments willnow infringe on the property rights of those withless economic and political power with more regu-larity,” he told the committee. “These groups, low-income Americans and a disparate number ofAfrican Americans and other racial and ethnicminority Americans, are the least able to bear thisburden.”

As far as Shelton is concerned, it’s all too remi-niscent of the tide of urban renewal that rolledthrough America starting in the 1950s. Spawnedby the Housing Act of 1949 and underwritten bythe federal government, urban renewal destroyed

numerous “blighted” inner-city neighborhoodsand displaced many residents through the use ofeminent domain.

“The history of eminent domain is rife withabuse specifically targeting racial and ethnicminority and poor neighborhoods,” Shelton testi-fied. “Indeed, the displacement of AfricanAmericans and urban renewal projects are so inter-twined that ‘urban renewal’ was often referred toas “black removal.’”

There are timeswhen it [eminentdomain] is the onlyway to complete a project.


Bricktown in Oklahoma City

In her book “Root Shock: How Tearing Up CityNeighborhoods Hurts America, and What We CanDo About It,” Fullilove examines what urbanrenewal did—and still does—to the AfricanAmerican communities it displaced. Fullilove

found that neighborhoods deemed “blighted” bythe powers that be were often vibrant communities.Empowered by eminent domain, urban renewal’sdestruction of affordable neighborhoods has creat-ed an epidemic of homelessness, inhibited the start

of new businesses and destroyed importantcommunity networks and institutions, shesaid.

The Kelo decision ensures eminentdomain will remain a tool politicians anddevelopers can wield for their mutual gain,said Fullilove. “Developers are big cam-paign contributors and have a lot of accessto politicians and politicians are quite will-ing to do what they want,” she said.

Jordan understands the concern. “We livein a post-urban renewal world and we cansee the destruction caused to communitiesby well-intentioned projects,” he said. At thesame time, it’s important not to throw thebaby out with the bathwater, said Jordan.“Any person looking at the record would say,yeah, there’s been sporadic misuse of emi-nent domain,” said Jordan. “But the level ofabuse in recent years has been overstated.”

Eminent domain is a “tool of last resort,”said Jordan. “It’s not used nearly as often asdiscussion post-Kelo would have usbelieve.” Still, there are times when it’s theonly way to complete a project. That can beespecially true in urban settings where it’sdifficult to assemble a large parcel withoutinvolving numerous small—and less likelyto be united about selling—property owners,he said.

It’s also important to understand that eco-nomic development projects often include

Eminent domain is one of the strongest powersgovernment has, and it has to be used sparingly.


Oklahoma City redevelopment

public elements such as municipal offices or a tran-sit center and are not driven solely by private-sec-tor interests. “If you take eminent domain out, itmakes projects harder to do, that’s for sure,” saidJordan.

The key, said Jordan, is to make communities“more comfortable with the basic fairness of theprocess,” he said. One way to do that is by preced-ing any use of eminent domain with a public plan-ning process that produces a blueprint for theneighborhood so “everyone can see what the planfor the community is.”

Another big issue is compensation. Paying fairmarket value doesn’t always compensate home-owners for what they lose when they’re forced outof their neighborhood—or take into account whatthe property will be worth after redevelopment,said Fullilove. It becomes even more difficult in aneighborhood where property values are lowest—the kind of neighborhood often targeted for rede-velopment.

America is suffering from “a famine of low-income housing,” said Fullilove. If a person’s homeis worth only $60,000, will they be able to find

another one in the same city at that price? sheasked. And what about renters? “If everybody actslike we have no responsibility to help the poor inour cities, we are going to be creating somewherein our country refugee camps for poor people,” shesaid.

Fullilove doesn’t deny economic developmentcan benefit cities, but “it depends on how you doit,” she said. That’s especially true for housing.“There’s a huge tendency for the range of incomes[of potential residents] to start at $30,000,” shesaid. “It has to cover the whole income range inways that are proportionate to the population of thearea.”

The key is to makecommunities more

comfortable with thebasic fairness of

the process.


Brad Broberg is a Seattle-based freelance writer special-izing in business and development issues. His workappears regularly in the Puget Sound Business Journaland the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce.

NewOrleans



A s far as Gwendolyn Adams is con-cerned, Hurricane Katrina is still killingpeople, more than a year later. Her

mold-ravaged home, blocks from the levee breachin the Lower Ninth Ward, fell to bulldozers recent-ly. Still, the retired schoolteacher counts herself asone of the lucky ones. As of mid-September she wasprohibited even from parking a trailer on her lot,thanks to a lack of potable water and electricity. Butat least she, her husband and son were back in theirbeloved city, having scored one of the rare rentalunits available. Meanwhile, more than a year later,her neighbors are starting to come back to otherareas in the Ninth Ward, albeit slowly, and withgashes in the community fabric still painfully evi-dent.

“I attended the funeral on Saturday past of oneof my church members who grieved himself todeath because he was stuck in Texas and he could-n’t get back home. He eventually just gave up andallowed sickness to overtake him,” Mrs. Adamssaid. “A lot of my older friends are depressed, losingweight, not eating. Yes, people are still dying fromKatrina.”

Lower Nine, as residents call it, became theposter child for the storm’s effects. In part that wasbecause the physical damage was so visible andreadily accessible to journalists encamped in down-town hotels, only minutes away by car. The wall ofwater that surged through the flood-wall breachobliterated many of the neighborhood’s modest

houses and sent others careening off their founda-tions and into other houses. Because it was solidlyAfrican American and mostly poor, the Lower Ninealso became emblematic of the people displaced bythe storm—those mostly black faces we saw cryingfor help on rooftops or waiting in anguish for safepassage out of the Superdome and ConventionCenter.

Many other neighborhoods were flooded, ofcourse. Fully 80 percent of New Orleans took onwater, as did nearly 100 percent of neighboring St.Bernard Parish and large portions of JeffersonParish. But the fate of the Lower Nine acquired spe-cial significance in the debate over how, and evenwhether, the flooded areas of the city should berebuilt. Was it right to allow people to continue tolive in harm’s way, or to re-establish the concentra-tions of poverty that seemed to have isolated somany from mainstream society? Even to raise thesequestions, however, opened a Pandora’s box of sus-picion and fear arising from the city’s race andclass divisions.

The hurt feelings and suspicion these attitudeswould engender ultimately doomed the first planfor rebuilding, put forward by Mayor Ray Nagin’sBring New Orleans Back Commission. That planessentially drew a red line around the parts of NewOrleans regarded as “viable” and gave neighbor-hoods outside the line four months to demonstratetheir own viability, based on the number of resi-dents who took action to return. After that point the

By David Goldberg

city would determine where it would offer servicesand maintain infrastructure, and other areas wouldrevert to green space. Rational in the abstract, thatscheme seemed almost designed to doom hard-hitareas like the Lower Ninth Ward, whose residentswere barred even from visiting their flooded homesfor months after the storm. Nagin, facing re-elec-tion, distanced himself from the plan even before itwas announced.

“For many citizens, the plan created an almostdesperate sense that their future would be out oftheir control and planning would be top down,”

said Steven Bingler, a local architect and plannerwho is overseeing the successor effort to create aUnified New Orleans Plan. “It may have had phys-ical merit, but by failing to address cultural andsocial issues it ensured its undoing.”

The truth, too, is that it is hard to make a “scien-tific” argument for which neighborhoods are simplytoo vulnerable to rebuild in a city that is substan-tially below sea level. The early story was thatAfrican Americans had suffered disproportionatelybecause they lived in neighborhoods, like theLower Ninth Ward, that were lower than the neigh-borhoods of the old city, which was built on the sliv-er of high ground built up by depositions from long-ago Mississippi floods. While the Ninth Ward islower than the old city, it actually is higher groundthan most of the land that was developed in the lastcentury, particularly the latter half, when backswamps were filled to create suburban-styleenclaves such as mostly white Lakeview or NewOrleans East, home to much of the black middleclass. While a substantial rainfall might inundatethose areas, the Lower Ninth rarely flooded. Intruth, the entire metro area can survive only withina well-functioning system of flood control. Absent adispassionate rationale, then, a conscious choice toshrink the city’s footprint means picking winners


The government …has an obligation tomake sure they canget back home.

and losers, something that the political leadershipis loathe to do.

If, in the early going the question was “Shouldparts of New Orleans rebuild?” the question now iswhether people of lesser means are able to return,and whether the black middle class, with optionselsewhere, will endure what it takes to come back.

Enormous obstacles bar return of the AfricanAmerican poor

“The poor people didn’t have enough money toleave town before the storm, so they certainly don’thave enough money to come back home,” notesMalcolm Suber, national organizing coordinator forthe Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, which wasorganized after the storm to fight for the right toreturn. Most of those same residents were busedout of the city in the days and weeks after the storm.“The government dispersed these people, so it hasan obligation to make sure they can get backhome.”

And that begs the question of whether there is aliteral home to occupy. “Our affordable market inthe whole metro area has just about disappeared,”says REALTOR® Conchita Sulli, owner broker ofConchita L. Sulli & Assoc., Inc. “You see all theseapartment complexes, heavily damaged, and theyare empty. Where are you going to put the peoplewho would have lived there?” In addition, about 85percent of New Orleans huge stock of public hous-ing remains closed, while local and federal author-ities devise plans to redevelop it. “The complexionof the city has changed radically. My experience isthat the large number of renters is still gone.”

Our affordable marketin the whole metroarea has just aboutdisappeared.



A recent Brookings Institution report estimatesthat 48,000 of the city’s rental units, about 40 per-cent of the entire stock, were destroyed or heavilydamaged. Rents are up 39 percent over pre-Katrinalevels. Wages, while higher, haven’t kept pace andunemployment is up by at least two percentagepoints. There are myriad other obstacles. The pub-lic transit system is running half its routes, but atgreatly reduced service. Fares, which had beenwaived since the storm, are being reinstated andthe system faces bankruptcy. The once-comprehen-sive system of indigent health care has been deci-mated. Public schools are largely closed and trans-portation is problematic. Utility and insurance ratesare soaring.

The state’s Road Home program, which will dis-tribute $6.3 billion in mostly federal dollars tohomeowners, will offer only $2 billion in rehabloans to landlords. Otherwise, the state is depend-ing on a complicated system of tax credits to spurcreation of affordable housing, but developers arebalking at the complexities.

All this leaves many of the displaced stuck instates like Texas, where 251,000 storm evacueesstill are living, according to a Gallup Organizationsurvey sponsored by the Texas Health and HumanServices Commission. Eighty-one percent wereAfrican American, and 61 percent of the house-holds had earned less than $20,000 a year beforeKatrina.

Whither the black middle class?With so many poor blacks coming back slowly, if

at all, what of the black middle class? Many havereturned or intend to; more than half the voters inthe mayor’s race were African American. Butwhether they continue to return, will hinge on deci-sions by African Americans of means.

“One of the problems with the return of the blackmiddle class is their community networks in NewOrleans have been devastated, and they haveoptions in other places,” said Lolis Elie, an AfricanAmerican columnist for the New Orleans TimesPicayune and second-generation New Orleanian.

Community networks in New Orleans have been devastated.


“No matter who or where you are, you have friendsand relatives who are not here. That has an impacton whether you want to come back. Are you willingto come back if there’s a shortage of doctors? If yourwife has a job and you don’t, can you make it back?If the insurance company isn’t paying you enoughto rebuild? Do you want to come back if your neigh-borhood isn’t back? They are more apt to havefriends and family in other parts of the country tomake the transition easier.”

On the other hand, he said, New Orleans has apowerfully magnetic pull. “I think about my moth-er, who is not a woman who goes to every secondline [parade] and gushes volumes about how sheloves the city. But when this happened and herhouse got flooded, her determination to get backhas been unwavering. She’s not alone.”

Still more complex dynamics are at play. EasternNew Orleans, which began life in the 1960s as ahuge master-planned enclave for affluent whitesfleeing the city, has over the years become thelocation both for African American professionals,living in McMansions on cul de sacs, and lowerincome blacks, occupying the thousands of afford-able apartment units built to take advantage of fed-eral Section 8 subsidies. Parts of New Orleans Eastare perhaps the most vulnerable to flooding andstorm surge, but they are also among the mostpolitically connected. Many of these influential res-idents want the apartment complexes gone, trans-formed into green space and not new, affordable

housing. They have put that sentiment into theirown plan for rebuilding the East.

This points out problems with the city’s newapproach to a rebuilding plan,which starts from theassumption that every neighborhood will rebuild,largely according to its own plan, said Amy Liu ofthe Brookings Institution. Those neighborhood andlarger district plans will be pulled together underthe unified plan being overseen by Bingler. But thatprocess leaves serious, big-picture questions unan-swered: Where can affordable rental housing bebuilt? Can the city promise services and infrastruc-ture for all neighborhoods, given a much smallertax base, staff and budget?

“The mayor has made it very clear that everyneighborhood will be rebuilt,” said Liu, deputydirector of Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program,and author of the institution’s recent report on New

I have no fear for theculture of New Orleans.

Orleans. “Who’s going to say that they want moreaffordable housing, who will volunteer themselvesfor it, even if as a citywide goal they say it’s criti-cal?” she asked. In addition, “The utilities are hav-ing to raise rates, transit is bankrupt, water andsewer are completely broken, the police force can’tcover every neighborhood without the help of theNational Guard, which will be leaving soon. I don’tthink the city is being frank about its capacity, andthat is unfair to homeowners and other investors.”

Rhetorically, city and state officials are paintinga picture of a New Orleans with fewer public hous-ing projects and large apartment complexes andmore mixed-income and mixed-use neighbor-hoods, in compact footprints that allow people to

get more donewithout an auto-mobile and thatmaximize the effi-ciency of city serv-ices. Enormouspolitical obstaclesremain. Affluent,h i g h - g r o u n dn e i g h b o r h o o d sthat are in highdemand will resistbeing economical-ly integrated, evenas many lower-income residentsexpress profound

distrust of a process likelyto reduce the number ofaffordable units in thename of mixing incomes.

“There are still somepeople fighting for a small-er, richer, whiter footprint,and there are others fight-ing to get home,” saidWade Rathke, chief organ-izer for the Association ofCommunity Organizationsfor Reform Now (ACORN),which has advocated stren-uously for the return of low-income residents, and isthe lead consultant on therebuilding plan for theLower Ninth Ward. “Mixedincome is a euphemism forwhat they did at St.Thomas,” a housing projectthat was redeveloped as River Garden, with a mixof subsidized and market-rate units adjoining anurban Wal-Mart. “There they took 1,200 units oflow income and rebuilt only 60 units of lowerincome. That’s not a fair percentage for affordablehousing.”

Liu agrees that percentages should be muchhigher, but she strenuously defends the idea thatthe homes built for the working poor and people onsubsidies must never again be isolated in high con-

centrations that too easi-ly fall to official neglect,disinvestment and crime.But working against thevision for healthy, com-plete neighborhoods thatare as economically inte-grated as those of his-toric New Orleans, shesaid, is the compellingdesire for “speed, speed,speed.”

“It’s chicken andegg,” laments Sulli. “Oursmall businesses needworkers and they needcustomers, but peoplehave to have housing tocome to. It’s almost likewe have to do it fast, or


lose the opportunity.But doing it fastdoesn’t always meandoing it right.”

No matter how it’sdone, New Orleanswill have to get busyproviding housing forits low-wage work-force, said Rathke.“We didn’t get aKatrina shower andwake up as Seattle.Our jobs are not hightech, it’s hospitalityand service based,”he added. “Anybodywho believes we canget by with a lessdiverse population; Idon’t see wherethey’re getting that.”

Bingler said the city is moving beyond its initialpolarization. “There was a justifiable fear that low-income black folks would be displaced and barredfrom coming back. People were makingpublic statements that it should happen,”he said. “But I frankly think the system isin the process of correcting itself, and thiscommunity is actually reaffirming a com-

mitment to racial and economic diversity. Call mean optimist, but so far the forces that appeared tobe under way to undermine the racial and econom-ic diversity of this community have been reversed.”

That certainly would be good for the future ofNew Orleans’ vaunted culture, which so clearlyhas drawn upon the collision of world and indige-nous cultures at the mouth of the Mississippi.

“I have no fear for the culture of New Orleans,”said Elie, who writes frequently on the city’s food,music and art, ”because our culture is doing for usexactly what culture is supposed to do: Remind usof who we are and strengthen our fidelity to our-selves and our identity.”

That is what is drawing people like GwendolynAdams back, to rebuild in the same spot as before.“I can’t imagine being any place else. As bad as it is—as good as it is—there’s no place like New Orleans.”

I can’t imaginebeing any place else.

There’s no place like New Orleans.

David A. Goldberg is the communications director for SmartGrowth America, a nationwide coalition based inWashington, D.C. that advocates for land-use policy reform.In 2002, Mr. Goldberg was awarded a Loeb Fellowship atHarvard University where he studied urban policy.



smartGrowthinthestatesCompiled by Gerald L. Allen, NAR Government Affairs

Mountain Brook city leaders areworking toward adopting a newmaster plan that will accommodatemixed-use development in the city’sfour shopping villages. Debate overthe mixed-use concept was sparkedby a 2005 proposal for a village-typedevelopment that included a six-story residential and office buildingin English Village. Further debatecentered on whether mixed-usedevelopments were appropriate forvillages. Consultants have comment-ed that the city’s intentional layoutin the 1920s of homes encirclingshopping areas is precisely themixed-use concept that many com-munities throughout the country arenow seeking to encourage.

The Thunderbird BusinessSchool in Glendale plans totransform its campus into alive-work environment. Theschool would become a 45-acre urban core and add ahotel, hundreds of live-workapartments, and office andretail space. Pedestrian andbicycle paths also would beadded to connect the hous-ing with other areas. With anincreasing enrollment of for-eign executives who bringfamilies, the school decidedit needed to offer a commu-nity experience. Glendaleofficials are calling it a“quality infill project.”

In June, the Oakland City Councilapproved Oakland’s mixed-use Oak(Street)-to-Ninth (Avenue) project for 64acres of the Bay waterfront just south ofdowntown with 465 of its 3,100 housingunits slated for families making $25,000to $50,000 a year. The project is the resultof cooperation between the developerand several community groups, resultingin the development including 30 acres ofcompany-maintained public parks andtrails in addition to 200,000 square feet ofretail, a 170-slip marina and restoredwetlands. The company will hire 300 cityresidents as trade apprentices and thecity will invite proposals to redeveloppart of the 180,000-square-foot historicNinth Avenue Terminal for recreational,cultural or retail use.

ALABAMA ARIZONA CALIFORNIA


The town of Vienna is movingtoward annexing nearly 400acres of adjacent farmland thatwould eventually be developedinto a Smart Growth communityof 300 homes. The preliminaryplan for the project envisionshouses designed to complementthe white clapboard homes inolder Vienna neighborhoods,linked together by a new townsquare with a new town hallbuilding. The plan also calls forneighborhoods clustered along-side a series of public trails andparks that would leave approxi-mately two-thirds of the siteundeveloped. Critics of the planhave expressed concern that theproposed small-scale commer-cial development, which wouldinclude a grocery store, phar-macy and drycleaner, mightunintentionally attract largerbusiness to the community.Vienna presently has tworestaurants, a service station, abank branch and one conven-ience store.

The city of Pittsfield’sDepartment of CommunityDevelopment is reworking itssubdivision zoning code toestablish flexible developmentzoning rather than the oldPlanned Unit ResidentialDevelopment (PURD) rules.Under the flexible developmentproposal, developers wouldhave to preserve at least 25 per-cent of the property as openspace or agricultural land.Additionally, developers couldreceive density bonuses, allow-ing higher density and clusteredbuilding, in exchange for desig-nations of larger open space oraffordable housing units. Theold PURD rules required onlyreserving a minimum of 10 per-cent of land as open space.Additional revisions of the newzoning code are expected in thecoming months before a finalvote is taken.

Plan NH, a nonprofit community plan-ning group, came to Merrimack to directa two-day “design charrette,” whereplanners, engineers, architects anddesigners brainstormed ideas for a newtown center design. Formed out of fourvillages and thus lacking a defined cen-ter, the goal of the charrette was to createa new physical center for Merrimack. Thecharrette focused on the former HarcrosChemical property, a 12.5-acre site donat-ed to the town by a local resident. Duringthe charrette’s first day, residents weregiven time to suggest ideas for the site.These included a river walk, bandstandand ice rink. In the end, the charrette pro-posed a plan with a large park that incor-porated a pavilion, public garden, dogpark and seating areas by the adjacentSouhegan River and Baboosic Brook.Supplementing the park on adjoiningproperty would be a new library, retailcenter, town hall and courthouse eitherredesigned in existing buildings or newlybuilt. The proposal was estimated to cost$50 million to implement but wasdesigned to allow construction in phases.

MARYLAND MASSACHUSETTS NEW HAMPSHIRE


smartGrowth inthestates (continued)

Orange County commissionersapproved the county’s Planning andInspections Department to develop adraft of a Transfer of DevelopmentRights (TDR) ordinance. The TDRprogram would protect farmland inOrange County by allowing landown-ers to sell the development rights oftheir land as credits. These creditscould then be purchased and used bya developer to increase the densityallowed on other land in OrangeCounty. Previously, consultants and atask force analyzed the legal, econom-ic and administrative perspectives fora TDR program and advised that theTDR initially only cover unincorporat-ed parts of Orange County. A draft ofthe proposed TDR program is beingdeveloped and once the draft programis completed, there will be publichearings before the final stage of cre-ating the TDR program is begun.

Development in the North DakotaBadlands is becoming a concern forthe local residents. Ranches aroundMedora, North Dakota’s top touristdestination, are being sold and sub-divided into “rancheros” lotsbought by wealthy buyers to buildhomes on. Medora itself appearspoised for big changes. Proposalshave been floated for two subdivi-sions. If approved, it would be thefirst sizable expansion in the his-toric hamlet for decades. The townis wrestling to find the right balancein preserving its Old West feel withits growing aspirations as a touristcenter. The town has been dis-cussing a new historic preservationzoning ordinance for months, withsign restrictions a source of con-tention. A proposal forwarded bythe city zoning committee wouldcurb new freestanding signs andlimit the size of signs in proportionto storefronts. The ordinance, whichthe city council plans to take up thisfall, is an outgrowth of a strategicplan drafted two years ago.

NORTH CAROLINA NORTH DAKOTA

Inclusionary zoning, which givesdevelopers financial incentives tobuild affordable housing, is com-ing to Queens. The new policy ispart of a set of sweeping land-usechanges for 130 blocks in Maspethand Woodside, in the western partof the borough. Roughly 110 resi-dential blocks will be zoned toallow mostly one- and two-familyhomes and stem the proliferationof oversized houses that has drawncriticism elsewhere in the borough.The other 20 blocks, scatteredalong Queens Boulevard from 50thto 73rd streets, will be zoned toallow for larger residential devel-opments and affordable housing.Under the inclusionary zoningcomponent, developers will be ableto increase buildings by one-thirdif 20 percent of the space is perma-nent affordable housing. In recentyears, inclusionary zoning hasbeen approved for Hudson Yardsand West Chelsea in Manhattan,and Greenpoint and Williamsburgin Brooklyn.

NEW YORK


Implementing a 2004 SmartGrowth Land Partnership fund-ing program, CumberlandCounty commissioners in Julyawarded a total of $1 million in35 grants to municipalities andregional nonprofits for farmlandand natural resource preserva-tion, parks and recreation, andlivable community plans. Thegrants ranged from $15,000 forordinance preparation to a max-imum of $100,000 for landacquisition. “The results of theprogram clearly show there isinterest in land preservation andSmart Growth in the county,”stated Commissioner GaryEichelberger who, together withother commissioners and thecounty planning director, calledthe program a success.

The projected commuter rail betweendowntown Fort Worth and Cleburneabout 25 miles south has local offi-cials preparing four cities along theway for higher-density transit-orient-ed development. The four towns onthe commuter rail line—Burleson,Crowley, Joshua and Cleburne—areanticipating the new rail service byannexing land, buying land and zon-ing for transit uses. Burleson MayorKen Shetter pointed out that his cityhas zoned 653 acres as its transit-ori-ented development district, whichprompted a developer request andcity council approval for rezoninganother 138 acres nearby for aplanned development with 300upscale apartments. Mayor Shetterstressed, ‘’We’re not waiting for trainsto come to Burleson. We’re startingour development around it.’’

PENNSYLVANIA TEXAS

Burlington is using publicinput to begin outliningplans for the 2.79-acre for-mer Moran GeneratingPlant waterfront site.Public opinion was mixedabout whether the large,brick, generating plantshould be renovated ordemolished as part of thefinal plan, so drafters areproviding plans with andwithout the plant in them.Site renderings will bereleased and discussed atpublic forums in the fall.Suggestions and opinionsfrom these discussions willhelp the city devise a defi-nite plan to put before vot-ers for approval.

VERMONT

Date post:	27-Jan-2015
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