Category Archives: zoning regulations

Our “Housing Language”

As someone who has attended many housing conversations over the past decade, there are many housing-takes I am well acquainted with. If you’re a housing advocate, this is probably true for you, too.

We are all familiar with the proverbial “three legged stool” of affordable housing (capital investments, financial assistance, and supportive services), the plight of housing being siloed from other social service sectors, Vermont’s aging demographics, and smart-growth practices. If one were to create a housing bingo card, terms like “Frannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” “multi-family housing,” and “Act 250″ would surely make it into squares. Combined with our notorious  habit of referring to the numerous housing nonprofits, agencies, and other entities by their acronyms, the world of housing has developed its own language. If you are anyone outside of our insular bubble, however, all this terminology likely requires some translation.

Last year, we shared this post “Housing Committees & Citizen Housing Advocacy.  Our intent for the guide was to encourage participation in local housing committees by everyday people who can speak to the individual, specific needs of the community members most impacted by our housing shortage. But if we don’t make the “language” of housing more accessible, can we rely on community-driven change by our housing committees and review boards?

Opportunities for community engagement in the policies we implement as towns, cities, and states are in place with the belief that they create avenues for community members to ensure their needs and shared spaces are not steamrolled by national, government policies.

We know that all cities and towns don’t have the same needs, and a single overseeing organization could not possibly know what those needs are. We also know the history of our federal and state governments creating intentionally discriminatory policies with the intent of disinvesting from Black and Brown communities, and segregating their members from white communities. This is to say that existing regulations, like the National Environmental Protection Act, are intended to further our democracy through community participation.

What ends up happening however, as this NYTimes podcast points out, is that the marginalized communities intended to benefit from these policies are not the ones actually using them. It is the people with the privilege of access to these avenues who are most readily able to voice their concerns — people who have the time to do the research and commit to the meetings, the backgrounds to understand the language, access to the meetings space through transportation or technology, familiarity with governance protocols, and the personal interest to “protect” their stakes in their neighborhood. 

In recent years, housing advocates have recognized this pattern. Already, there are creative solutions emerging across Vermont to bring the housing conversation to the people passionate about housing justice, but lacking avenues to make an impact.

Housing for All Summit

The Fair Housing Project joined Vital Communities and Keys to the Valley for the  recent Homes for All Summit, a conversation on how to meet the housing needs of the Upper Valley Region of Vermont. 

Together, we discussed housing solutions, projects, and challenges Upper Valley communities are facing. John Haffner, manager of Vital Communities Housing and Transportation program, emphasized the need to change our vernacular when we talk about housing and communities in Vermont’s more rural spaces. 

Two photos from the Upper Valley region appeared on Haffner’s screen. To the left, an idyllic single-family house with a red barn, surrounded by rolling pastures and foliage-adorned hills. To the right positioned a black and white photo of a bustling city center, complete with front-facing businesses, topped by apartment rentals and connected by walkable roads.

From the Housing for All Summit, Haffner illustrates how historical city centers depict contemporary housing values

 

Haffner argued that not everyone can live in the single family home, abutted by the red barn and rolling pastures that comes up when you google “Vermont Upper Valley,” as he revealed was the case with the Norwich-based photo on the left. However, dense, walkable town-centers are just as much a part of Vermont’s historical “character.” The right-hand photograph Haffner reveals as Lebanon town from the early 1900’s, ironically encompassing our new urban ideals over a hundred years past. The strongest resistance to building the housing we need is often in the name of preserving the character of our communities. But character becomes distilled into a series of images that may not actually represent the true diversity of our Vermont neighborhoods. Housing advocates are charged with shifting our shared perception of what it looks like to live in the Upper Valley region of Vermont. 

In Burlington, the Department of City Planning Brings the Housing Conversation to the Community

Up in the Chittenden County region of our state, housing advocates deal with distinctly different housing needs, but are facing a similar problem: community resistance to building in their neighborhoods. Can you shift the way a community thinks about their current housing landscape, its history, and its future over a series of public forums?

Burlington’s Department of City Planning is responding to Vermont’s most acute housing shortage, where recent vacancy rates have dropped to 0.4% for rental housing overall, and as little as 0% for three bedroom apartments. One of the zoning blocks they are charged with reviewing is the South End, the Pine Street corridor which includes Burlington’s Arts District.

City Planning staff members Meagan Tuttle and Charles Dillard are tiptoeing in delicate territory, however. With the area only recently formally recognized by the city in 2010 as the Arts District, artists have been organizing in the remains of Burlington’s manufacturing companies for over 30 years. Artists are credited with revitalizing a part of town zoned only for manufacturing, and bringing some of the “funky personality” that we associate with Burlington today. But in 2015 when Burlington proposed housing in that area, the businesses and artists organized against it with some success. Today, under the guidance of Tuttle and Dillard, the rezoning proposal looks a little different. They have identified what is termed the “Innovation District,” a small parcel of land near the Arts District that would benefit the community with more housing. 

The Planning Department of Burlington was cautious and strategic in how they engaged the community around this potential change to regional zoning. A series of interactive Q&A’s allowed residents to ask questions about the proposed change, and to voice their needs for the community, including an interactive map which people could add notes to. The team was a frequent visitor at the Farmers Market, a well-attended community event that takes place in the Arts District. 

Is it possible to talk about zoning, but make it fun?

At the start of last month, the Burlington Department of Planning hosted a trivia night at Burlington Beer company. The audience was an even split of housing advocates, curious for “fun” ways to consider housing policies, and patrons, entertained by the prospect of trivia while enjoying a drink. Surely, there has never been a moment in Vermont’s history where the conversation of zoning was accompanied by so much laughter. Hosts asked questions like, “how many units are in each building?” showing an array of “charming” homes that had been subdivided into multi-family housing. Between questions that invited audiences to reflect on the history of Burlington’s housing policies, moderators encouraged the audience to reflect on how different neighborhoods in Burlington were more or less inclusive. “As we play this game, think about how Vermont has both one of the oldest housing stocks in the country, and continues to be one of the whitest states in the country.”


Noteworthy in the outreach methods of Burlington’s Office of City Planning is their visual iconography. If one is asked to draw a picture representing “home” (as we often prompt Fair Housing Month participants to do at CVOEO’s Fair Housing Project), most of the time, it is depicted as the iconic square topped by a triangle. This is true even if the artist themselves does not live in a place represented as such, with the exception being when participants are invited to consider home from a deeper, more personal lens, as with this Bent Northrop Fair Housing Month submission. Burlington’s City Planners know that the iconic “single-family” two bedroom house is not what most Burlington community members live in, and so they hired local artist Jodi Whalen to depict the specific, unique architecture of buildings in Burlington. Whalen’s drawings include some of the quirky apartments featured in the trivia slides- which appear as a single home, but pack extra apartments in the back – as well as the newer, high-density builds that are cropping up in the city today. We reached out to Whalen to hear more about the process of creating the illustrations.

Office of City Planning hires local illustrator to depict a wide variety of Burlington homes
Office of City Planning hires local illustrator to depict a wide variety of Burlington homes

I moved to Burlington from Pennsylvania in 1991, and have lived in the Old North End, Downtown, the New North End, and the South End. I love not just the unique architecture of the city, but also the way people make their houses their homes. I love to ride my bike around town to catch glimpses of porch gardens, little free libraries, sunflowers in green belts, and other touches that bring these old homes new life. In my illustrations, I like to add whimsical colors and patterns to add even more of the fun Burlington spirit to the homes.

-Jodi Whalen, on her illustrations for the City of Burlington Department of Planning

This is just a taste of some of the creative approaches to shift our housing “vernacular” as towns, cities, and a state. Tune into our Vermont Housing Conference post for highlights on other creative takes to inviting more community members into the housing conversation!

 

 

 

 

WORKING TOWARD ACCESS FOR ALL – Fifty Years of the Fair Housing Act: a Vermont Perspective

FHP organized event in front of Burlington, VT City Hall Continue reading WORKING TOWARD ACCESS FOR ALL – Fifty Years of the Fair Housing Act: a Vermont Perspective

“Not very many options for the people who are working here…”

A Paper from CARSEY RESEARCH: University of New Hampshire, Carsey School of Public Policy,  Fall 2017, Jessica A. Carson and Marybeth J. Mattingly

Rural Housing Challenges Through the Lens of Two New England Communities

 “In this brief, [Jessica A. Carson and Marybeth J. Mattingly] use interview and focus group data to describe some of the ways that restricted rural housing stock affects working families in two rural New England counties, and explore solutions proposed by rural residents and experts to make housing affordable …

“Subsidies and publicly funded programs can play a part in alleviating the challenges of affordable rural housing, but  addressing the issue of affordable housing in rural places will require a variety of approaches. For instance, at the local level, residents can encourage local zoning and planning boards to align town regulations with “inclusionary zoning” practices, such as requiring a certain percentage of housing units to meet affordability standards and offering incentives to developers for constructing affordable dwellings. Municipalities might also loosen or alter zoning restrictions to reduce lot size requirements and allow construction of structures other than traditional single-family
dwellings, including duplexes, in-law apartments, backyard cottages, townhouses, or bungalow courts.”

As the Arctic Icebergs Melt, So Does Political Opposition to Housing [in some places anyway]

This article is in Rooflines – The Shelterforce Blog

  Posted in Rooflines by Randy Shaw on June 20, 2017

“On June 13, San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee signed HOME SF into law. The district supervisor-sponsored measure will add 16,000 housing units in the next two decades, 5,000 of which will be affordable.”

“On that night in Berkeley, a large turnout of pro-housing activists stopped the Berkeley City Council’s plans to halt new housing. In response to grassroots pressure, Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin announced before the meeting that the agenda item promoting downzoning was “greatly misunderstood” and that the city ‘cannot put roadblocks in the way of new housing.’”

But the tide has turned. People are battling the politics of exclusion. They recognize that while artificially restricting the housing supply is great for profiting those who already own property, it’s not so good for those paying sky-high rents or who have been priced out of the city altogether. As Supervisor Katy Tang stated at the signing ceremony for HOME SF, if San Francisco ‘does not continue to provide affordable housing for our middle income households, they will continue to leave and we will no longer have a middle class.’”

Emphasis added by the Thriving Communities blog editor.

Read the Full Article in Roofline

NOTE: The photo posted with this blog was posted by the Thriving Communities blog editor and was not posted by Shelterforce.

What is Fair Housing Month about? HUD explains.

Getting a head start on April in March –

Note: All the content below in this post is taken from a web site maintained by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

In April, we come together as a community and a nation to celebrate the anniversary of the passing of the Fair Housing Act and recommit to that goal which inspired us in the aftermath of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in 1968: to eliminate housing discrimination and create equal opportunity in every community.

Fundamentally, fair housing means that every person can live free. This means that our communities are open and welcoming, free from housing discrimination and hostility. But this also means that each one of us, regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, and disability, has access to neighborhoods of opportunity, where our children can attend quality schools, our environment allows us to be healthy, and [for us to grow] opportunities and self-sufficiency.

…commitment to fair housing is a living commitment, one that reflects the needs of America today and prepares us for a future of true integration.

History of Fair Housing –

On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which was meant as a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, sex, (and as amended) handicap and family status. Title VIII of the Act is also known as the Fair Housing Act (of 1968).

The enactment of the federal Fair Housing Act on April 11, 1968 came only after a long and difficult journey. From 1966-1967, Congress regularly considered the fair housing bill, but failed to garner a strong enough majority for its passage. However, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson utilized this national tragedy to urge for the bill’s speedy Congressional approval. Since the 1966 open housing marches in Chicago, Dr. King’s name had been closely associated with the fair housing legislation. President Johnson viewed the Act as a fitting memorial to the man’s life work, and wished to have the Act passed prior to Dr. King’s funeral in Atlanta.

Another significant issue during this time period was the growing casualty list from Vietnam. The deaths in Vietnam fell heaviest upon young, poor African-American and Hispanic infantrymen. However, on the home front, these men’s families could not purchase or rent homes in certain residential developments on account of their race or national origin. Specialized organizations like the NAACP, the GI Forum and the National Committee Against Discrimination In Housing lobbied hard for the Senate to pass the Fair Housing Act and remedy this inequity. Senators Edward Brooke and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts argued deeply for the passage of this legislation. In particular, Senator Brooke, the first African-American ever to be elected to the Senate by popular vote, spoke personally of his return from World War II and inability to provide a home of his choice for his new family because of his race.

With the cities rioting after Dr. King’s assassination, and destruction mounting in every part of the United States, the words of President Johnson and Congressional leaders rang the Bell of Reason for the House of Representatives, who subsequently passed the Fair Housing Act. Without debate, the Senate followed the House in its passage of the Act, which President Johnson then signed into law.

The power to appoint the first officials administering the Act fell upon President Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon. President Nixon tapped then Governor of Michigan, George Romney, for the post of Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. While serving as Governor, Secretary Romney had successfully campaigned for ratification of a state constitutional provision that prohibited discrimination in housing. President Nixon also appointed Samuel Simmons as the first Assistant Secretary for Equal Housing Opportunity.

When April 1969 arrived, HUD could not wait to celebrate the Act’s 1st Anniversary. Within that inaugural year, HUD completed the Title VIII Field Operations Handbook, and instituted a formalized complaint process. In truly festive fashion, HUD hosted a gala event in the Grand Ballroom of New York’s Plaza Hotel. From across the nation, advocates and politicians shared in this marvelous evening, including one of the organizations that started it all — the National Committee Against Discrimination In Housing.

In subsequent years, the tradition of celebrating Fair Housing Month grew larger and larger. Governors began to issue proclamations that designated April as “Fair Housing Month,” and schools across the country sponsored poster and essay contests that focused upon fair housing issues. Regional winners from these contests often enjoyed trips to Washington, DC for events with HUD and their Congressional representatives.

Under former Secretaries James T. Lynn and Carla Hills, with the cooperation of the National Association of Homebuilders, National Association of Realtors, and the American Advertising Council these groups adopted fair housing as their theme and provided “free” billboard space throughout the nation. These large 20-foot by 14-foot billboards placed the fair housing message in neighborhoods, industrial centers, agrarian regions and urban cores. Every region also had its own celebrations, meetings, dinners, contests and radio-television shows that featured HUD, state and private fair housing experts and officials. These celebrations continue the spirit behind the original passage of the Act, and are remembered fondly by those who were there from the beginning.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

 

White House Housing Development Toolkit

Executive Summary from the White House Housing Development Toolkit: September, 2016

[FYI Please note this toolkit was issued under President Obama’s administration.]

“Locally-constructed barriers to new housing development include beneficial environmental protections, but also laws plainly designed to exclude multifamily or affordable housing. Local policies acting as barriers to housing supply include land use  restrictions that make developable land much more costly than it is inherently, zoning restrictions, off street parking requirements, arbitrary or antiquated preservation regulations, residential conversion restrictions, and unnecessarily slow permitting processes. The accumulation of these barriers has reduced the ability of many housing markets to respond to growing demand.”whitehouse-housing_development_toolkit-f-2_page_01

Read it all here> http://tinyurl.com/WhiteHouseDevpToolKit 23 pages easy reading.

Reform land use, promote shared growth of new housing

– San Francisco Chronicle  http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Reform-land-use-promote-shared-growth-of-new-9283703.php

By Jason Furman | September 25, 2016 | Updated: September 25, 2016 8:34pm

housing-constructionpicturePhoto: Michael Macor, The Chronicle

When certain government policies — like minimum lot sizes, off-street parking requirements, height limits, prohibitions on multifamily housing, or unnecessarily lengthy permitting processes — restrict the supply of housing, fewer units are available and the price rises.

It is no secret that cities like San Francisco, New York and Washington, D.C., face challenges in the availability and cost of housing. But policymakers and economists have increasingly recognized both the role that certain inappropriate land use restrictions play in raising housing costs — not just in major cities but across the country — and the opportunity for modernizing these regulations to promote shared growth.

Basic economic theory predicts that when the supply of a good is constrained, its price rises and the quantity available falls. In this respect, the market for housing is no different: When certain government policies — like minimum lot sizes, off-street parking requirements, height limits, prohibitions on multifamily housing, or unnecessarily lengthy permitting processes — restrict the supply of housing, fewer units are available and the price rises. On the other hand, more efficient policies can promote availability and affordability of housing, regional economic development, transportation options and socioeconomic diversity.

Research suggests that local barriers have become more restrictive in recent decades. One way to measure this is comparing the sale price of houses with construction costs. This gap typically reflects the cost of buying land — which increases with tighter land use restrictions. Indeed, the gap has increased in the past two decades: House prices from 2010 to 2013 were 56 percent higher than construction costs, a 23 percentage-point crease over the average gap during the 1990s.

Of course, many land use regulations can have benefits for communities. Environmental reasons in some localities may make it appropriate to limit high-density or multiuse development. Similarly, health and safety concerns — such as an area’s air traffic patterns, viability of its water supply, or its geologic stability — may merit height and lot size restrictions.

But in other cases, barriers to housing development can allow a small number of individuals to enjoy the benefits of living in a community while excluding many others, limiting diversity and economic mobility.

This upward pressure on house prices may also undermine the market forces that typically determine patterns of housing construction, leading to mismatches between household needs and available housing.

Improving land use policies can also create benefits for the U.S. economy as a whole. High- productivity cities offer higher-income jobs than low-productivity cities and often attract workers who move from other cities, naturally bringing more resources to productive areas of the country. But when unnecessary barriers restrict the supply of housing and costs increase, then workers — particularly lower-income workers who would benefit the most — are less able to move.

All told, this means slower economic growth: Some researchers have estimated that GDP could have been almost 10 percent higher in 2009 if workers and capital freely moved so that the distribution of wages across cities was the same as in 1964.

On the other hand, smarter land use and housing policy can promote both growth and equity. While most land use policies are appropriately made at the state and local level, the federal government can also play a role in encouraging smart land use regulations. Today, the Obama administration is releasing a new toolkit at http://bit.ly/2d4dVAc that highlights best practices that localities have employed — including streamlining permitting processes, eliminating off-street parking requirements, reducing minimum lot sizes, and enacting high-density and multifamily zoning policies — to reduce overly burdensome land use restrictions and promote mobility and economic growth.

Reforming land use policies can have important benefits for local residents and the nation as a whole, not only raising economic growth, but ensuring that its benefits are widely shared among all Americans.

Jason Furman is the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.