Category Archives: older people

At last! Housing that serves a purpose

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Thanks partly to the Burlington Housing Action Plan, which calls for housing up to 900 collegians “potentially on one to two carefully-selected downtown locations,” we’re going to be hearing a lot, over the next few years, about something called “purpose-built student housing.”

That’s because the new wave of student housing around the country is being generated by private developers on behalf of colleges and universities, as would be the case in Burlington. And what these developers say they’re putting up is “purpose-built.”  KnoxSuch as “The Knox,” in Knoxville, Tenn., near the University of Tennessee campus.

Now, you might well wonder: “Purpose-built” housing as opposed to what? Pointless housing? (Perhaps examples of the latter spring immediately to mind.)

So, what does “purpose-built” mean? Here’s the Merriam Webster definition:

Designed and built for a particular use

Like, to be lived in? As in, duh, apartment building? There must be more to it.

Students aren’t the only target of “purpose-built” developments. A cursory Google search turns up “purpose-built” developments for older people, disabled people, mixed-income people. A prime example of the latter is East Lake, a revitalized neighborhood in Atlanta that used to be a rundown public housing project.

Take note: “Purpose-built communities” and “intentional communities” are not the same thing. (“Intentional communities” as opposed to what, you might wonder. Accidental communities?)

The purpose-built phenomenon seems to be hot in Canada. Check out Mirvish Village in Toronto, which prides itself on its diversity. The website does not make it easy to discern, however, how much it costs to live there.

OK, so what’s special about “purpose-built” student housing, as distinct from a plain old privately contracted dorm? (Redstone Lofts on UVM’s campus, privately built and managed, would be an example of the latter, sort of. Nobody was describing that as “purpose-built” when it went up a few years ago.)

The amenities, apparently. knox2Roof decks, hot tubs, climbing walls, flat-screen TVs in every suite, swimming pools, those sorts of things.

Very well, let’s imagine six-story “purpose-built” student housing on the northwest corner of South Winooski Avenue and Main Street, the parking lot next to the fire station. (Presumably the climbing wall and hot tubs would be on the inside, not accessible to passers-by.) Here’s what we’d like to know:

Will the inclusionary zoning ordinance apply, and if not, how can the ordinance be amended to ensure that a decent share of these “purpose-built” units are affordable? 

Scaling back, sort of

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A new verb, or gerund, is twittering its way into the contemporary housing lexicon: “co-living.”

It’s often paired with “co-working,” another neologism, and “micro-housing.” These words are being used most commonly to describe the emerging lifestyles of highly driven, hard-striving young entrepreneurs, typically in technical fields — Millennial start-up wannabes, they’re sometimes called in the literature.tiny1 Harnessed to their ambitions, they’re willing to live in tiny spaces with some common amenities (co-live), work in open-space offices where they can freely network and brainstorm with peers (co-work), and abandon the idea of maintaining a conventional “work-life balance.”

These patterns reportedly originated in the Bay Area, as you might expect, but are showing up in New York. This summer, the Times ran a story about Pure House, one of several businesses renting apartments with amenities to such people who are willing to pay $1,600 to $4,000 a month to share rooms with others of their ilk. “The Millennial Commune,” read the headline. (For BuzzFeed’s elaboration on this phenomenon, click here.)tiny2

We’ve never met anybody like that, but we take it on faith that such people really do exist. What we’d like to suggest, though, is that some variant of co-living might have appeal for ordinary people, too – Millennials and oldsters, alike. We’ll explain in a moment, but first, let’s be clear that co-living is not the same as cohousing.

Cohousing, as the Cohousing Association of the United States describes it, is “an intentional community of private homes clustered around shared space.” There are many variations of this basic idea of combining private and communal space, and a couple of dozen of these communities have sprung up around Vermont. These are clustered developments, but they’re not necessarily adduced as an answer to the housing-unaffordability problem because of the added costs associated with the shared facilities.

Co-living, by contrast, puts people in tiny apartments (say, 200-300 square feet) with access to some shared space (such as a communal kitchen and lounge). Typically, these are furnished rentals.

An example is Commonspace, 21 micro units being developed on two floors of a five story building in Syracuse, N.Y., above a co-working office space. Each unit will have a bathroom and a kitchenette and will rent from $700 to $900 a month — supposedly slightly less than a one-bedroom apartment goes for in Syracuse, according to a fine profile in The Atlantic. tiny3

Quite apart from the “co-working” annex, micro-units have proliferated in Seattle over the last few years and appear to appeal especially to people who want to live close by where they work.

Now obviously, this sort of place is not for everyone. It means, among other things, giving up the idea that you’ll be paying for living quarters big enough to hold all your seldom-used stuff.

But it might make sense for lots of people — recent college grads working their first jobs, dislocated workers or homeless people getting back on their feet, retirees living on fixed incomes. Not that all these people would necessarily have live together, but assorted communities might suggest themselves.

And beyond rentals, perhaps different ownership models could be devised by land trusts, using judicious public subsidies, all with an eye to affordability.

Strange bedfellows, or not

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Not long ago we heard a tidy summary of two converging demographic trends bearing down on the affordable-housing problem:

There is the surging population of older people, Baby Boomers and beyond, who are looking to downsize.aging2

Then there is the younger-adult population — Millennials, Gen-Xers — who are looking to up-size but can’t afford to, as they postpone buying homes.

Might there be a way to meet these divergent generational needs in some way that somehow preserves neighborhoods with a stamp of affordability?

That’s a key challenge that one of the presenters in our “Thriving Communities” seminar, John E. Davis, posed at the end of his discourse. (You can see the seminar in webinar-slide form if you click here, or in video mode if you click here.) He admitted he didn’t have any easy answers.

Neither do we, but we have a few notions that might prolong the discussion. These ideas are predicated on the fact that older people, overwhelmingly, want to age in place (that is, in their own homes); that in many cases, those homes are too big for them to manage; that increasingly, older people are open to the idea of home-sharing (as we noted in the post about a recent AARP survey in Burlington). Why not look for ways to convert big, empty houses into spaces that can accommodate both an aging widower and a young family?burlingtonhouse

One way would be to encourage — and drop regulatory barriers from — the addition of accessory dwelling units. (For an article on how zoning can facilitate aging-in-place, click here. For an essay on aging-friendly land-use policies, click here.) The new unit could be an annex that the older person would occupy, freeing up the main house for other residents.

Or the new unit could be a self-contained space within the house itself. We’ve seen articles touting the idea of grown children adding an “in-law suite” to their own homes to house an aging parent. Why not turn that around, so that that aging person’s home is remodeled to include an independent suite that the aging person parent can then occupy, opening up the rest of the house for another owner, perhaps a young family?

family

How might affordability enter this picture? Perhaps as a condition of publicly subsidized financing that could be offered to promote construction of accessory units or the conversion of big old houses into duplexes. Various tax incentives could be offered for older home-owners to take these steps.aging1

And who knows, maybe the hide-bound mortgage world could be expanded to include new forms of co-ownership or shared equity for some no-longer-strange bedfellows: Older empty-nesters aging at home compatibly under the same roof as younger full-nesters.

 

 

Note by Ted Wimpey:

Another good option for “aging in place” is “home sharing.” Check out HomeShare Vermont for a good example.
http://www.homesharevermont.org/about-us/

“HomeShare Vermont helps people stay in their homes by connecting them with potential housemates who are looking for a place to live. While our primary goal is to help elders stay at home, we have found that people of all ages and abilities can benefit from homesharing. There are no age, ability or income restrictions to use our services. “

 

Better than nothing

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Off-year election round-up:

  • In San Francisco, where housing issues dominated the ballot — or at least the election coverage – Proposition F naturally got the most attention.  sanfrancisco2That was an initiative to restrict Airbnb, which proponents argued is effectively reducing the city’s housing stock via the proliferation of pricey short-term rentals. Prop F inspired a kind of media circus, with Airbnb investing $8 million in a campaign to defeat it, with pro-Prop F forces occupying Airbnb headquarters the day before the election. Voters said no, in any event, 55 percent against. If you want to learn more about Prop F in excruciating detail, click here.

Voters said yes, though, to Proposition A, $310 million in housing bonds for developing and maintaining affordable housing – the first such bonding question to gain approval in San Francisco in nearly two decades, so apparently the affordability crisis there is registering the electorate. They said no, however to Proposition I, a moratorium on market-rate developments in the historically Latino Mission District.

Of course, there’s a school of thought that the housing crisis in San Francisco and everywhere else is mostly a supply and demand problem, and that if development were allowed to flourish without political or regulatory constraints, prices would go down, or at least, not go up so fast. One problem with that argument in a place like San Francisco is that the population isn’t fixed: There are simply too many moneyed people (techies, among them) poised to move in to town to pay the soaring prices that the market can bear when the housing supply grows.

  • In Maine, voters overwhelmingly approved Question 2, a $15 million bond to underwrite 225 affordable units for older people and to fund repairs for 100 homes of low-income aging. oldguy “That’s a drop in the bucket,” said the Portland Press Herald in an editorial, given the “demographic storm” coming to Maine. (Maine officialdom is anguishing about the  greying population, same as in Vermont.) Still, it’s better than nothing.

 

 

 

 

  • In Summit County, Colo. (home to Breckenridge), voters agreed to maintain a tax that supports workforce and affordable housing. It’s a sales tax of 0.125 percent. Doesn’t sound like much, but again, it’s better than nothing.  Perhaps the Vermont townships that host ski areas can come up with something more generous for their workers.

Not bad, could be better: AARP’s take on BTV’s ‘livability’

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A willingness to consider home-sharing is among the key findings of a new AARP survey of 500 Burlington residents age 45 and older.

Burlington2When asked if they would be open to a home-sharing arrangement with a person who could provide services in order for them to continue living in the home, 56 percent of the respondents said yes. That was up from 36 percent in an AARP survey nine years ago.

The new response suggests a pent-up demand for more accessory dwelling units on properties where older Burlingtonians want to age in place — which most respondents clearly wish to do. Seventy-nine percent “strongly agreed” when asked about their desire to remain in their current home, and 80 percent rated Burlington as a good or excellent place for older people to live.

The home-sharing finding suggests that current services, mentioned in a previous post, are undersubscribed. It also points to a need for a supportive regulatory climate for accessory dwelling units, which are, after all, an important piece in the chronic puzzle of how to come up with more affordable housing.

burlington1

Another housing finding of note: Asked their opinion about building moderate- to low-income housing units in vacant lots in Burlington, 67 percent responded favorably, with 32 percent opposed. These numbers might have been slightly higher/lower is the question had used the contemporary term of choice, “affordable housing,” which has a nicer ring but which is, we have to admit, something of a euphemism.

Asked for their concerns about what might make it difficult to age in place, “high cost of living” topped the list, but it remains unclear which kinds of costs, specifically, are at issue.

Besides housing, transportation and “community engagement” were spheres covered by the telephone survey, which comprised 20-minute telephone interviews of randomly selected people. The margin of error was 4 percent. To see the full survey, “The Path to Livability: A Citizen Survey of Burlington, Vermont,” click here.

A presentation of the survey results by researcher Joanne Binette was made in AARP’s Burlington office to an audience of about two dozen people, among them housing and transportation specialists.

Burlington4

Older people in Burlington get around in multiple ways. Driving is still the main way (83 percent), but these people also walk (68 percent) and bike (41 percent) or take the bus (27 percent) at least some of the time.

Generally, they find it easy to get around even if they couldn’t drive (66 percent). The main drawback to bus service, they said, was the lack of weekend or evening service. (One set of bus concerns relates to schedules and routes, another to bus stops and access to them.)

Fifty-fiBurlington7ve percent said they would bicycle if conditions for cyclists were better.

But are the streets safe? Apparently they’re more so for bicyclists (51 percent said streets are safe for cyclists) than for people with disabilities (41 percent), older people (36 percent) or children (33 percent) or pedestrians (27 percent).

Respondents had opinions on improving sidewalks and bus service, but appeared to be relatively satisfied with educational and social activities available to them in Burlington.