APARTMENT ADVOCATE
When Is Affordable Housing Not About
Affordable Housing?
by Fred Tayco, NAA
I
’ll get to the titular question in just
a second. I wanted to start off by
congratulating the apartment industry on
being right – the issue of affordable housing is
important and deserves the public’s attention.
Through your tireless efforts, others have
finally come around. Yes, it may have taken
them a couple decades, but people are finally
talking about it. Heck, even presidential
candidates are talking about it. Granted, you
can’t get any further removed from relevancy
than to have the highest office of the land
opining on a uniquely local issue. But you know
what? It is elevating the issue.
Appreciate the attention. You earned it.
Because now you get to promote policies to fix
what you have long been warning policymakers
on the consequences of a sustained supply
and demand imbalance. There is no need to
be smug and say, “I told you so,” because the
human cost, the impact to people, is self-
evident.
You’ve made it! Now all you have to do is
sit back and wait for the phone calls and emails
from policymakers begging for your expertise…
It hasn’t happened, has it?
In fact, chances are you’ve not only seen
policymakers ignore the history of failed
housing policies, but ostensibly doubling down
on them.
Rather than address the root problem,
supply, you’ve seen them go the other way and
attempt to regulate access to the limited stock
of existing housing. Proposals that limit the
ability to screen prospective residents, remove
problem residents and manage rental rates are
some of the ways that policymakers have chosen
to be “seen” as addressing affordable housing.
In the title of the article I ask the simple
question: When is affordable housing not about
affordable housing?
The short answer is, when it doesn’t produce
a single unit. The long answer is, when you
avoid doing the right thing for the politically
expedient thing.
Make no mistake, building housing is hard.
It takes years to get something planned,
approved and for the industry to get it built.
Often, the elected officials that approves the
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housing are long out of office by the time it is
all said and done.
That difficulty is multiplied when it is
apartment housing. NIMBY activism has
not only hurt apartment numbers on a
project-by-project basis, but in the long-range
production as well. This opposition ranges
from orchestrated vocal protests designed to
intimidate well-intentioned officials to subtle
housing policies that deter the development of
apartment housing.
Finally, it is not about affordable housing
when all you want to do is check the proverbial
box on an issue. Proposals like rent control
are political theater. Never mind the fact that
it has failed every place it has been attempted;
that is immaterial to its primary purpose. It
is meant to be seen. To satisfy the moment of
outrage. To say that you have done something
without doing anything.
Often, I have heard exasperated elected
officials throw their hands up and say “we need
to do something” as justification to onerous
regulations. That somehow it can’t get worse
than it already is.
To that end, I leave you with an excerpt
from the California Health and Safety Code,
section 50003 (a). As background, this
language is meant to codify the importance of
affordable housing to the health and well-being
of its citizens.
“…The Legislature finds and declares
that… there exists within the urban
and rural areas of the state a serious
shortage of decent, safe, and sanitary
housing which persons and families
of low or moderate income, including
the elderly and handicapped, can
afford. This situation creates an
absolute present and future shortage
of supply in relation to demand, as
expressed in terms of housing needs
and aspirations, and also creates
inflation in the cost of housing, by
reason of its scarcity, which tends to
decrease the relative affordability of
the state's housing supply for all its
residents.”
That declaration was published in 1977. It
can be argued that since then, the state has
done everything but build supply.
It can most definitely get worse.
Fred Tayco is the Director of External Affairs for
the National Apartment Association
www.aamdhq.org