NewGeography.com blogs

Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post takes on the role of homeownership in our society. I'm generally a fan of Samuelson's writing, a normally sober, cold-eyed analysis of issues without favor to one ideology over another, so imagine my disappointment when reading him say, "The relentless promotion of homeownership as the embodiment of the American dream has outlived its usefulness."

Of course, there's more to his column. He goes on to say:

Unfortunately, we let a sensible goal become a foolish fetish. Not everyone can become a homeowner. Some are too young and footloose; some are too old and dependent; some are too poor or irresponsible. Some don't want a home.

This is different that saying homeownership is not a worthy goal for our nation and is quite distinct from the ideas of Richard Florida, who has previously written that homeownership is overrated and who’s recent "Roadmap" to recovery focuses on de-emphasizing homeownership. Where Florida is right is in acknowledging that this would "blow up" the fundamentals of our economy.

He's also engaging in what I call strategic diminishment – that is, consciously pursuing a future that is less than our current state. Many elite progressives think we have it too good and that our lifestyle choices are harmful to ourselves and our planet. It's not enough that they want to be scolds; they want to use the power of government to change America into a place where our quality of life is diminished.

And progressives also glorify this reduction with a "less is more" attitude. The Washington Post recently presented the case against air conditioning, and USA Today reported on the banning of drive-throughs in the city that pioneered them sixty years ago. I've addressed strategic diminishment as it relates to the mobility and the Obama administration’s “Livable Communities Act,” but this is also true for homeowners and covers not just the percentage of homeowners but even the size of homes. Ron Utt of the Heritage Foundation warns how even the President has adopted a worrisome narrative on homeownership.

Before we go off the deep end, let's clear up two points. First, the crisis we've gotten ourselves into is not because people own homes. It's because of the flawed policies promoting homeownership. We know about the role of the Community Reinvestment Act and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also contributing were various land-use planning schemes collectively known as Smart Growth.

Second, homeownership has many benefits. Homeownership is more than a lifestyle choice; it's a source of wealth and stability. And when homeowners take out a second mortgage on their homes, it's often as a source for financing their own small businesses – another ideal we associate with the American Dream.

There are countries with equal or greater rates of homeownership that do not have government intervention policies that skew the market. But as we consider housing policy at the local, state, and federal levels, what should be the principles on which it is based?

Before we adopt A Nation of Renters as our new creed, let's fix the broken policies that got us here.

Ed Braddy is executive director of the American Dream Coalition, a non-profit grassroots and public policy organization that promotes freedom, mobility, and affordable homeownership. The ADC's annual conference takes place September 23-25 in Orlando, Florida. For more information, visit americandreamcoalition.org or email Ed at ed@americandreamcoalition.org.

I saw this story in the Omaha World Herald last week: Benefits of stimulus bill spread unevenly over U.S. As I read through it, I became increasingly impressed. The journalists start off by laying out who said what about the benefits of stimulus spending. They provide quotes and facts from the White House, the Congressional Budget Office, and Joe Biden’s spokesperson. They include viewpoints and analysis from professors at Berkeley, Harvard, George Mason and the editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. They even talked it over with the National Association of State Auditors, Comptrollers and Treasurers – the people in charge of receiving and accounting for the billions of dollars represented by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. What impressed me most, though, was that they did their own research – not just reporting what the Administration or Congress told them was happening or was supposed to be happening.

“Spending the Stimulus” is a website put together by McClatchy Newspapers and the Medill News Service to track what was promised and what was done, how much was actually spent and where and on what the stimulus billions were spent. I was intrigued by their finding that “much of the stimulus money has yet to go out the door” eighteen months after the emergency, gotta-fix-it-now legislation was passed. After Congress approved $750 billion for the Wall Street Bailout in October 2008, I’m pretty sure all that money was out the door before December!

Even more intriguing is the finding that the money was spread around rather unevenly. Beyond the infantile “Why Did North Dakota got More Than Me?” rhetoric going around among the states (by the way, the McClatchy-Medill per-capita graphic shows that most of New England got more than North Dakota), is the more interesting discussion of where would the spending be most stimulating. Transportation money was directed to the states under the “usual formula” despite the fact that the Great Recession didn’t follow a formula as it spread throughout the economy. The result: “researchers were unable to find any relationship between unemployment in a given area and the amount of stimulus dollars spent there.” If unemployment is lower in some areas than in others, it wasn’t because of the stimulus spending.

Maybe this is a good thing. Instead of focusing on the political necessity of justifying billions of dollars to pull the country out of the Great Recession (unlike the complete lack of justification for bailing out Wall Street), the McClatchy-Medill report raises more interesting points. Is it “rewarding failure” to send more money to the states that most failed to develop diversified economies that are resilient to downturns? Would we be throwing good money after bad to provide more spending for states that didn’t manage the cash inflow from the rapid rise in property taxes that came with rapidly rising home prices? Finally, did we really want a central government to make every decision – county by county – about where and on what the money would be spent?

If you missed this story last week, I highly recommend perusing the “Spending the Stimulus” website for more stimulating idea.

Logic suggests that a lack of affordable housing in a region will dissuade people from living there, and employment levels will suffer as a result. However, until recently, no one had readily tested this theory and simply relied on this logic to substantiate this assumption. Ritashree Chakrabati and Junfu Zhang of the New England Public Policy Center published a report looking empirically at this theory in the United States. In doing so, they have found a substantial correlation between a lack of affordable housing and suppressed job growth.

While Chakrabati and Zhang analyzed data from many US metropolitan areas and counties, they first used California as a state case study to cut down on the number of unaccounted-for heterogeneities created by state policies. California epitomizes the problem of a dearth of affordable housing suppressing an economy. The increased cost of doing business has driven companies out of expensive California, exacerbating the unemployment problem, while the recipients of this flight (mainly in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest) are finding some growth in this recession. These days, people aren’t prioritizing culture and lifestyle; they simply don’t have the budget for it. In order to grow, states must assure residents and businesses that they can sustain themselves during this difficult time.

The findings of this study should also alert countries such as Australia, now in the midst of a major land and housing crisis, about creating more affordable conditions around their urban core cities to maintain economic growth, much less stimulate it. Just as businesses are reluctant to stay in California, business will be reluctant to find a home in these expensive core cities. Almost every country depends on global ties to support itself, and it will be those that can strike a balance between affordable housing and standard of living that thrive.

Between now and the end of the year, a hot political topic here in New York will be whether to let the Bush tax cuts expire for people in the highest income bracket, as the Obama administration proposes, or whether to extend those cuts for everyone. Advocates taking the latter position will correctly argue that higher rates will be especially harmful to New York, because of the large number of wealthy people, who live here.

What is not likely to be discussed, however, is that because of the exorbitant cost of living in New York and the surrounding suburbs, federal taxes take a supersized bite out of the incomes of all New Yorkers, who in the vast majority are not wealthy at all. The result is that here in New York City, which is arguably the poorest city in America when it comes to what people can actually afford, we end up subsidizing other states and localities, where people pay less to Uncle Sam, even as they enjoy a higher standard of living than we do.

How could this be? The answer is that because New York and the surrounding suburbs are so expensive, businesses have to pay higher salaries to recruit people to work for them. According to the ERI Economic Research Institute, a leading data survey company that helps corporate clients set compensation packages and calculate the cost of doing business throughout the United States and elsewhere, these higher salary costs are substantial.

They calculate, for example, that a typical registered nurse in metropolitan New York earns $82,712 versus a national average of $65,464. In the case of an accountant, they calculate a figure of $74,388 versus a national average of $58,712. In the case of an administrative assistant, as they define those job responsibilities, they calculate a figure of $59,243 versus $47,961 nationally. And finally, they also provide data for someone working as a janitor. Here the figure they calculate is $38,142 versus $31,220.

Sounds great. Who doesn’t want a higher salary? But unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The problem is that the IRS doesn’t care how much you can actually buy with your hard earned dollars. They just want to see the number printed on your W-2. And as we all know, the more you make, the more you pay.

For the average registered nurse in New York, filing as an individual, and assuming no special deductions or one-time credits, the tax bite amounts to $14,381 versus $10,219 for the average registered nurse in the rest of the country. An accountant here pays $12,444 versus $8,531 nationally. For an administrative assistant, the figure is $8,656 versus $5,844. And in the case of a janitor, the figure is $3,899 versus $2,864.

But wait, it gets worse than that. Based on data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, it turns out that the cost of living in the New York metropolitan area is significantly higher than the difference in salaries alone would indicate. According to their data, the cost of living here is 45 percent higher than in the rest of the country or approximately twice the difference in salaries.

Yes, employers have to pay more to recruit people to work here in New York, but they don’t have to make up the whole difference. Economists refer to this as money illusion, which is their way of saying that people find it difficult to distinguish between the nominal value of money and the true purchasing power of that money in the marketplace.

If we recalculate salaries to take into account the cost of living, it turns out that the federal tax premium that New Yorkers have to pay is even greater. Thus, if the tax bite were to reflect the actual standard of living for a registered nurse in New York, the real tax would be $8,106 instead of the actual tax of $14,381 or a difference of $6,275. For an accountant, the difference would be $5,775. For an administrative assistant, it would be $4,352, and for a janitor, $1,778.

The lessons here are clear. In the short term, New York’s Congressional delegation needs to restrain efforts to raise taxes in Washington, D.C., because the impact here will be greater than elsewhere. And in the longer term, we need to determine why the cost of living in New York is so high and then implement the reforms necessary to fix the problem and give New Yorkers a standard of living that is competitive with rest of America.

The opposition Liberal-National Coalition, locked in a close battle with the ruling Labor Party in Australia's Saturday elections, has adopted a housing policy to improve the nation's housing affordability. The policy would require states to monitor housing affordability and to release more land for development. There would also be a review of the efficacy of development charges.

Australia suffers from some of the most unaffordable housing in the world, with a Median Multiple (median house price divided by median household income) of 6.8, which is more than double the historic norm of 3.0. With recent interest rate increases, the median household would have to pay more than 50% of its gross income to service a mortgage on the median priced house. Little more than 15 years ago, house prices were affordable in Australia, which had seen home ownership rise from approximately 40% before World War II to approximately 70%. The principal cause of the loss of housing affordability has been the virtual universal adoption of "smart growth" ("urban consolidation") land use restrictions, which have (among other things) made it virtually impossible to develop inexpensive housing on the urban fringes, with the price of rationed land driven up many times.

The Coalition's housing policy includes the following provisions that are directly related to removing the urban consolidation barriers to affordable housing:

In order to continue to receive federal funds, States and Territories will need to increase land supply and reform their planning and approval systems under the National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA).
States and Territories will need to set affordability targets to guide land releases and dwelling approvals. In order to receive federal funds States and Territories would need to demonstrate that they had a plan for delivering these targets and those approvals and land releases occurred consistent with the targets established.
The Coalition will review of State, Territory and local developer charges, which have been contributing an increasing component to the cost of development. State and local governments that build higher charges into the cost of housing will be less able to meet their home affordability obligations under the Compact.

Housing affordability has been an issue of substantial concern in Australia for years and has emerged as the top concern among voters in this election. State governments have talked about housing affordability, but have done little. Over the past five years, house prices have continued to rise relative to incomes. Just in the last nine months, a mortgage payment on the median priced house has risen from $500 in Adelaide to more than $800 in Sydney.

The Coalition policy, however, represents the second significant development in recent weeks (Note). The first was an expansion of the Melbourne urban growth boundary by 440 square kilometers. All of this may signal an overdue attention to housing affordability in Australia.

-----

Note: Performance Urban Planning statement on the Coalition housing policy.

-----

Photograph: Adelaide: Urban fringe land (no houses allowed). Photograph by author

Get a glass of wine. Then click on this link, which plays a video called Community Growth, created in 1959.

Once you've seen the video, read on…

You're probably sitting with a puzzled look – 1959? Aren’t these the exact same issues that are plaguing us today? Don’t those 1959 developments look like many of today’s latest developments? Even the way they bulldozed through the land and stick-built the homes looks just like the methods used today!

When I was 7 year old, my mother bought a new white 1959 Chevrolet Impala convertible with a red vinyl interior. This was one of the best designs with those wonderful curved wing-like fins and oblong tail lights. I remember sitting in the front when my mother slammed on the brakes as a child ran in front of the car. Since they did not have seat belts back then, my head flew into the steel dashboard (your probably thinking; ah ha! so that’s why he writes for New Geography). That beautiful Chevy was a coffin in a crash, as witnessed by the following video showing 50 years of safety advances between the 1959 Chevy vs. 2009 Chevy.

Back then, a 1959 Chevy with 50,000 miles on it was on its last legs, just about broken down, whereas today, a 2009 Chevy with 50,000 miles would be considered just about broken in.

If a 1959 land development subdivision layout were to crash into (OK, be overlayed upon) a 2009 land development subdivision layout there would be little difference.

We have written about this in the past, but it bears repeating: Designers look to the ordinances for guidance, and these regulations have been stagnant for about 5 decades (1959. Developers hire designers assuming they will get the best possible layout. Designers look to the six decade old ordinances and assume the minimum dimensions are the optimum ones to maximize density (their clients profits). The layout by minimums will result in cookie cutter monotonous designs. The council and planning commissions admonish the developer for submitting plans that lack character and imagination, yet the developer just followed the regulations that promote such development. And the cycle repeats, and repeats, and repeats for generations upon generations.

You are reading this article on a computer that is more powerful than any that existed in 1959, or 1969, or possibly even in 1979. If you are older than 60 years old, chances are if this was 1959, you would be dead by now. Advances in health as well as an awareness of what we eat and how we live allow us to live longer happier and more productive lives.

Technological advancements have touched virtually every product and aspect of our lives – except the neighborhoods we live, work and play within.

There is something very wrong with this situation, and solving these problems through over densification and forcing a nation into public transportation is taking giant leaps backwards, not towards 1959, but more towards 1859. We posses innovation and technology for the design and building of sustainable future cities without sacrificing the desire for space and personal transportation freedom. This however takes more effort. But isn’t about time we leave 1959 behind?

An opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee by Sean Wirth of the Environmental Council of Sacramento could not have been more wrong in its characterization of the causes of the housing bubble in Sacramento.

The article starts out promisingly, correctly noting that:

But it is all downhill from there, with the suggestion that the extraordinary price increases in Sacramento were the result of too much suburbanization (the theological term in urban planning circles is "sprawl"). In fact, all things being equal, house prices tend to escalate where the supply is more constrained, not less. Where suburbanization is allowed, the market can supply enough housing to avoid inordinate house price increases. Where suburbanization is severely constrained, a legion of evidence indicates that house prices are prone to rise. It is all a matter of basic economics. George Mason University economist Daniel Klein puts it this way:

Basic economics acknowledges that whatever redeeming features a restriction may have, it increases the cost of production and exchange, making goods and services less affordable. There may be exceptions to the general case, but they would be atypical.

Housing is not atypical and Sacramento house prices soared in response to the tough use regulations. By the peak of the bubble, the Median Multiple (median house price divided by median household income) had risen to 6.8, well above the historic norm of 3.0. Many houses were built, but not enough to satisfy the demand, as Mr. Wirth indicates. Building many houses is not enough. There need to be enough houses to supply the demand, otherwise land prices soar, driving up house prices.

Unless a sufficient supply is allowed, speculators and flippers will "smell the blood" of windfall profits, which are there for the taking in excessively regulated markets.

During the housing bubble, house prices rose well above the historic Median Multiple norm only in metropolitan areas that had severe constraints land use constraints (called "smart growth" or "growth management"). This included Sacramento, other California markets, Miami, Portland, and Seattle and other markets around the country.

At the same time, more liberal development regulations allowed a sufficient inventory of housing to meet the demand in high growth areas like Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and Austin. In each of these places (and many others), the Median Multiple remained near or below the historic norm of 3.0, even with the heightened demand generated by a finance sector that had lost interest in credit-worthiness. As would be expected, speculators and flippers avoided the traditionally regulated markets, where an adequate supply of affordably priced housing continued to be produced.

Wirth expresses understandable concern about the house price losses since the bust. From the peak to the trough, the drop in Sacramento median house prices was more than 55%. However, this is to be expected once a serious economic decline is precipitated, especially in the sector that precipitated the crash (in this case housing). Economists Ed Glaeser of Harvard and Joseph Gyourko of Wharton have shown that not only (1) are house prices higher in more restricted markets but also that (2) there is greater price volatility in more highly regulated markets. Indeed, it is likely that the housing bust would have been much less severe or even avoided altogether if constraints on land had not driven the prices and subsequent mortgage losses so high in California and a few other states that they could not be absorbed by financial institutions. At the time of the Lehman Brothers collapse, 11 "ground zero" markets (including Sacramento), all highly regulated, accounted for 75% of the mortgage losses in the nation, with a per house loss rate of 15 times that of traditionally regulated markets.

Wirth's article expresses opposition to a Sacramento County decision to allow more development to occur on the urban fringe. He would prefer to force development into the existing urban footprint. The economic consequences of such folly are well known. In Australia, such policies have driven led to a doubling or tripling of house costs relative to incomes. The annual mortgage cost of the median priced house has risen to 50% of the median pre-tax household income, in a country that defines mortgage stress at the 35% level. Before the adoption of smart growth policies, Australia's housing affordability was similar to that of liberally regulated markets in the United States.

Avoiding the next housing bubble requires not repeating the mistakes that led to the last. Sacramento's young and lower income households can only hope that the additional land approved by the Board of Supervisors will be enough of a safety valve to keep housing affordable so that they can become owners rather than renters.

Photograph: Sacramento (author)

The potential for a symbiotic relationship between the environment, cars and people may be about to take a giant leap forward. London's Daily Telegraph reports that a group of engineers from Genco have developed a bio-bug (Volkswagen bug) that runs on human waste. The car is powered for 10,000 miles from the excrement from 70 households (annually). The human waste bio-bug would be carbon neutral because it would not add any greenhouse gas to that already produced. The fuel would be produced at sewage plants, which already produce the necessary methane fuel from waste. While the technology, fully implemented, would not produce sufficient methane to power the entire fleet of cars, it would be a significant step forward and is further indication of the potential for technology to make substantial greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Bio-Bug Photo

The Harlem Community Development Corporation has come up with a rather unique plan to combat high real estate prices in the district. It proposes establishing an open-air market under the Metro North tracks spanning one mile, or 22 city blocks. This new market would accommodate about 900 vendors, helping to increase the now low number of local entrepreneurs and independent retail stores in Harlem.

The market would not only attract vendors, but tourist traffic as well, which would help rejuvenate a neighborhood hampered by soaring commercial real estate costs. It costs anywhere from $125 to $225 per square foot for commercial space in Harlem’s prime locations, resulting in only 42 stores for every 10,000 residents. The Metro market project would ease pressure on small, independent retailers and allow potential entrepreneurs the chance to create viable businesses in the city.

This need for such a project reflects the economic trends and challenges facing the larger New York urban area’s middle class. New York City has the nation’s highest cost of living, and like the rest of the nation, is still experiencing the effects of the recession. The middle class, including small business owners facing high rents, struggles to make the six-figure salaries needed to meet the city’s high cost of living.

Harlem’s Metro market project, which would encourage an independent entrepreneurial spirit, embodies the required plan of action for New York City. The city needs to find inventive ways to deal with its economic reality in order to reverse the recession and revitalize its appeal to the energetic and the ambitious.

A few weeks ago, The New York Times touted purported savings that a household would save by living in the core city of New York (in Brooklyn) instead of the suburbs (South Orange, New Jersey). The article downplayed the 1,000 fewer square feet the money bought in Brooklyn and did not consider the 40% higher cost of living.

The Province in Vancouver has now followed with a near identical story, except that the urban household in will make do with even less space. The city of Vancouver household will live in 800 square feet, or 1,200 fewer square feet in the high rise condominium than in a suburban Coquitlam detached house used in the comparison. Like The Times, The Province is little concerned with the smaller size of the house and misses the fact that the cost of living is from 10% to 20% less in the suburbs and exurbs than it is in the city of Vancouver.

Nonetheless, according to Tsur Somerville, director of the University of British Columbia UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, who assisted in developing the figures for The Province, "If all they cared about were the dollars, they wanted to have $600,000 worth of real estate and then minimize their out-of-pocket costs, all else being considered, then being in the city is better," A commenter appropriately notes the volatility of strata (condominium association) fees, which suggests that out-of-pocket costs could rise significantly.

Canadians are not listening to "their betters" any more than Americans. US Census data indicates a continuing strong migration of people from the central cities and strong migration to the suburbs, despite heroic efforts on the part of the media and others to mask the reality.

"Being in the city" may be preferable to some in the Vancouver area, however not to the majority of the age group (25 to 44 years) most likely to move is voting for the suburbs, according to a recent Statistics Canada report. According to the report:

"... there continues to be a migration of many young adults and families from central municipalities to surrounding municipalities, while few move in the opposite direction."

For every one person who moved from the suburbs to the city of Vancouver between 2001 and 2006 (in the age group):

A table in the Statistics Canada report shows people in "creative class" occupations moving in greater numbers to the suburbs than to the city.

However, not everyone is moving in larger numbers to the suburbs.

The Statistics Canada report provided a similar analysis for Canada's two larger metropolitan areas, Toronto and Montreal. In Toronto, moves to the suburbs were 3.5 times moves to the city, while in Montreal 2.7 central city dwellers moved to the suburbs for every suburbanite moving to the city. This does not, however, necessarily indicate that the exodus to the suburbs is stronger in Toronto and Montreal. It is rather an indication of the fact that these two central cities represent a larger share of their metropolitan population than Vancouver. This means that more of the core out-migration is captured in Toronto and Montreal.

So, the media continues the "drumbeat" and the people keep marching --- in the opposite direction.