Opinion: Stop worrying, NIMBYS — affordable housing shouldn’t squash your property values
Opinion: Stop worrying, NIMBYS — affordable housing shouldn't squash your property values Los Angeles Times
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Affordable Housing and Property Values: Debunking the Myth
Just down the street from my family’s Venice home, workers are smoothing plaster inside a 6,000-square-foot new house whose owners, a young couple from the Bay Area, will soon have a property worth $7 million.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
- No Poverty
- Zero Hunger
- Good Health and Well-being
- Quality Education
- Gender Equality
- Clean Water and Sanitation
- Affordable and Clean Energy
- Decent Work and Economic Growth
- Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
- Reduced Inequalities
- Sustainable Cities and Communities
- Responsible Consumption and Production
- Climate Action
- Life Below Water
- Life on Land
- Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
- Partnerships for the Goals
Across from that mansion-to-be is an 11-unit apartment building whose cracked stucco could use a new coat of its mustard-colored paint. The families that live there come mostly from Oaxaca, Mexico, and many of the adults work as employees at restaurants in Venice and Marina del Rey.
Los Angeles is a city historically segregated by race and class. But in our slice of the city, multimillionaires in newly built villas live side by side with the affordable apartments of the people who clean their pools, watch their children, and cook their El Pollo Loco orders.
My family’s neighborhood may be an outlier — or moving inexorably toward full gentrification — but at least for the last three decades, it has also served as vibrant proof that the notion that affordable housing lowers property values is overblown, if not flat-out wrong.
The Impact of Affordable Housing on Property Values
That enduring belief has contributed to widespread not-in-my-backyard opposition that makes building affordable housing in higher-income areas so difficult.
- “It is total NIMBYism,” said Adlai Wertman of USC’s Marshall School of Business. “It’s ‘I want to help poor people, just not in my neighborhood.’”
Our neighborhood provides plenty of anecdotal evidence that mixing housing and income levels doesn’t sink property values. In a four-block area, low- and moderate-income apartment buildings and multifamily units are sprinkled among six mega-mansions and older, middle-class single-family homes like ours, which was built in 1924. The lower-income units are not government-subsidized.
In the mustard-colored building, Marin Ceja, a self-employed pool technician, pays $2,000 per month for his two-bedroom apartment, more than $3,000 less than the average for a two-bedroom rental in Venice. Assuming Ceja’s across-the-street new neighbors financed their home with 20% down, they’ll be paying $20,000 per month.
The presence of lower-cost multiunit buildings hasn’t driven down the resale value of homes. The average sale price of homes in Venice has increased by a million dollars in the last 10 years. In the last year, while home prices have declined by 7% countywide, in our neighborhood they rose over 4%.
Numerous studies show our corner of Venice, east of Lincoln Boulevard and north of Venice Boulevard, is not unique. Low-income housing has a positive impact, or no impact, on neighborhood house values, according to a majority of studies reviewed by A-Mark Foundation, the research and policy nonprofit I lead. Two studies concluded that low-income housing had negative effects on property values in some specific cases.
One 10-year study that looked at property values in the least affordable housing markets in the U.S. — 45% of which were in California — found that newly built low-income housing had no effect on state property values.
That’s been the experience of affordable housing builders too. Loren Bloch, who spent decades developing affordable housing in Southern California, told me that when he insisted on building 22 low-income housing units along with 37 market-rate units in Oxnard in 2001, other developers thought he was crazy.
“But people sucked them up,” he said, “and they lived side by side together.”
Oxnard real estate prices around Bloch’s development have risen by double digits since then.
Tom Safran spent four decades convincing wary, lawyered-up residents that mixed neighborhoods work for everyone, so long as the building quality is high.
After finally winning city approval for 154 affordable units in Del Rey on Culver Boulevard, Safran faced off against a handful of neighbors whose lawsuits delayed construction two and a half years, before they settled on 124 units — which more than 1,800 people applied for in 2013.
His company faced similar opposition to his Thatcher Yard development in Venice, despite bringing in Steve Giannetti, who designed Lady Gaga’s Malibu spread, as an architect. Residents fought to scale back the project from 160 units to 98, overruling Safran’s contention that as long as valuable Venice land was available, it should house the most diverse kinds of units, and the largest number of them, that was reasonable.
“Communities work best when they have a range of incomes,” Safran told me. “When people who teach school or do policing or work behind the counter in the dry cleaners don’t have to drive an hour and a half, it creates a more successful society.”
The Need for Affordable Housing
In Los Angeles County, home prices have risen twice
SDGs, Targets, and Indicators
1. Which SDGs are addressed or connected to the issues highlighted in the article?
- SDG 1: No Poverty
- SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
- SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
2. What specific targets under those SDGs can be identified based on the article’s content?
- SDG 1.4: By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular, the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership, and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology, and financial services, including microfinance.
- SDG 10.2: By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status.
- SDG 11.1: By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums.
3. Are there any indicators mentioned or implied in the article that can be used to measure progress towards the identified targets?
- Indicator for SDG 1.4: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, with legally recognized documentation and who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and by type of tenure.
- Indicator for SDG 10.2: Proportion of people living below 50 percent of median income, by age, sex, and persons with disabilities.
- Indicator for SDG 11.1: Proportion of urban population living in slums, informal settlements, or inadequate housing.
Table: SDGs, Targets, and Indicators
| SDGs | Targets | Indicators |
|---|---|---|
| SDG 1: No Poverty | SDG 1.4: By 2030, ensure that all men and women, in particular, the poor and the vulnerable, have equal rights to economic resources, as well as access to basic services, ownership, and control over land and other forms of property, inheritance, natural resources, appropriate new technology, and financial services, including microfinance. | Indicator: Proportion of total adult population with secure tenure rights to land, with legally recognized documentation and who perceive their rights to land as secure, by sex and by type of tenure. |
| SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities | SDG 10.2: By 2030, empower and promote the social, economic, and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status. | Indicator: Proportion of people living below 50 percent of median income, by age, sex, and persons with disabilities. |
| SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities | SDG 11.1: By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums. | Indicator: Proportion of urban population living in slums, informal settlements, or inadequate housing. |
Behold! This splendid article springs forth from the wellspring of knowledge, shaped by a wondrous proprietary AI technology that delved into a vast ocean of data, illuminating the path towards the Sustainable Development Goals. Remember that all rights are reserved by SDG Investors LLC, empowering us to champion progress together.
Source: latimes.com
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