OPINION: Cities are correct in placing development in neighborhoods (PMG–Beaverton Valley Times)
Every city in the metro region needs more middle- and high-density housing, and more affordable housing; that might mean in your neighborhood.
The Times | Feb. 9, 2017
Every city in the metro region needs more middle- and high-density housing, and more affordable housing; that might mean in your neighborhood.
Whenever a city begins talks on a medium- or high-density development, you can expect to hear a particularly Augustinian declaration: “Lord, give us affordable housing, but not in my backyard.”
It likely is true that no one, ever, has been excited about new construction next door. Development on your own doorstep means noise and dirt; it means more traffic and fewer trees; it threatens views and even, potentially, class sizes in the local school.
But at the same time, most people recognize the dearth of affordable housing that plagues Portland, every suburban community around Portland, and every metropolitan area up and down the West Coast.
Building affordable housing means increasing density. Maybe not in your neighborhood. But then again … maybe right there.
Portland economist Joe Cortright notes, accurately, that the mass outmigration from cities to suburbs and rural areas, which dominated the socioeconomic landscape after World War II, reversed itself in the last couple of decades. People are pouring back into cities. People born here tend to want to stay here when they grow up, and people born elsewhere want to move here because it’s beautiful, has a vast supply of drinking water, and easy access to the oceans, deserts, mountains and rivers.
In that way, affordable housing is an entirely predictable phenomenon based on supply and demand.
Cities can grow, or they can contract — see Detroit, Michigan. And if they grow, they can grow foolishly — Houston comes to mind — or wisely. And wise growth means higher density along transit corridors.
And no, doing away with Portland’s famous urban growth boundary won’t magically solve the lack of affordable housing. Again quoting from Cortright: In the first 15 years of this century, the urban growth boundary expanded to add more than 32,000 acres of land. Since 2000, those UGB expansion areas have added only 8,500 new housing units, about 7 percent of new dwellings built since 2000.
That’s because adding a lot of land on the outskirts of a metropolitan area and saying, “let the poor people live out there,” is a recipe for disaster. New, affordable residential development ought to be located where current residential neighborhoods exist.
Likewise, the refrain, “Oh, City Hall is in the pocket of developers,” falls flat. Everyone who’s ever said that lives in a house or apartment built by a developer. It’s akin to those apartment-dwellers who live in a place built with the help of pile-drivers, who subsequently complain about the pounding of pile-drivers for the next development. Sauce for the goose….
No, density needs to happen in each city’s municipal core, along transit lines. That includes the residential rezone north of Fred Meyer in Tigard, which the City Council just approved to the roar of opposition from neighbors who likely agree that affordability is important … but not in my neighborhood.
Beaverton, Tigard and Tualatin need to take their fair share of high-density housing, just as Portland does, and just as every other city in the metro area does. And quite often, that means in pre-existing residential neighborhoods, along transit corridors like Highway 99W, or Highway 8 and Highway 10.
St. Augustine famously prayed, “Lord make me pure, but not yet!” Likewise, the suburban residents who want affordable housing, but always “elsewhere,” lament in vain.
Originally published at www.pamplinmedia.com.
