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Wednesday, September 12, 2001 Smart growth must address housing needs America faces a crisis that has been largely unreported and ignored: Millions of American families cannot afford adequate housing. The statistics are clear and they are disturbing.Fourteen percent of American families today 13.7 million households have "critical housing needs," meaning that they spend more than half of their income on housing or live in seriously substandard conditions. One in every seven renter households (5.3 Americans) has a critical housing need. The homeownership rate for African American and Hispanic families 47.8 percent and 47.5 percent, respectively, for the fourth quarter of 2000 is 20 percentage points below the national average of 67.5 percent. The homeownership rate among young households is still below the peak of 44.7 percent it reached in 1979 and now stands at 41.2 percent. While millions of working families need affordable housing to buy or rent, the number of low-income rental units is declining by almost half a million per year. These numbers are daunting. They are the statistical manifestation of a very real housing shortage that affects the daily quality of life for millions of Americans. Two factors are contributing most to this growing problem. First isa significant increase in population. The recent Census reports that 1.35 million households were formed in this country every year during the last decade. That's 200,000 more households per year than previously believed. Those new households need housing. To keep up with the underlying demand, we need to build about 1.6 million new homes and apartment units each year. The second factor is the resistance to construction of new multifamily housing. This is a national trend, and it is having a significant impact on the supply of housing available for low-income families. The now-familiar term is "NIMBY" Not In My Back Yard. Environmentalists, home builders, advocates for the poor and homeless, and urban planners all agree on one aspect of growth policy that is the need to construct more housing in our cities and inner suburbs. The only people who don't agree with this strategy are the home owners who live near any proposed new housing development. The problem is that individual resistance to rental and other multifamily housing presents a formidable barrier. Those barriers often cause the home builder to look elsewhere, and that means housing that is affordable to low-income families often does not get built. Another term we1re hearing more and more is "snob zoning." Local governments, often pressured by their constituents, are adopting zoning patterns that greatly restrict where and how much multifamily housing can be built. Put these factors together a burgeoning population, a decreasing supply of low-income rental units, local governments that adopt zoning plans that restrict multifamily development, and neighborhood activists who fight new development and it's not hard to see why it is increasingly difficult for low-income families to find adequate housing. The answer to this nation1s housing crisis is for all of the stakeholders in this process to do their part. That means the home builders must be willing to invest in the cities and inner suburban markets. Cities and counties must be willing to accommodate new residential development. Financial institutions must be willing to create financing that promotes infill development and other smart growth. State and federal legislators must be willing to write laws that provide incentives to local governments that permit infill development, and disincentives to snob zoning and other policies that make it easy for cities and counties to reject the infill and multifamily development that is needed to ease this housing crisis. There are solutions. But to get from here to there, we will need creativity, cooperation and, perhaps most important, the political will to make the right decisions. (John Hayes, who is with Torrey Homes, is president of the Home Builders Association of Midwest Georgia, which serves a membership of approximately 460 builders and associate members in Fayette, Coweta, Spalding, Heard and Meriwether counties.)
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