August 9, 2006
Planning Groups Say Region Must Rethink Policies on Land Use
By JANNY SCOTT
The New York region, faced with some of the highest housing costs in
the country, needs to radically rethink its approach to land use,
transportation and school finance, according to a report being
released today by two planning and advocacy groups with extensive
ties to civic, business and academic leaders and policy makers.
The report, by the Citizens Housing and Planning Council and the
Regional Plan Association, said the region needed to reduce its
reliance on suburban single-family homes and begin promoting two-
family houses, garage apartments and the redevelopment of cities
like Newark, Bridgeport and Yonkers as future sources of housing,
among other steps.
It also said that states and towns should move away from their
traditional use of property tax revenues to finance public
education a practice that has encouraged many towns to exclude
certain types of lower-cost housing, like apartments, and certain
groups, like lower-income families, thought to consume more in
school costs than they pay in taxes.
"We don't have the land for development, we don't have the highway
capacity for suburban development, and issues of congestion and the
loss of open space are becoming more important to people in suburban
communities," said Christopher Jones, vice president for research at
the Regional Plan Association. "We really do need a different
approach if we're going to provide the housing for what's estimated
to be three to four million people over the next 25 years."
Frank Braconi, chief economist for the New York City comptroller's
office, who worked on the report in his previous job as executive
director of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, said: "We're
all in this boat together. The main competition is not New York City
versus suburban areas. We're competing against other world centers,
other super-regions. The super-regions that get their acts together
in a coordinated way are going to be the winners."
The report, more than a year in the making, is said to be the first
to take such a broad and comprehensive approach to the complex
housing challenges facing the city and its surrounding suburbs and
smaller cities.
While rising home prices have benefited millions of families, they
have made it harder for young people, single people, immigrants and
lower-income families to find a foothold on the economic ladder, the
report said. Commuting times have gotten longer and illegal housing
has proliferated. The number of elderly people, immigrants and one-
person households in the region is rising, it said, but their
housing options have shrunk.
Smaller cities with good transportation infrastructure and land
available for redevelopment could be a source of additional housing
without contributing to sprawl, the report says. "Accessory units,"
like apartments in private houses and above garages, currently
prohibited in many places, could provide low-cost housing without
changing neighborhood character if such units were made legal.
The report calls for mixed-income development around the region's
300 transit stations (areas known as "transit villages"); the
opening of rental housing in town centers to invigorate local
shopping districts and add life to main streets after hours; and the
creation of programs that link open-space preservation initiatives,
popular with voters, to the development of higher-density, lower-
cost housing in other areas.
"I think that much of what they say is absolutely true," said Robert
W. Burchell, director of the Center for Urban Policy Research at
Rutgers University. He said most people approaching retirement were
likely to stay in the region: "This generation is not going to
retire on the 17th hole. They are looking for college towns,
interesting suburbs, new concentrations of mixed use in these
locations."
The report, to be posted on each group's Web site, points out that
government's influence on the housing market goes beyond land-use
regulations: Decisions about transportation infrastructure and
public-school finance shape where and what kind of housing is built.
After several decades of suburban job growth, the report suggests,
new suburban job centers need to be linked to the regional transit
system.
Improvements in transportation need to be evaluated in light of the
type of housing development they will trigger, the two groups said.
They call for strong financial support for several proposed regional
transportation projects that could create opportunities for "transit-
oriented housing." They said the region's major transit agencies
should also have "stable, sufficient operating and capital
subsidies."
The report says that even a good private housing finance system will
not produce new housing affordable to low- and moderate-income
households; only government loans and grants will do that, it
asserts. The two groups recommend tax credits for employer-assisted
housing; acquisition funds to allow nonprofit groups to purchase and
preserve existing low-rent housing; and state housing trust funds
that can be used to create mixed-income housing.
"There's not one stick of housing built new that's not subsidized or
not being provided by a nonprofit or some public subsidy for those
below 80 percent of median income," Mr. Burchell said. In New York
City, he said, 70 percent of the demand for housing comes from
households with incomes below 135 percent of the median, but 100
percent of the supply of new market-rate housing is for people with
incomes above 135 percent.
The report will first be sent to the wide array of people on the two
organizations' boards and advisory committees, Mr. Jones said. Their
joint regional housing advisory committee, for example, is made up
of 33 people, including bankers, planners, city housing officials,
scholars and housing advocates.
"I think they did a very good job," said Marian Zucker, director of
affordable housing for Suffolk County and a member of the advisory
committee. "I haven't seen anything like this done in the New York
region."
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