abigail.desvergnes

Boston.com Staff

November 20, 2019 10:45 am

Lower mortgage rates and a healthy job market have boosted the housing market and economy. For developers, its reportedly a good time to build.

And the stats show they are.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that US home-building rose 3.8 percent overall in October (single-family starts alone went up 2 percent), and the construction of apartment buildings rose 6.8 percent.

But what does this demand mean for buyers?

Bad news first. Affordability could be a problem, because despite the new construction, inventory is still low and home prices are climbing.

Here is the good news: There is usually less competition in the fall for those homes.

Here are 12 properties to explore at open houses this weekend from a two-bedroom Melrose home with beautiful woodwork for $469,900 to a five-bedroom beach house overlooking Scituate Harbor for $2,395,000.

Check them out:

$469,900

2 bedrooms, 1 full bath

1,187 square feet

0.15-acre lot

Open houses: Saturday, Nov. 23, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

***

$479,900

4 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 1 half bath

2,346 square feet

0.91-acre lot

Open house: Sunday, Nov. 24, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

***

$529,000

2 bedrooms, 2 full baths

1,260 square feet

Open houses: Saturday, Nov. 23, from noon to 1 p.m., and Sunday, Nov. 24, from 11 a.m. to noon.

***

$499,000

4 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 1 half bath

2,082 square feet

0.94-acre lot

Open house: Sunday, Nov. 24, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

$789,000

3 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 1 half bath

2,606 square feet

0.13-acre lot

Open house: Saturday, Nov. 23, from noon to 1:30 p.m.

***

$799,000

3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 1 half bath

2,383 square feet

0.32-acre lot

Open houses: Saturday, Nov. 23, and Sunday, Nov. 24, from 1 to 3 p.m.

***

$942,625

2 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 1 half bath

2,330 square feet

Open houses: Saturday, Nov. 23, from 12:30 to 2 p.m., and Sunday, Nov. 24, from noon to 1:30 p.m.

***

$959,500

3 bedrooms, 2 full baths

1,388 square feet

Open house: Sunday, Nov. 24, from noon to 2 p.m.

$1,175,000

6 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 1 half bath

5,708 square feet

1.3-acre lot

Open house: Sunday, Nov. 24, from 1 to 3 p.m.

***

$1,195,000

3 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 1 half bath

4,043 square feet

0.48-acre lot

Open house: Saturday, Nov. 23, from 11 a.m. to noon.

***

$1,848,888

5 bedrooms, 5 full baths

3,950 square feet

0.16-acre lot

Open house: Sunday, Nov. 24, from 2 to 3 p.m.

***

$2,395,000

5 bedrooms, 2 baths, 1 half bath

2,098 square feet

0.67-acre lot

Open house: Sunday, Nov. 24, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Subscribe to the Globes free real estate newsletter our weekly digest on buying, selling, and design atpages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp. Follow us onFacebook, Instagram, and Twitter@globehomes.

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12 must-see open houses in Greater Boston (Nov. 23-24) - Boston.com

Metro Phoenix's first no-car apartment complex is going up in Tempe, across from light rail.(Photo: Design by Opticos/Rendering by Hugo Render)

An apartment development with no parking for its expected 1,000 residents is planned across from a light-rail station in Tempe.

The $140 million development will have scooters, bicycles andsome ride-sharing cars. It alsohas plans to offer residents of the 636 apartments deals on light rail,buses andrides with Uber or Lyft.

Developers of the complex called Culdesac Tempe, which will be on 16 acres near Apache Boulevard and River Road, say it will be the first car-less apartments built in the U.S. It's scheduled to open to renters across from the Smith-Martin light-rail stop infall 2020.

We want our residents tosee life from their doorstep, not stuck behind a windshield, said Jeff Berens, who with Ryan Johnson founded the San Francisco-based firm Culdesac with $10 million in venture capital.

Culdesac is partnering with veteran developer Sunbelt Holdings led by John Graham to develop the apartments.

Metro Phoenix's first no-car apartment complex is going up in Tempe, across from light rail.(Photo: Culdesac Tempe)

"To our knowledge, this will be the first apartment complex built without parking for residents," said Graham. "It feels like the timing is right. The number of people I know who are carless now is amazing."

The development wouldn't be entirely parking-free. There wouldbe guestspaces on site for visitors and parking for the development's commercial retail.

Other apartment developments inthe United Statesand metro Phoenixare experimenting withlimited parking, and some with no parking are planned in Los Angeles and on the East Coast.

We are witnessing the first generation of people choosing not to own cars, Johnson said.

As part of Culdesacs development agreement with the city, Tempewaived its parking requirements.

The Development Review Commission will vote next month on a zoning map amendment and development plan review for the first phase of the project. The requestis expected to go to the City Council on Dec. 12, said Chad Weaver, community development director.

Weaver said developers are expected to pull building permits early next year after they close on the property.

LOVE OR HATE THE TRAINS:: Light rail boosts home values in metro Phoenix

Though the city has approved projects with reduced parking in the downtown area, this will be one of the first such projects outside of the citys core, he said.

He said staff hopes this will help alleviate traffic in the area.

Were happy folks are bringing us unique ideas and we hope that we can take more use of the transit that has been invested in and is right at their doorstep, he said.

The project falls within one of Tempe's opportunity zones, which could allow investors to take advantage of federal tax breaks.

Rents for the no-car apartments will be market rate at about $1,400 to $1,500, say the developers.

The average rent in Tempe is about $1,360, according to ABI Multifamily.

The developer thinks a big part of the draw for millennials will be saving money on transportation costs.

Metro Phoenix is in the midst of an apartment building boom. More than 3,000 other apartments are currently under construction or recently completedin Tempe, includingRiver at Eastline Village, a 56-unit affordable developmentacross the street from the Culdesac site.

Culdesac Tempe will also have a pool, park, separate dog park and gym.

There will be some parking at the sitefor the development's retail space that could include a grocery, coffee shop and co-working space.

Metro Phoenix's first car-free apartment development is going up in Tempe, across from light rail. (courtesy of Logan Hunt Films)(Photo: Culdesac Tempe)

Reach the reporter at Catherine.Reagor@arizonarepublic.comor 602-444-8040. Follow her on Twitter @Catherinereagor. Reach the reporter paulina.pineda@azcentral.com or 602-444-8130. Follower her on Twitter @paulinapineda22.

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral today.

Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/tempe/2019/11/19/culdesac-tempe-apartment-complex-wont-offer-residential-parking/4191470002/

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Tempe apartments for renters without cars are in the works - AZCentral

Michael Schwartz November 20, 2019 2

Michael Hild is looking to unload a chunk of his Richmond real estate holdings. (BizSense file photos; rendering courtesy Tranzon Fox)

As he awaits trial on federal criminal charges and with prosecutors keeping his assets on lockdown, a chunk of the Richmond real estate holdings tied to local mortgage executive and developer Michael Hild are being put up for grabs.

Ten properties owned through LLCs tied to Hild and his wife on the citys Southside are scheduled for auction on Dec. 17, according to a release late Tuesday from auction firm Tranzon Fox.

The ownership entities Church Hill Ventures LLC, Kingfisher LLC, and Gardenia LLC sought and received permission from the federal government to sell the properties, according to Tranzon. Thats in accordance with a post-indictment restraining order the government put in place to preserve assets owned directly and indirectly by Hild while his case plays out.

Hild, 44, ran Chesterfield-based lender Live Well Financial until its collapse into bankruptcy this summer and was arrested in August on counts of securities fraud, mail fraud and bank fraud, related to an alleged reverse-mortgage bond scheme.

Several of the properties headed to auction were on the list of 29 properties the government said it would target for seizure if he was convicted, arguing that those properties constitute proceeds of Hilds fraudulent scheme.

The former SunTrust Bank building at 1518 Hull St. (BizSense file photo)

The properties up for grabs at auction include:

Most notable among them is the old bank building at 1518 Hull St. Hild apparently had conceptual drawings produced for the site, showing a new construction, five-story, 55-unit apartment building sitting behind the existing bank building, which would be converted into 14 additional apartments. Those designs convey with any sale at auction, and zoning is in place for such a project, Tranzon said.

Also within the group is the old Lighthouse Diner building at 1228 Hull St.; the old Mechanics and Merchants Bank building at 1129 Hull St., now used as an event space; and an old church at 1201 Decatur.

The former Lighthouse Diner building at 1228 Hull St. (BizSense file photo)

The list of properties up for auction notably does not include the buildings that house Hilds recently opened Dogtown Brewing Co. Hot Diggity Donuts and Butterbean Caf.

It also does not include the 4-acre assemblage anchored by the Siegels Supermarket building at 2005 Hull St. which was listed for sale earlier this year for $12 million and the subject of a pending rezoning request.

A live auction will be conducted Dec. 17 at the Westin Richmond at 6631 W. Broad St., beginning at 11 a.m. Bids can also be made online.

The properties will be auctioned off individually, but buyers can bid on multiple parcels.

The government claims Hilds alleged scheme illicitly netted $65 million from lenders by fraudulently inflating the value of Live Wells portfolio of complex reverse-mortgage bonds to induce lenders to loan the company tens of millions of dollars more than they normally would have.

Hild has pleaded not guilty and remains free on a $500,000 bond. His only comment publicly since his arrest last month has been through his attorneys, who stated every business failure is not a corporate crime.

A trial is set for October 2020.

He also faces separate civil charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission of fraud and violations of federal securities laws. Hes due to respond to those claims on Nov. 29.

Also charged in both cases is Live Wells former CFO Eric Rohr and Executive Vice President Darren Stumberger. They are cooperating with authorities and have pleaded guilty in the criminal case, and consented to partial judgements on the civil matter.

Hilds wife Laura Dyer Hild is not a party to any of the government legal actions.

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Portion of Hild's Manchester-area holdings headed to auction - RichmondBizSense

The same developer that revitalized the White Furniture Building in Mebane is now working to create a new residential apartment complex and commercial space at the longtime Granite Finishing Mill manufacturing plant in Haw River.

The Lofts on Haw River, as the complex is to be named, will feature 175 apartments ranging in size from just under 650 square feet up to 1,900 square feet. There will also be a restaurant onsite, as well as a coffee shop, as part of a total of 7,800 square feet in commercial space. The project began in December of 2018 with the initial phase of construction.

In a recent tour of the construction project, Marques Miller, a sales and marketing representative with property management firm Trivest McNeil, explained that the developers are looking to begin renting the first units by the end of December and early January, with the project coming to completion around March.

Theres a lot of floor plans, Miller said. No units have not yet been reserved, because the pricing hasnt been locked in officially. Square footage is going to start at 644 square feet, and go up to 1,900 square feet, with most of the units having amazing river views.

This is definitely our first time taking on a project with commercial space, Miller added, indicating that the onsite restaurant and coffee shop will have its own parking area. There will be additional square footage that could become a second restaurant on the property at some point in the future.

Along with the wide range of floor plans overlooking Haw River, there will be river access with a walkway that goes down to Haw River and back up to the apartment complex. Some of the upper-floor units will offer not only rooftop access, but also decks with spectacular views of the river.

When there are not construction sounds, you can hear the water. Its real pleasant, Miller said. This property stands out because of its relationship to the river.

Granite Mill began in the 1840s along the Haw River as a cotton mill. It eventually grew as time went on and become a prominent fabrics manufacturing company, Granite Finishing Mill. According to D3 Developments website (http://www.d3-development.com/granitemill/), the Granite Finishing Mill was one of the largest producers of corduroy during the mid-twentieth century.

It was one of Alamance Countys largest manufacturers, Miller explained. In its prime, this place employed approximately 2,000 people. The Town of Haw River now is about 2,500 people. So it was a huge part of the community.

Miller informed us that the Granite Mill facility at one time comprised of 22 buildings, taking up approximately 1.3 million square feet. Some of those original buildings, which include units across the street as well as the current Haw River recycling plant, are not part of the apartment complex reconstruction contract. Granite Finishing Mill shut down for good in the 1990s and was used for years as a storage facility for another company before being vacated.

A total of 12 buildings within the Granite Mill complex are being refurbished by D3 Development, a Durham-based firm, for the 175 apartments - all on the north side of East Main Street.

D3 Development, which oversaw the successful transition of White Furniture from an abandoned historic property into a thriving residential community, received a $5 million loan from the Town of Haw River as part of a public-private partnership between the developer and the community to modernize and repurpose the old mill.

The developer has also received State of North Carolina Mill Credits, a HUD-insured 221(d)(4) construction and permanent loan, as well as a Tax Credit Bridge Loan, as part of the $44.2 million project to revitalize the long-abandoned series of buildings along the Haw River on Main Street. Approximately $36.3 million of the project are qualified rehabilitation expenses, according to D3 Developments website.

As was the case with the Lofts at White Furniture, there are painstaking efforts being made to bring the various apartment buildings up to modern living standards, while also preserving as much of the original structure.

There are many areas in the various buildings where the original hardwood flooring remains. Much of the original exterior - made largely of brick and stone - still stands. Numerous steel support poles and beams are still in place. Many of the windows overlooking the river have been in place for decades.

Were really trying to preserve the history of what this place brought to Haw River, and bring it back, Miller said. You can see the big smokestack - that will stay. The pool will be right beside it, and the gym will be right in front of it. Were trying to keep as much of the original history.

As part of receiving the various state and federal tax credits for the project, Granite Mill was approved to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Getting approved on the National Register of Historic Places meant that the project had to meet certain specific sets of requirements beyond the basic building codes to receive Certificates of Occupancy and allow renters to begin inhabiting buildings. Extra efforts had to be made to avoid destroying certain historical elements of the property.

It is going to be historically preserved on the National Registry. So meeting that criteria comes with its own challenges, Miller said.

Despite all the historical preservation, the units will be outfitted with modern utilities. The units - some of which will be two stories - will all have washers and dryers in them. There will also be Wifi throughout the various buildings, along with many other attractive onsite amenities.

There will be a large community area, and there will be a large business center. There will be a fitness center and a yoga center, Miller said.

With so much growth taking place in eastern Alamance County over the past few years, the Lofts at Haw River project seems to be a perfect union of meeting a local need while also preserving a local treasure.

Nobody wanted to see the Granite Mill complex fall apart beside the river on such prime real estate. But somebody had to figure out how to repurpose the 12-plus acre property. The Lofts on Haw River will allow this historic piece of Alamance County history to live and breathe again, while also providing another vital resource to accommodate the housing needs of a rapidly-growing area.

I think you see that a lot of growth is happening in Durham, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh. And theres a lot of growth in the Greensboro and Winston-Salem areas, which is bringing a lot of growth to the middle areas - Burlington, Mebane, Haw River. Elon is growing a lot. Mebane is growing at a huge rate - really good growth. Were hoping to help Haw Rivers economy, and surrounding areas, Miller said.

Originally posted here:
Lofts on Haw River rapidly taking shape | Business - Mebane Enterprise

Photo: Unsplash

Wondering what buildings are coming down or going up in Chicago? Local building permit data can shine a light on what's under construction near you.

In the past week, the city issued 223 building permits, according to data from BuildZoom, a platform that helps homeowners and businesses with new construction and remodels.

Eight of those permits were for new building construction, five were for demolition projects and the remainder were for repairs and renovations.

Read on for a selection of the most noteworthy new permits.

Applicant Skiffington David Patrick received a permit for new construction of a structure at 401 N. Michigan Ave.

Applicant R Carlson & Sons Inc. was issued a permit for new construction of a structure at 631 N. La Salle Drive.In the permit, the work scope is described as: "Disconnect existing u/g conduit and wiring to fuel management and leak detection systems including dispensers and pumps. Run new u/g conduit from building to new fueling dispensers sub motors and reconnect to existing circuits and leak detection and intercom systems. Also run new u/g pipe and wire to canopy lighting and reconnect to existing lighting circuits."

Contractor Kyle Kocinski Chicago Special Events Managem received a permit for new construction of a structure at 600 W. Montrose Drive.

Applicant Chicago Heat & Air Inc. was issued a permit for new construction of a structure at 2254 W. Roscoe St. The work is described as: "Erect a three-story, two-unit apartment building with basement and detached two-car garage with roof deck access stairs per plans."

Contractor Power Construction Company LLC was issued a permit for new construction of a structure at 1520 W. Harrison St. The work is described as: "Revision to tower crane to move from originally approved location and increase the jib length. No change to model and foundation type."

Contractor Hartmann Electric Company Inc. received a permit for repair/renovation of a structure at 11601 W. Touhy Ave. The work is described as: "Extend existing lighting and power circuits to new configuration for Alitalia Airlines office in terminal five."

Contractor Four Star Electric Inc. received a permit for repair/renovation of a structure at 900 W. North Ave. The permit defines the project's work scope as: "Replace an existing sign with new sign using existing power."

Contractor D&J Electric Inc. was issued a permit for repair/renovation of a structure at 5625 N. Kilbourn Ave. The permit defines the project's work scope as: "Service replacement 120/240v 200a required with new solar work."

Applicant VP Mechanical was issued a permit for repair/renovation of a structure at 155 N. Michigan Ave. In the permit, the work scope is described as: "Revision to permit #100814120 to change GC to HJ Pokorny Construction LLC and HVAC contractor VP Mechanical."

Applicant Triad Associates Inc. received a permit for repair/renovation of a structure at 3542 S. Washtenaw Ave. In the permit, the work scope is described as: "Replace [six] antennas with new tech antennas. Install [one] new GPS antenna. Install [two] new cabinets."

This story was created automatically using local building data from BuildZoom, then reviewed and augmented by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing.

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Zooming in: A look at the construction projects in your Chicago neighborhood - Yahoo News

Construction of the two buildings on either side of Doheny Hall is scheduled to be completed before Fall 2020 move in.

The new building intended for first year students will look similar to Del Rey North and South: each rooms layout will include built in closet space, but no sink, according to Beth Crowell, associate director for resident services. The building will also provide students with a communal kitchen and other shared spaces, as well as a number of both single-use and gender neutral restrooms on each floor.

While the building being constructed on the former site of Huesman Residence Hall will look similar to the Del Reys, the building being constructed on the former site of Sullivan Residence Hall will be the first of its kind on campus. The second building will be a mix of apartment and pod-style living and will house over 300 continuing students, according to Crowell.

Pod style living is made up of a series of interconnected double or single rooms that share a living room, kitchen and bathrooms with separate stalls. Each pod will house 18-19 students, as previously reported by the Loyolan.

Crowell stated that the pod-style living will be especially beneficial to the Living Learning and Theme communities on campus. Living Learning Communities are programs where students who take one or more courses together also live together, according to the LMU website. Living Learning Communities available on campus include Honors Living Learning Community, Life Science Early Awareness Program (LEAP) and Sustainable Living Experience (SLE).

We are really excited that we were able to take student feedback and incorporate their ideas into the design of the buildings, said Crowell. For the first time single rooms in apartments will be available and our current number of single rooms on campus will more than double. Each building will have a number of common spaces including large event spaces and smaller areas where students can study or talk on the phone outside of their room.

The buildings are currently in the framing stage of construction, according to Crowell. The walls used during this stage were made off-site to decrease the amount of noise pollution. However, some of the residents in Doheny are still affected by the construction.

Shadron Nash, a freshman biology major, said that the dust and noise from the construction are what affects him the most as a Doheny resident.

All of the [Doheny] residents dont like having to deal with the construction but its what we ended up with, so we just deal with it regardless, said Nash. I wouldnt say its the best living arrangement but it could be worse a little extra noise and dirt isnt gonna kill us.

Construction is scheduled to be finished before Fall 2020 move-in, according to Crowell.

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Construction in East Quad is in beginning stages | News - Los Angeles Loyolan

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Building permits for residential construction surged in October from a year earlier to the highest level since May 2007, suggesting the housing pipeline is heating up even as winter sets in.

Permits leapt 14.1% from a year earlier to a seasonally adjusted 1.46 million, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That figure was better than the 1.385 million Bloomberg consensus estimate. Housing starts also rose in October, up 8.5% from a year earlier to 1.314 million. That was a bit shy of the 1.320 million economists expected. Both single- and multi-family starts rose.

While the indicators tend to be a volatile ones, permits were boosted by a jump in the multi-family sector, where the 12-month average climbed to a 32-year high, notes Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. This, he said, is likely in response to rock-bottom vacancy rates on rental properties.

Given the lag between securing a building permit and completing construction, the vacancy rate will remain under pressure for at least another year, Shepherdson said.

It might be no surprise, then, that shares of real-estate investment trusts have posted big gains over the past 12 months. Leading the pack is Sun Communities (ticker: SUI), up 58%. Sun owns manufactured housing-communities.

A few REITs, though, have pared gains this month. Essex Property Trust (ESS), for example, has fallen 3.1% since the start of November, paring its 12-month gain to 24%. The company owns apartments on the West Coast, where the rise in October building permits was particularly strong.

Write to Lisa Beilfuss at lisa.beilfuss@wsj.com

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Finding an Apartment to Rent Is Hard. Here Come the Builders. - Barron's

In the past few months, Apple, Google and Facebook announced multibillion-dollar investments in housing. Gov. Gavin Newsom has made housing a top priority of his administration, committing an unprecedented $1.75 billion to spur housing development. The state legislature has passed a record-breaking number of housing bills in the past two years. And last week, Newsom called a meeting of the states top business leaders and asked them to do even more.

The urgency public and private sector leaders are bringing to housing reflects an increasingly dire reality statewide. In the Bay Area alone, tens of thousands of individuals are cycling into homelessness annually, and there are 175,000 more on the brink of homelessness. Addressing this need would require construction of 188,000 new units of affordable housing by 2023 at a cost of $94 billion.

If we are to upend the status quo, we must do more than simply sustain our current momentum. We must engage on this issue in a fundamentally new and collaborative way. We see four primary levers.

First, density and zoning. Onerous land-use requirements make it nearly impossible to identify parcels for multi-family housing or move affordable projects forward at the scale required. For example, 94% of all developable land in San Jose and 62% in San Francisco is zoned only for single-family housing. We need more flexible zoning with much greater density near services, transit corridors and surrounding urban areas.

Our second challenge is time. It can take five to seven years from project inception to completion. This is too long given our immediate housing needs, and makes housing more expensive, since construction costs escalate at over 5% each year. Entitlements for affordable-housing projects need to take months, not years, and we need our elected officials to address these inefficiencies and regulatory hurdles for affordable housing.

Third, we must reduce the cost of construction. We have serious work to do to make up for decades of minimal innovation in the industry and to address our shortage of skilled construction workers. Even now, as construction innovations begin to advance, they are hindered by risk-averse construction lenders and government funders who are reluctant to embrace new approaches like modular housing.

Fourth, we need to be more strategic in our deployment of capital, so were not only building more housing, but doing so as cost effectively as possible. Investments provided by business and philanthropic leaders at low or no cost can allow developers to be more nimble in acquiring land and buildings and utilize new cost-saving construction technologies. While long-term public-sector funding will always be needed to ensure permanent housing affordability, upfront flexible investments by the private sector can drive change and allow public dollars to go further.

To address each, we need to fundamentally change the way we work together to provide housing. Each sector philanthropic, private and public needs to leverage its unique strengths to fill the specific gaps that others cant. This may seem daunting, but there are successful models at work.

The city of San Francisco is working with nonprofit housing developers and the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, a lender that leverages private and philanthropic capital to buy apartment buildings and preserve their affordability. And, in partnership with Tipping Point Community, the Accelerator Fund leverages philanthropic capital to build new permanent housing for people experiencing homelessness, bending development cost and time curves in a way the public sector cant do alone.

In the South Bay, cities and counties are working with Destination: Home as part of a collective impact strategy to implement Measure A, a 2016 ballot measure generating $950 million for deeply affordable housing. These partnerships have resulted in a pipeline of 21 new housing developments for homeless and vulnerable residents.

And working across city and county boundaries is imperative. Industry leaders recently created All Home, a nonprofit organization, with the specific intent of working regionally with cross-sector stakeholders to create transformative change.

We need innovation and new kinds of partnerships across sectors and geographies to deliver solutions that match the challenge. Solutions are within our grasp, and tackling this crisis will require all of our grit, humility, and creativity. Californias future depends on our ability to work together to create change.

Rebecca Foster is CEO of San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund; Jennifer Loving is CEO of Destination: Home; Tomiquia Moss is CEO of All Home.

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It takes a village to solve Bay Areas housing crisis - San Francisco Chronicle

In 2018, Scott Wiener, a California state senator representing San Francisco, introduced a co-authored bill that detonated a debate over housing. The aim of Senate Bill 827 was to override local regulations on building height in order to allow denser, high-rise construction near transit hubs. At once radical and simple, its target was nothing more, and nothing less, than zoningthe most common American way to control land use. Zoning determines whether a building is commercial or residential, how big it can get, whether its a single-family home or a high-rise tower. Though zoning is a legislative act, it is sometimes influenced by the efforts of a handful of well-connected people at a neighborhood association, or sometimes by a single, well-connected member of a zoning board. S.B. 827 would have overridden many such rules and made it easier to build. The bill derived its intellectual force from a growing consensus among economists that rising rents and housing prices in Californiaa state in which the median home price is more than twice the national average, and in which more than twenty per cent of residents spend more than half their income on housingare due to a dearth of multifamily housing and to the cumulative effect of zoning rules that stopped that housing from being built.

S.B. 827 elicited heated arguments, along with a few bizarre political coalitions. In supporting the bill, housing advocates found themselves allied with wealthy developers. Meanwhile, in opposing it, anti-gentrification activists found themselves allied with rich homeowners from places like Beverly Hills. A portion of the anti-S.B. 827 crowd simply didnt want to change their neighborhoods characteroften a racialized code wordbut many others came from multiracial working-class neighborhoods, and, for them, the bill was essentially a gift to developers, who would take the opportunity to build market-rate housing and augment ongoing gentrification. In the end, the opposition won outthe San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles City Council both voted against endorsing itand, despite late-breaking attempts to include anti-displacement measures, the bill failed to make it out of committee, losing 64. Of the votes in its favor, only two were from Democrats, Wiener and his co-authorfurther proof that the housing debate involves some strange bedfellows.

S.B. 827 nonetheless has spurred a more substantial conversation about zoning reform, of all things, than any urbanist could have predicted. Unfortunately, much of this conversation has taken place online, meaning that its resembled people screaming past one another and then shrinking into two opposing crags of congealed vitriol. On one side are the YIMBYsthe acronym stands for Yes, in my back yardwho believe that prices are too high because of market distortions that limit the amount of housing people actually want and need. For them, the solution is to increase market-rate housing, which, over time, will result in a reduction in prices and rents. Opponents of YIMBYsoften called NIMBYs, meaning Not in my back yard (as a term of opprobrium, it of course predates YIMBY)have a variety of rejoinders to this argument, but they center on the idea that building market-rate housing will never deliver the amount of housing that people need, at prices they can afford. Furthermore, they argue that the immediate effect of introducing such housing is gentrification and displacement. It is at this point that the argument devolves into accusations that the YIMBYs are tools of rich, white real-estate developers, and that the NIMBYs are tools of rich, white homeowners, and the space in between these two positions is quickly converted into a muddy field, where no one dares show a white flag.

The particular airlessness of this debate is only partly due to its growth in the complexity-free vacuum of the Internet. The more significant constriction is that it is an argument that takes place almost entirely according to the terms of real-estate development. In a recent book, Capital City, the geographer Samuel Stein puts this debate into context, and adds to it. He argues that our housing dilemma derives from an unholy fusion of development and politics, which he calls the real estate state. Stein, a geographer at the City University of New York, tries to establish how industrial cities, in becoming postindustrial, opened the way for real estate to enter the breach. Landowners have been determining the shape of cities for centuries, and the idea of housing as a commodityeven as a financial assetis not exactly state of the art, Stein writes. What is relatively new, however, is the outsized power of real estate interests within the capitalist state. Deriving his insights from left-wing geographers and urban historians, and also from interviews with activists in New York City, he alternates a panoptic view with one that looks more closely, from the ground up, at what reckless development does to lives and livelihoods.

But Steins special aim is not just to show how real estate controls everything, which, if you were halfway paying attention during the financial crisisrooted as it was in the predations of housing marketsyou already know. His principal point is that the power of the real-estate state flows from the dynamic between development and the profession of city planning. Planners are usually thought of as bureaucrats, though sometimes they take on the aspect of legend: Baron Georges-Eugne Haussmann, who tamed rebellious Paris into wide avenues that couldnt be barricaded; imperious Robert Moses, who pummelled New York with expressways. Steins planners are at once lesser and greater than these. Though they may look like mousy cubicle denizensdetermining the right sort of window treatment for a historic house, or calculating the Area Median Income for a smattering of affordable units in a luxury buildingtheyre more influential than they appear. Planners, he writes, are tasked with the contradictory goals of inflating real estate values while safeguarding residents best interests. The position is an inherently uncomfortable one. But planning holds out the promise that the future is, at least in part, knowable. Explicit in Steins narrative is the idea that a different, more democratic kind of planning might lead us to more democratic kinds of cities.

Like many professions with a broad, metaphorically resonant name, planning has a history that can be dated back centuries. In the Americas, planners domesticated forests, dammed rivers, laid out grids. But city planning as we know it today arose in the late nineteenth century, as a response to the growing chaos of industrial life. At first, the profession was meant to ameliorate conditions of congestion, sanitation, and shoddy construction, especially where they intersected with the lives of workers and the urban poor. Benjamin Marsh, the first secretary of the New York City Committee on Congestion of Population (CCP), was one of the twentieth centurys most energetic thinkers on planning. He decried tenements and sweatshops, pushed for government control of factory-owned land, and advocated for a progressive tax on land values to help fund the social needs of workers. Marshs proposals, like those of many planners, were essentially based on the hope that the rich could be shamed into supporting the poor. This was a gambit that, in time, left planners frustrated and power imbalances intact.

Marsh and figures like him embody what Stein, following the historian Robert Foglesong, describes as a twinned set of contradictions in planning. Developers need planners, but a conflict arises when the former look to the latter for interventions in public space. They demand that the state build the infrastructure that makes their land usable, Stein writes of developers. At the same time, they are fiercely protective of their property rights and suspicious of planning insofar as it threatens their control over land. Planners, in turn, are agents of the public, but they are beholden to developers, in practice. Democratic societies require at least a display of public input, but often only a display: planners must proceed with enough openness and transparency to maintain public legitimacy, while ensuring that capital retains ultimate control over the processes parameters. From this comes the charade of public-comment sessions, familiar to most active city dwellers, in which so-called stakeholders are invited to discuss development plans, whose basic outlines they have little chance of influencing.

Similarly, planners who want to assert broad control over the public realm are often dependent on recalcitrant businessmen, who are unlikely to give them the full measure of what they might want to achieve, since planning often involves the creation of public infrastructure that requires business to get out of the way. Much of what does get achieved requires catastrophic, violent interventions in the lives of the very people that planners are trying to help. The land for Central Park, the green lung of New York and one of the greatest parks in the world, was secured by expelling Manhattans largest African-American settlement. The construction of most public housing required the resettlement of thousands of households, often those of working class African-Americans, in the destructive process known as urban renewal. (Urban renewal, James Baldwin said, in an interview, really means Negro removal.)

Urban renewal accompanied broader convulsions in American cities, during which much industry fledto barely unionized Southern states and abroad, for cheaper wagesor was deliberately pushed out. Stein follows Robert Fitchs underrated, impassioned book The Assassination of New York in detailing how many planners dreamed of replacing the citys industrial areas with office towers, and, in the sixties and seventies, through large-scale changes in zoning, succeeded, transforming the city from blue-collar to white-collar. At the same time, the practice of redlining, in which the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), a New Deal agency, marked diverse neighborhoods as being unworthy of credit, and hardened urban segregation and poverty. In the eighties, the United States began to cut public assistance to cities, leaving more and more power in the hands of private developers.

This history sets up Steins main story, which is about the contemporary high-priced city of gentrification and displacement. Mercifully, his analysis does not mention hipsters, artisanal stationery stores, or CBD lattes. Instead, he discusses how planners have once again played a central role in scaling up gentrification from a neighborhood phenomenon of renovation and reinvention to a larger process of displacement, demolition and development. A miasma of guilt and misunderstanding surrounds discussions of gentrification. The usual storyof upwardly mobile people moving into depressed areas and displacing existing, less well-off residents in the processis at least partly true. But, as geographers have pointed out for some time, it also requires disinvestment: neighborhoods decline, in part, because of state neglect, and yuppies rush in where planners fear to tread. This is how the familiar story of places such as SoHo, in lower Manhattan, and Park Slope, in Brooklyn, begins. Those neighborhoods were abandoned by the government before they were occupied by new residents.

Similarly, the past three decades have been characterized by hyper-gentrification, which is a largely legislative phenomenon, the work of planners and policymakersnot simply an ineluctable market signal that is sent when someone opens a vegan doughnut shop. Stein details the number of planning-policy innovations that have made it easier for developers and large nonprofits to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes. In 1971, the establishment of New Yorks 421-a tax program gave developers abatements on luxury construction, for anywhere from ten to twenty-five years. (One of the great beneficiaries of 421-a, Stein notes, was Donald Trump, who built Trump Plaza, on the Upper East Side with a thirteen-million-dollar tax break.) In 2016, when the program was set to expire, 421-a cost New York $1.2 billion a year. A recent revision to the law, under Governor Andrew Cuomo, brought the cost to $2.4 billion a year. Thats about six hundred million less than the M.T.A. requested from the state to fix the ailing subway system. These are the sorts of numbers that reveal how the real-estate state declares its priorities. As legislators made developers lives easier, planners became the helpless accomplices of urban inequality.

Jane Jacobss The Death and Life of Great American Cities, an indictment of American city planning, appeared in 1961; Robert A. Caros The Power Broker, an indictment of an American city planner, appeared in 1974. In the years between their publicationand partly owing to their argumentsplanning lost whatever was left of its swashbuckling air, and was increasingly seen as a clumsy, illegitimate, even villainous profession, its members casually carving their utopian visions into the fabric of complex, heterogeneous cities.

When planning lost its revolutionary lan, it also lost its sense of ambition. Many mid-century planners, for all their missteps, tried to engineer a more equal city. As planning lost its power, an impressive variety of inequities crept into policymaking. Zoning emerged as the most important tool of increasingly powerful neighborhood groups that sought to limit racial integration, protect the character of existing neighborhoods, and encourage the early stages of gentrification. As the think-tank scholar Richard Rothstein outlined in The Color of Law, from 2017, zoning has always been exclusionary, especially in keeping black families out of certain neighborhoods. In 1910, Baltimore tried to institute zoning on explicitly racial lines, before the Supreme Court struck down the practice. But zoning on implicitly racial lines has persisted because of Americans preference for single-family housing over apartment buildingsmultifamily housing was associated with poorer renters of color. New Yorks 1961 zoning law, for example, protected a number of mostly single-family-housing districts in Queens, the Bronx, and South Brooklynthe archetypal urban villages depicted in shows like All in the Family and films like Saturday Night Feverand helped prevent renters of color from joining their mostly white residents.

Contemporary planners, stripped even further of power, have proposed only meager remedies for such inequality. One attempt has been inclusionary zoning, which allows developers to exceed zoning restrictions and receive subsidies if they commit to making a portion of their apartments affordable for a certain period of time. In response to New York Citys luxury-development boom, Mayor Bill de Blasio made inclusionary zoning mandatory. Even so, the mandate has a number of fatal loopholes, which allow developers to skirt the requirements, and the income threshold still excludes most black and Latinx New Yorkers. Another problem with de Blasios plan may be its premise. For it to succeed, the plan needs to marshal a multitude of rich people into places that are already experiencing gentrification, as Stein writesexactly the sort of effect that activists feared with regard to S.B. 827. Though it would potentially satisfy only three per cent of the need for affordable housing units in New York, it could add a hundred thousand market-rate apartments to the citys neighborhoods.

According to ultra-YIMBY reasoning, the addition of these apartments might not be a problem, since housing markets are, like other markets, subject to supply and demand. But, as the author Rick Jacobus recently argued in the magazine Shelterforce, the housing market is segmented, better understood as as a set of interrelated submarkets that can move somewhat independently than as a single market. For example, rent for student housing may roughly follow the laws of supply and demand, but, in general, its cost isnt eased by building a lot of housingwhat matters is the supply of student housing and the demand from students. By the same token, upzoning that allows for more affordable housing to be built has effects on existing affordable housing. When planners upzone neighborhoods to allow bigger buildings, rent-stabilized landlords will have every reason to sell their properties to speculative developers, who could then knock down the existing properties and build something bigger and more expensive, Stein writes. The long-term effect of a housing boom may be a housing bustbut, in the meantime, all sorts of pain may be inflicted on existing residents.

There are other reasons to be cautious. Historically, attempts to remedy segregation through the real-estate market have often ended up increasing it. In a groundbreaking new book, Race for Profit, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton, shows how the post-urban renewal-planning regime came to rely heavily on the real-estate industry. New forms of subsidized loans were, in her phrasing, a form of predatory inclusion, trapping black homeowners in substandard housing, while developers continued to reap dividends. Her analysis covers a specific period in time, and a particular kind of housing market, but its conclusion is general and damning: the American real-estate market was founded on racism and still depends on it. White NIMBYs have kept multifamily buildings out of wealthier neighborhoods, in no small part to keep those neighborhoods racially homogeneous, and it is doubtful that real-estate developers can solve this historic inequity.

Though Stein supports efforts that would increase housing construction in wealthy areas, he is clear that these policies need to be part of a broader program. In a recent article for Jacobin, he argues that there is a general overreliance on zoning, which is, in any case, a tool ill-equipped to confront the private land and property markets. The solution, therefore, is a popular movement for anticapitalist urban planning and the decommodification of land and housing. In other words, having a market for housing is itself the problem. And a return to large-scale planning is the answer.

Stein is one of a number of voices, some of them newly ensconced in state legislatures, pursuing what he calls classic methods. One of these methods is rent control. For decades, rent control has served as a case study in what not to do in housing in the U.S., though it remains a normal feature of housing markets in Austria and other countries. But, in the past few years, it has made something of a comeback; Oregon and California both recently passed statewide caps on rent increases.

In classical economics, caps on rent increases were believed to limit the incentives to build new housing. If that were true, one policy solution would be to exempt new construction from controls for a certain period of time. A more significant solution would be for the state to intervene where the market failsthat is, to build public housing. Public housing is another curse word in the American context, though less for the economics of itthere is no more obvious solution to the rise in prices than to take some units permanently off the marketthan for its sorry denouement in the countrys history. The United States committed to a sweeping expansion in spending for public housing with the landmark Housing Act of 1949, and then proceeded to build fewer units than were promised, and dedicated little to maintenance following building. Many condemned American housing projects for their forbidding scale and design flaws and, even more so, for the racial segregation they createdby the mid-nineties, forty-eight per cent of public-housing residents were black, as opposed to nineteen per cent in the private-rental market. And, since the nineteen-seventies, several measuresincluding President Richard Nixons moratorium on public housing, the rise of Section 8 vouchers, and the HOPE VI program, under which housing towers were demolished and replacedhave steadily eroded Americans support for public housing. The result is a country in which millions of eligible people have lost access to subsidized housing, and in which the existing public-housing complexes are suffering from severe infrastructural neglect.

Decades of a housing crisis, accompanied by decades of organizing and activism, have finally led to revaluations of public housing and regional planning. A policy team led by the tenants-rights activist Tara Raghuveer recently produced a proposal for a Homes Guaranteea marquee plan that proposes the construction of twelve million new, permanently affordable homes as social housing. Meanwhile, the law professor Mehrsa Baradaran, who has advised Senator Elizabeth Warren, has called for a twenty-first-century Homestead Act, under which a public trust would be tasked with purchasing distressed or abandoned homes in historically redlined areasa form of direct capital investment with the aim of remedying the racial wealth gap. Both are serious proposals that have the potential to shift power away from developers and toward the people historically excluded from the housing market. To be achieved, both need the backing of enormous social movements. They could also resurrect large-scale planning, conceived on a freshly democratic basis, as a profession of consequence. The planner, after decades of irrelevance, or worse, might yet be a figure of noteand perhaps, in a time of crisis, one of purpose.

A previous version of this post misidentified the author of the Shelterforce article.

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The Plight of the Urban Planner - The New Yorker

From students having to relocate for class to store schedules being thrown off, Tempe construction is negatively affecting the community

The construction site for the Omni hotel and conference center is pictured on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019, at the corner of Mill Avenue and University Drive in Tempe, Arizona.

Construction in Tempe is almost inescapable. The traffic delays, booming demolition and dusty metro air can affect the lives of ASU students, staff and local residents. These negative repercussions seem to be overlooked in the interest of the Universitys ceaseless need for innovation and expansion.

ASU and the city of Tempe have continually invested in construction projects around the Universitys main campus, which has had a detrimental impact on local businesses. While this construction has proven short-term inconveniences for consumers and business owners, it is expected to have positive long-term effects on business.

ASU President Michael Crow has signed off on $1billion worth of new developments to maintain the Universitys expansion, he said at a town hall in May.

These projects range from several new apartment complexes to the construction of a retirement home on Mill Avenue and retail spaces that will allow new businesses to reach ASUs student body.

These new projects enable the University to form meaningful partnerships with corporations. ASUs relationships with local businesses often prove to be beneficial to students, as they create job opportunities, discounts on goods and services, and new places to shop, live and eat.

But the high volume of construction in such a small area does not come without pressing issues. Local businesses, which can become inconvenient to access, are significantly impacted by the construction.

Depending on what the construction is, it can make a business or hinder it, Kassie Haywood, assistant general manager and three-year employee at Original ChopShops Tempe location, said. It really hurts our business. However, in cases of construction of new buildings that dont block off roadways, such as the new Union Apartments next door (to ChopShop), that actually just brought us a ton of new business. There are now a bunch of new local students who are coming into ChopShop multiple times a week who werent originally there before the new building.

Haywood also said that she has received numerous calls from patrons claiming that they were unable to find ChopShops location due to the road blockage from construction.

Businesses on Mill Avenue have especially suffered consequences of the construction.

Chloe Rizzo, a stylist at Juut Salon Spa on Mill Avenue, said she has noticed a drop in business among her clients even native Arizonans and regulars because of construction.

My clients are exhausted from the construction, Rizzo said. I talk to a lot of people every day, and its always a first topic. I have clients say that if it wasnt for me, or the salon, they would never even come to Tempe.

The construction around ASUs Tempe campus, which is home to numerous single-lane streets, makes it difficult for patrons to access businesses. Some students, like Lauren Coleman, refuse to even attempt driving through Mill Avenue due to how slow and inconvenient it can be.

Jonathan Schneider, an ASU junior studying communication and a ChopShop employee, said that due to the stores location, he always hears complaints about the traffic and construction.

Especially when University Drive was under (palm tree) construction, we had a lot of food delivery workers come in, Schneider said. It turns people away from traveling to the actual store.

Not only does this construction dampen business, but it also has a negative impact on students education.

Lauren Coleman, an ASU junior studying secondary education, said construction noise frequently disrupts her class in the G. Homer Durham Language and Literature building, and they even had to relocate to avoid the disturbance.

We sat on the floor in the Social Sciences Building, and we are planning on going there again for class this Thursday and maybe for the rest of the semester, Coleman said. It is quite frustrating that we can't have our class in our assigned classroom because the construction is so loud.

Coleman also stated that she tries to avoid driving and riding her bike on Rural Road, Apache Boulevard and Mill Avenue due to the construction.

According to the Minnesota Department of Transportation, small businesses are at risk for difficulties from construction projects because they rely on local traffic to support their existence.

The construction on Mill Avenue has caused a lot of chaos for my clients, as well as everyone else at our salon, Rizzo said.

She also said that clients have a difficult time finding parking, which causes lateness and sets back the salons schedule as a whole. She mentioned that lateness makes stylists unable to complete their full service due to time constraints.

Roadway construction may also make it increasingly difficult for employees to make it to work on time.

Haywood said the construction affects the whole days workflow at ChopShop. One of her employees was recently 30 minutes late due to construction, she said. This small setback affected the food preparation process and delayed orders.

Construction on ASUs campus has been the norm for several years, but why exactly is the University so deeply committed to developing new structures?

This is likely due to the Universitys biggest marketing tool the number one in innovation rating.

ASUs chief research and innovation officer, Sethuraman Panchanathan, said in a State Press article in 2017, this rating is closely related to forming partnerships (with) corporations and entities that share common values with us, like Starbucks, Mayo (Clinic), Adidas along with everything the institution is involved in.

New developments, such as Mirabella or the Hayden Library reconstruction, sets ASU apart from other universities.

Haywood believes that once the light rail expansion and the Mill Avenue town car construction are finished, a whole new demographic could be introduced to the local business scene.

Right now, we have a lot of student customers and a lot of local business workers who come here on their lunch breaks, but we think that this could bring a lot of high school students waiting for the bus or nearby shoppers, Haywood said.

ASUs leadership values innovation and development, even when local businesses are directly impacted.

Coleman said that she finds it difficult to fully enjoy the campus while everything is being built and rebuilt.

I really wonder whether all of the construction projects going on right now are unique to this year or if this will be the standard rate of construction on our campus and in our city from now on, Coleman said. I hope it isn't.

Reach the reporter atamsnyde6@asu.eduor follow @AnnieSnyder718 on Twitter.

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The adverse effects of Tempe's construction - The State Press