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Letter from the President
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Dr. James Fawcett |
The median price for a single-family house sold in California last month soared to more than $574,000 and keeps on rising. Earlier in the week the New York Times published data showing that urban areas are increasingly losing middle income residents with the result that American cities are providing housing more for those with lower and upper incomes: lower because they cannot afford the transportation costs to move to the suburbs and upper because they can afford the price of living in the city. What are our colleagues talking about as solutions to these problems?
Housing researcher Howard Husock, writing in the Public Interest about ten years ago recounted the experience of Boston and its famous "triple-deckers." It's an instructive lesson in how the market provided housing for a new immigrant population after the turn of the last century. Certainly it's not the only answer to the housing crisis but certainly one that bears recollecting. Husock tells us that triple-deckers were popular in New England because land was expensive, building materials plentiful and there was lots of demand for housing for cities flush with recent immigrant populations. As a unique building type, triple-deckers offered both housing services and housing stock in the same structure. Here's how it worked: a family with modest savings could save and probably borrow enough money from their family to construct a three-story triplex. The owners would live in one of the flats and rent out the other two. By so doing, they were able to amortize their loan, accumulate some capital but also provide housing, and what's equally important, socialization for newer immigrant families. Close proximity of neighbors and the pride of ownership of the landlord encouraged renters toward civic-minded behavior but also the opportunity to become culturally socialized.
The triple-decker style spread throughout New England and ultimately was halted as a movement by its very success, he tells us. The approach brought immigrant families into the middle class by making them landowners but their success apparently threatened the social status quo in some communities who passed land use controls prohibiting the use for a variety of reasons including the risk of fires in rows of triple-deckers. In fact, however, they gave many families the economic boost needed to further establish themselves in the middle class.
Triple-deckers with their resident owners and modest rental units won't solve all of our urban housing problems but they do showcase a model that we may have forgotten and that our elected officials would do well to remember. Do we all need that single family home that seems to be our cultural model? Well, history teaches that there are other ways of providing housing services at a reasonable price, promoting civic virtues and also creating compact cities that are livable. The triple-decker still lives in the Northeast both historically, in existing housing stock, and now in new construction. Maybe it's a model worth considering for other housing starved regions.
James A. Fawcett
International President
fawcett@usc.edu
Editor’s Column
IEminent Domain: Post Kelo Reactions
Reactionary backlash has occurred across the county with legislation in response to the Kelo v. City of New London, Ct. where the US Supreme Court held, in a 5 to 4 decision that the governmental taking of property from one private owner to give to another in furtherance of economic development constitutes a permissible “public use” under the Fifth Amendment. The Supreme Court restated its “longstanding policy” of giving deference to legislative judgment regarding what public needs justify the use of eminent domain.
Have you all been paying attention to this issue? The President issued an “Executive Order: Protecting the Property Rights of the American People.” The Congress has been exercised to such frenzy that a number of bills have been introduced that would make the use of the eminent domain tool so restrictive that it would be virtually worthless. This despite the ruling of the Supreme Court! Enactment of any of these bills will have a profound inhibiting impact on development as the powers of cities, redevelopment, and housing agencies are curtailed or challenged in court for years to come.
In addition to the President and Congress making this a major political issue, the states are joining in. Across the country a response to the Kelo decision is being considered in 43 of the 44 states that have gone into session this year. Ballot initiatives are likely in several of these states. And to date legislatures have passed bill in 23 states. These initiatives have been primarily as a result of the “hands off my home” initiative that the Institute for Justice Advocacy for reform of Eminent Domain Laws which has promoted model legislation and apparently have millions of dollars in funding to pursue striping local governments of their powers to improve communities.
In California the “Anderson Initiative”, the Protect our Homes Act,” goes well beyond the narrow eminent-domain issue raised by the Supreme Court’s decision. Buried in the measure is a “regulatory takings’ provision that requires California taxpayers to pay property owners their “economic loss” from the adoption of new environmental and zoning regulations.
So heads up, and help educate yourselves as to what is happening in your state and at the Federal level…this backlash will affect all of us.
Best of luck.
Helen Sause
International Editor
helensause@alamedanet.net |
