How European-Style Public Housing Could Help Solve The Affordability Crisis

[M II A II R II K]

How European-Style Public Housing Could Help Solve The Affordability Crisis


February 25, 2020

By Ally Schweitzer

Read More: https://www.npr.org/local/305/2020/0...ability-crisis

"Public housing" isn't such a loaded term in Vienna, Austria. In the European capital, public housing is attractive and well-maintained. It's located near schools, transit and cultural amenities. It's home to singles, families and senior citizens — and most important, it's mixed-income, with affluent Viennese sharing walls with working-class residents.

- But social housing is still a radical concept in the U.S., where government-funded housing is — unfairly or not — associated with crumbling apartment towers marred by crime and poverty. First constructed as segregated housing for low-income Americans during the New Deal era, many public housing projects were reserved for poor African Americans systematically shut out of the housing market. As conditions worsened in public housing, the federal government pulled out, leaving local authorities with enormous maintenance backlogs and residents in unsafe conditions. --- Some progressive officials and activists say public housing doesn't need to be this way. Borrowing best practices from cities like Vienna, Austria, they say, could improve millions of lives, chip away at America's legacy of racial segregation and give the country an economic boost.

- The main difference between social housing and public housing is who's allowed to live in it. Since the end of World War II, public housing in D.C. and the rest of the country has been reserved for poor residents, typically black Americans barred from economic opportunity. Owned and operated by governments, disproportionately located in high-poverty areas and exclusively available to the neediest occupants, public housing has never had a working financial model, says Peter Gowan, a senior policy associate with the left-leaning Democracy Collaborative. "Public housing in the United States was designed to fail," Gowan says. "It was designed to be segregated, it was designed to be low-quality. Where a few public housing authorities tried to do it very well, it was disinvested from later on."

- Today, social housing in Vienna is available to people of all incomes. It's often built on government-owned land that's sold to a private company, which then owns and operates the housing units under public oversight. And crucially, social housing is placed in desirable areas and required to meet architectural and livability standards that make it appealing to people across the income spectrum. --- Those higher-income tenants pay market rents, subsidizing the cheaper rents reserved for low-income occupants. In Vienna, typically half of a building's units are reserved for low-income people. Rent costs don't fluctuate wildly year-over-year, in part because the government builds thousands of new social housing units each year, ensuring that supply keeps up with demand. Today, social housing accounts for an estimated 40% of the housing stock in Vienna.

.....

In D.C.'s Ward 1, Garfield Terrace is one public housing building in serious disrepair, according to the city's housing authority.






Churchill Gardens is a social housing community in London. Progressives in the D.C. area are calling for similar housing to be built here.

[Obadno]

We tried public housing 70 years ago.

Gunna get a big no from me dog.

[jd3189]

It’s either that, more housing built with less restrictions, or more homeless people and less people overall living well enough in the city. Unless that is what most of us ultimately want...

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Obadno

We tried public housing 70 years ago.

Gunna get a big no from me dog.

Except we didn't.

The article mentions mixed income housing maintained and located near amenities and transit. That wasn't the case with projects built in the shittiest parts of US inner cities far from employment centers, transit and in the middle of food deserts. And highly segregated.

[mrnyc]

public housing with mixed income has been happening in usa for some time. there are no new outright pj's anymore.

[Obadno]

Originally Posted by JManc

Except we didn't.

The article mentions mixed income housing maintained and located near amenities and transit. That wasn't the case with projects built in the shittiest parts of US inner cities far from employment centers, transit and in the middle of food deserts. And highly segregated.

Honestly I think a more robust voucher system would be better. just give people a living stipend they can chose to spend above that if they can.

[hauntedheadnc]

My city is redeveloping Lee Walker Heights, its oldest public housing complex, with this goal in mind. The 96-unit complex was built in 1950, and although it's in the middle of town it's isolated by design atop a small bluff with very steep sides, and with only one road in and out.

When they're done the new neighborhood will have 212 units, mixed-income, much improved amenities, better connectivity to the surrounding streets, and a retail component one of those streets where the city acquired an abandoned car dealership and folded the land into this development. And it will still be within walking distance to the heart of town and with ample access to transit.

[mrnyc]

most new public housing is built in conjuction with developers in nyc. in the bronx for example the new ones i see popping up everywhere and currently under construction are typically half market, half median income of the neighborhood.

about the closest new thing to old style pj's i can think of is the massive melrose bronx la central development under construction. that one is five towers for homeless and veteran housing and also low and middle income housing for families making between $23k and $100k. this is in the heart of one of if not thee the lowest income areas of the city, and as ny is a right to housing state, the city is absolutely desperate for more of this level of housing. could people with these needs be more spread around? yes, but getting it done right now is by far the biggest issue.

[M II A II R II K]

It also cuts down on ghettoization if enabled people don’t mind staying if the building and neighborhood it’s in is acceptable, especially if the building included some condo amenities in it.

[MonkeyRonin]

Here's a different idea: set up a not-for-profit crown corporation dedicated to building housing.

They'd need to be financially self-sufficient, so homes would be sold or rented at a rate high enough to cover construction & operations cost - meaning that prices wouldn't be as high as the regular profit-maximizing free market; but it also wouldn't be a drain on public funds like public housing.

This corporation could have the mandate to build large quantities of a diverse array of quality housing options (as opposed to the investor-friendly but not necessarily human-friendly condo schlock common amongst private developers) that would largely be geared towards the middle and working class, who are increasingly being shut out of both the public and the private market. And as a government agency, it could benefit from expedited permit timelines, reduced development fees, and access to government-owned lands to further reduce costs.

Anyone know of any real world examples of this? It hardly seems like a novel idea.

There's still a place for subsidized housing of course - rent geared to income or low cost/free housing is necessary for the disabled, homeless, and those living in poverty; but otherwise, public housing is not the answer to the housing crisis. It's little more than a bandaid solution at best, and corporate welfare at worst (to guarantee businesses their supply of low-wage service workers aren't priced out of the city).

[yaletown_fella]

I'm not a fan of public housing. Almost every public building in Toronto is full of cockroaches, beurocratic waste, brutally outdated, and many have dangerous people roaming the common areas.

My solution:

-Implement rent control on units that go for below $2000 per month

-Give out a universal cash subsidy for renters ranging for $400-1800/mo (similar to a negative income tax)

-Drastically get rid of development red tape to encourage developers to build in periphery areas of the city, lorise infill, basements, laneways .

I am low income and I dont realistically expect to be living "close to cultural amenities" in the city center. Thats a pipe dream. It makes more sense to milk desirable areas for tax revenue and then use this revenue to fund the housing cash subsidy and foster partnerships to build housing and tiny homes in former industrial areas and brownfields in the outskirts.

[Pedestrian]

This is the wonderful European style public housing:


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...ncerns-raised/

What can work and has long been done in the US, is mixed market rate and subsidized "affordable" as opposed to "public", housing. "Affordable" housing is built either by market rate builders within their buildings or by non-profit developers with money paid into a fund by market rate developers and is either sold at subsidized prices or rented out (and maintained) by the developers of the entire building, not some government entity.

All over the US government housing agencies have been archetypes of corruption and mismanagement. San Francisco's was recently taken over by the city at the insistance of HUD, but this is not an unusual event. We don't need more of this.

Aside from the "affordable" model described, what also works (if adequately funded) is Section 8 vouchers which provide government funds to subsidize rents in market rate buildings.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Here's a different idea: set up a not-for-profit crown corporation dedicated to building housing.

San Francisco has had a number of these for years--as already described. An example: https://www.tndc.org/housing/our-portfolio/

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by Obadno

Honestly I think a more robust voucher system would be better. just give people a living stipend they can chose to spend above that if they can.

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

what also works (if adequately funded) is Section 8 vouchers which provide government funds to subsidize rents in market rate buildings.

If you're treating housing as a commodity, expect it to behave as a commodity. Subsidizing demand when supply is constrained just increases prices.

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

This is the wonderful European style public housing:

That's England's public housing after forty years of Thatcherism. Try harder.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

If you're treating housing as a commodity, expect it to behave as a commodity. Subsidizing demand when supply is constrained just increases prices.

Absolutely true. But at least it gives the poor a greater share of access to what supply there is compared to the more affluent. I also support all sorts of ways to increase supply and condemn the various laws that suppress supply which, at least in CA, come mostly from the left.

Originally Posted by Encolpius

That's England's public housing after forty years of Thatcherism. Try harder.

France's banlieues and Italy's equivalent are just as bad or worse. The positive examples of public housing are mostly from formerly homogeneous, smaller countries like the Netherlands and Scandinavia and are more the exception than the rule continent-wide. Furthermore, it's easy to predict that as these countries become more diverse due to immigration from non-European places, the environment in their public housing will deteriorate.

As has been said, we had examples like these:


https://damocles.co/plan-banlieues-Macron/

They've mostly been torn down because they were hellish.

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Absolutely true. But at least it gives the poor a greater share of access to what supply there is compared to the more affluent.

This makes no sense, because Section 8 tenants still end up with the lousiest housing available, they just pay more for it (and everyone else pays more, too). It's just a way of handing over taxpayer money to landlords (the same way that subsidizing home mortgages is a way of handing taxpayer money over to banks and existing property owners). Rather than give that money away for nothing, why not use it to build more housing?

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I also support all sorts of ways to increase supply and condemn the various laws that suppress supply which, at least in CA, come mostly from the left.

It's not just laws that impede development. Banks, if allowed to, will always make more credit available to the purchasers of homes than the builders of homes. That makes sense -- a home mortgage is a relatively safe investment, a building mortgage is among the riskiest. And the bank profits either way. In fact, the only ceiling on the banking industry's profits from its residential lending business, beyond the amount of people's incomes, is the percentage of that income they spend on housing (and consequently the amount of housing debt they accrue). In a tight housing market, that percentage goes up. When housing prices fall due to a glut of new development, that percentage goes down. So they'll always be wary of financing too much housing development.

If you want to increase supply faster than increases in demand, you cannot do it by subsidizing demand, and you cannot expect help from private lenders. So the government must put resources to work directly to increase the supply of housing, either by making loans (which it can do easily, if allowed to) or by creating public agencies to build housing.

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

France's banlieues and Italy's equivalent are just as bad or worse. The positive examples of public housing are mostly from formerly homogeneous, smaller countries like the Netherlands and Scandinavia and are more the exception than the rule continent-wide. Furthermore, it's easy to predict that as these countries become more diverse due to immigration from non-European places, the environment in their public housing will deteriorate.

At least you recognize that there are positive examples of public housing. That's a start! But seriously: the problem with public housing is diversity due to immigration??! Hah. Half of Amsterdam's population is non-Dutch, and half lives in social housing of fantastic quality. Ditto in Vienna, where 62% of people live in social housing.

Maybe the problem with the banlieues has more to do with their segregation, poor planning and decades of neglect and disinvestment -- the same problems that America has with its public housing?

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Here's a different idea: set up a not-for-profit crown corporation dedicated to building housing.

They'd need to be financially self-sufficient, so homes would be sold or rented at a rate high enough to cover construction & operations cost - meaning that prices wouldn't be as high as the regular profit-maximizing free market; but it also wouldn't be a drain on public funds like public housing.

This corporation could have the mandate to build large quantities of a diverse array of quality housing options (as opposed to the investor-friendly but not necessarily human-friendly condo schlock common amongst private developers) that would largely be geared towards the middle and working class, who are increasingly being shut out of both the public and the private market. And as a government agency, it could benefit from expedited permit timelines, reduced development fees, and access to government-owned lands to further reduce costs.

Anyone know of any real world examples of this? It hardly seems like a novel idea.

There's still a place for subsidized housing of course - rent geared to income or low cost/free housing is necessary for the disabled, homeless, and those living in poverty; but otherwise, public housing is not the answer to the housing crisis. It's little more than a bandaid solution at best, and corporate welfare at worst (to guarantee businesses their supply of low-wage service workers aren't priced out of the city).

That's fine, but of course it depends on the government financing the new development, which will not be 'investor-friendly condo schlock' and will not meet banks' profitability threshholds.

It would be cool if a nonprofit or public agency was building it, as I think it would lead to more humane and innovative architecture (some of the most avant-garde housing in London was built by its borough councils, particularly in Camden). Under the right conditions, public and nonprofit agencies can build housing like this, in Copenhagen:



Or this, in London:



I think nonprofits do currently build and manage a lot of social housing in Europe. But the essential part of the question is who's financing it. The government should be allowed to lend heavily to housing developers and just print as much money as it needs to do so -- after all, that's exactly what private banks do (and it doesn't cause inflation, since the money's immediately put to productive use).

[Epicurean]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

At least you recognize that there are positive examples of public housing. That's a start! But seriously: the problem with public housing is diversity due to immigration??! Hah. Half of Amsterdam's population is non-Dutch, and half lives in social housing of fantastic quality. Ditto in Vienna, where 62% of people live in social housing.

I'm not sure that Amsterdam is a very good model. The rental market is crushingly expensive and difficult to get into. The social market (mostly stock owned by private individuals, not public housing corporations) has a waiting list that stretches into the decades. People who have places in the social market hold onto them no matter what, worsening the market still further. It works extremely well for people who already have places, but (anecdotally) might be the worst city I have personally seen for people who are trying to get into the market - worse than Toronto, Vancouver or Portland by far. By the end of this year, most of the people I know will have left the Netherlands (or at least Amsterdam) because they simply cannot live here with any quality of life.

Mind you, I basically like the system, but it seems to cope extremely poorly with significant growth or influx of wealth, making it a questionable model for fast-growing, wealthy American or Canadian cities. I do think it could do better if there was more give-and-take (e.g., if we are going to impose more rules on landlords, perhaps we can do something to also make renting easier), but the mentality here seems to be that more rules are always better, which simply doesn't seem productive or realistic to me.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

This is the wonderful European style public housing:

I think you'll find the horrific Grenfell fire was due to the cladding, that they had used to make the building look nicer and be more environmentally sustainable. As a social housing project Grenfell would have been fireproof (insofar as any fire in the building would have been confined to the one flat), however thanks to the new cladding the fire raced from the 4th floor to the roof within 20 minutes. The firefighters were dumbstruck as how that could even happen on a tower block - and one of the main mistakes highlighted in the Public Enquiry was how the fire experts didn't know/ weren't ever prepared for a cladding-spread fire that thus defied all their rescue scenarios - for such tower blocks a 'stay put' order is enforced for all other apartments as the concrete contains blazes within the rooms. In other tower block fires people are killed from trying to escape and breathing in fumes, rather than staying put.

This is what a normal tower block fire should look like - note the cladding went up and spread the fire, but none of the other cladding-less apartments caught it:



A great deal of questions were raised about the social infrastructure at large in the area (and the hierarchy as to why the world's richest ward had the world's most unsafe death trap), but it's not the social housing that killed the residents, it was by far the Celotex cladding they were installing, which literally hundreds of buildings across the country use, from office blocks to student halls (apartments with such cladding have seen their prices fall from $775,000 to $115,000). Also bear in mind Grenfell was not just social housing where the small 2 bed flats were rented at $3,200 per month, and worth up to half a million $.

In short it was when Grenfell Tower started getting away from social housing, cladding itself into a nice looking facade for the private market in the world's richest borough, that made itself into a death trap:

Before and after:


https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/380411...london-latest/


https://www.standard.co.uk/Front/lon...-a3565416.html

[Crawford]

Part of the reason public housing "worked" for so long was because Western Europe was socially-economically-ethnically quasi-homogeneous, or was perceived as such.

In Germany, public housing had a long postwar history of success, but in recent years has deteriorated badly and is extremely undesirable to non-immigrants.

Bigoted Germans sometimes call public housing "Affenkäfigen" (monkey cages). I think the connotation is obvious. So Europe is kinda where the U.S. was with public housing in the 1960's.