The affordability of housing remains a hot topic. We feel this problem acutely in Morgantown, but the lack of affordable housing is a national — even global — issue. And it’s a complex one.
For the U.S., the affordable housing shortage traces its roots to the 2008 housing bubble bursting. Ever since, demand has outpaced new supply, driving up the price of existing structures.
It doesn’t help that the house-building industry has been hampered by burdensome regulation that slows the process, adds to costs and limits what can be built and where. Urban development has been disincentivized while suburbs and single-family units were heavily subsidized, even as they became unaffordable for the middle class.
Suburbs and single-family-home neighborhoods may be the epitome of the American Dream, but they require vast amounts of space, which in turn limits land for future construction. That land scarcity makes property more expensive, raising overall cost.
Urban development, on the other hand, relies on density: maximum housing on minimal land, using townhouses, duplexes, condos or mixed-used buildings (the “missing middle” of American housing). It’s that high-density housing that has the best chance of alleviating America’s housing shortage and, therefore, the affordable housing crisis.
So why isn’t more being done to fill in the “missing middle”? It is a combination of lack of incentives, archaic zoning, parking minimums and NIMBY-ism (“not in my backyard”).
For example: Many would be upset to learn a grocery store was being built in their neighborhood, as they picture a big box store with a sea of parking. Yet many South Park residents miss having walkable grocers and shops. However, those small businesses would be virtually impossible to reproduce today due to zoning restrictions and parking minimums.
Similarly, the overall lack of affordable housing cannot be seen as entirely on developers, who must prioritize making a profit. Rather, it comes back to government regulations and lack of programs — something our city is working on. For example, the planned Richwood redevelopment prioritizes mixed-used buildings, with small shops and corner stores on the ground floor and affordable housing above.
Developers can’t be expected to fight the city, county, state and federal government to build housing that loses money, so it’s government’s responsibility incentivize affordable housing creation through grants, tax breaks, zoning changes and streamlined permitting.
As we pointed out last week, the new townhomes being built in Sunnyside aren’t affordable to the average Morgantown resident — which was not to say that they shouldn’t be built at all. Rather, we hope to see some of the thinking behind the Richwood redevelopment applied to this Sunnyside revamp. Surely there is an opportunity here for a public-private partnership with the city to ensure more housing of all types and for all budgets.
