Toronto is an egregious offender when it comes to rational development - 1/6 the density of Paris with a fraction of its population. But the Planning and Housing committee is trying:
Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods: Multiplex Study - Proposals Report
Summary
Toronto is expected to grow by a minimum of 700,000 people by 2051 - how these new Torontonians are housed will shape the City for decades to come. In recent years, the City's growth has been focused on transit rich areas such as the Downtown, Centres, and along Avenues, where the supply of apartments has increased significantly. Conversely, the supply of low-rise housing has not kept up with demand and in some cases, the City's low-rise Neighbourhoods have lost population. The City can choose to adopt a more equitable approach to growth across Toronto that sees Neighbourhoods adapting to change, remaining vibrant, and providing more Torontonians the option to live within one of our low-rise communities.
I hesitate to respond to this post as the Bethesda Magazine column that is linked was written by a person with the same surname as our columnist. Perhaps a son or other relation? Anyway, I share the concerns of Michael DeLong but he is unrealistic to think he will find housing in the area he was looking. Prices in this area (I've lived in Montgomery County for 43 years as a renter, homeowner and now condo owner). are high and last year we decided to move out of our house and into a condo. We wanted to live in the same proximity and needed a 3 BR unit which are quite difficult to find. We had a specific price limit and did not want to do a lot of renovations. We got lucky and within three months found the perfect unit. When we sold our house this January we had three offers for well over the asking price. I thought this was astounding given it is a 1955 split level home.
It's instructive to read the comments to Mr. DeLong's Bethesda Magazine article. His $74K income is below the median for this area and yes he was priced out of close in properties. As some noted in their response to Mr. DeLong, the Thrive2050 proposal is highly flawed and was the work of a few staff on the Planning Board. there has been a lot of push back against it. Montgomery County already has an affordable housing law on the books. Any new construction has to have affordable units. On our street there are a lot of 50 year old low rise brick apartment buildings that are slated for redevelopment over the next 13 years. All the new construction will have affordable units (I think 20%). In our old neighborhood, there was a large plot that was developed in to single family homes and two duplexes of affordable housing were built in the development.
Developers want to maximize profits and are building mostly high end units. This goes for both apartments and SF homes.
Affordable housing laws are necessary but not remotely sufficient. The challenge is that in large portions of Montgomery County, including transit accessible neighborhoods, zoning laws prevent the building of anything but single family homes. This sort of restriction on supply straightforwardly explains why a $74K income will price you out of Silver Spring (which for those less familiar with Montgomery County.
I'm a big thrive 2050 fan that lives in one of the outer lying Silver Spring neighborhoods (live in Long Branch, I grew up in Woodside). I do understand that neighborhood defenders like the place they live now, even if collectively severe restrictions on building drive the supply crisis. I think that ultimately equitable efforts to allow more building and looser restrictions near transit are the way to address the challenge. It's reasonable for neighborhood defenders to want to shape how the change happens, but I think that we should all see the status quo as a problem beyond the scope of current affordable housing policies to address be willing to bargain and haggle and figure out how to allow for build up rather than accept be take the increasingly exclusive outcomes derived from longstanding zoning practice.
The problem with Bethesda and to an extent Silver Spring is there is no vacant property to build on. We lived in Maplewood (right next to NIH on the north side for those not familiar). Two properties were developed in the years we lived there. The first which I already noted above, was the former headquarters of the American College of Cardiology that sold the property to a developer. The second was a large parcel owned by the family of our former county executive. That is currently being developed with only SR homes (starting price $1.3M, IIRC). The number of units on that parcel is below the threshold to build an affordable housing unit. Maplewood already has some high rise condos, several townhouse groupings, one affordable apartment building and two more that will be constructed. This is not just a neighborhood of SF homes.
In the absence of close in vacant land, the status quo won't change at all. Certainly in further out developments (King Farm up in Gaithersburg, there is a much higher population density with townhouses and other multiple family housing.
I'd say that part of the solution here is upzoning in a way that allows for building up in a way that isn't hyper focused (with the Purple Line eventually increasing the land area of transit accessible housing. Like it's pretty frequent to see smaller houses replaced by big houses in a way that could potentially be duplexes or quads or what have you. If you settle on some nice form factors and allow them to be built by right, then suddenly the potential holding capacity of that presently filled areas picks up as housing naturally turns over or a big developer payout makes downsizing much more appealing for a retiree individual or couple or the like.
When the rules all heavily lean towards SF home with lots of potential veto points and slow rolling to do other things, it's not surprising that SR homes becomes the profitable option of choice.
I'm all in favor of building up as well as townhouses as a way of increasing population density. We live in a 10 story condo and I have no problems adjusting from being in a SF home for over 30 years. Zoning should be much more flexible than it currently is. If you look at NW DC there is a mixture of apartments, condos, SF homes, and row houses. Unfortunately, a lot of these are also high price properties.
Our former house sat on a 13K sq ft lot that could have easily supported a two family dwelling. I don't know what the neighbors would think of that.
Well, as long as housing is scarce, and the land is high-priced, the property will be high-priced at all—either from the value of the land it takes up, or from the added costs of building tall...
"His $74K income is below the median for this area and yes he was priced out of close in properties."
You write as if this were some exogenous law imposed by space aliens, when in fact it is just selection effect. Yes, of course if there is only enough housing for 30% of the people who want to live in a region, then the people who live there will mostly be drawn from the upper 30% of the income distribution. And why on earth you think it should be impossible for someone with income "below the median" to purchase housing, I can't imagine. Do you believe the correct number of inhabitants is zero?
I never said that it is impossible to purchase housing. It's that he could not purchase housing where he wanted to buy. He could have found something further out that still would have been accessible to Metro for his commute to work. I am not indifferent to him. We look at the low rise apartments on our street that are going to be replaced and wonder whether new ones will be as affordable. There is so much building going on in our area of Bethesda but these are all in the 'luxury' price range whatever that means.
This area is crazy in terms of real estate prices and development.
Toronto is an egregious offender when it comes to rational development - 1/6 the density of Paris with a fraction of its population. But the Planning and Housing committee is trying:
Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods: Multiplex Study - Proposals Report
Summary
Toronto is expected to grow by a minimum of 700,000 people by 2051 - how these new Torontonians are housed will shape the City for decades to come. In recent years, the City's growth has been focused on transit rich areas such as the Downtown, Centres, and along Avenues, where the supply of apartments has increased significantly. Conversely, the supply of low-rise housing has not kept up with demand and in some cases, the City's low-rise Neighbourhoods have lost population. The City can choose to adopt a more equitable approach to growth across Toronto that sees Neighbourhoods adapting to change, remaining vibrant, and providing more Torontonians the option to live within one of our low-rise communities.
Fromhttp://app.toronto.ca/tmmis/viewAgendaItemHistory.do?item=2022.PH35.3&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I hesitate to respond to this post as the Bethesda Magazine column that is linked was written by a person with the same surname as our columnist. Perhaps a son or other relation? Anyway, I share the concerns of Michael DeLong but he is unrealistic to think he will find housing in the area he was looking. Prices in this area (I've lived in Montgomery County for 43 years as a renter, homeowner and now condo owner). are high and last year we decided to move out of our house and into a condo. We wanted to live in the same proximity and needed a 3 BR unit which are quite difficult to find. We had a specific price limit and did not want to do a lot of renovations. We got lucky and within three months found the perfect unit. When we sold our house this January we had three offers for well over the asking price. I thought this was astounding given it is a 1955 split level home.
It's instructive to read the comments to Mr. DeLong's Bethesda Magazine article. His $74K income is below the median for this area and yes he was priced out of close in properties. As some noted in their response to Mr. DeLong, the Thrive2050 proposal is highly flawed and was the work of a few staff on the Planning Board. there has been a lot of push back against it. Montgomery County already has an affordable housing law on the books. Any new construction has to have affordable units. On our street there are a lot of 50 year old low rise brick apartment buildings that are slated for redevelopment over the next 13 years. All the new construction will have affordable units (I think 20%). In our old neighborhood, there was a large plot that was developed in to single family homes and two duplexes of affordable housing were built in the development.
Developers want to maximize profits and are building mostly high end units. This goes for both apartments and SF homes.
Affordable housing laws are necessary but not remotely sufficient. The challenge is that in large portions of Montgomery County, including transit accessible neighborhoods, zoning laws prevent the building of anything but single family homes. This sort of restriction on supply straightforwardly explains why a $74K income will price you out of Silver Spring (which for those less familiar with Montgomery County.
I'm a big thrive 2050 fan that lives in one of the outer lying Silver Spring neighborhoods (live in Long Branch, I grew up in Woodside). I do understand that neighborhood defenders like the place they live now, even if collectively severe restrictions on building drive the supply crisis. I think that ultimately equitable efforts to allow more building and looser restrictions near transit are the way to address the challenge. It's reasonable for neighborhood defenders to want to shape how the change happens, but I think that we should all see the status quo as a problem beyond the scope of current affordable housing policies to address be willing to bargain and haggle and figure out how to allow for build up rather than accept be take the increasingly exclusive outcomes derived from longstanding zoning practice.
The problem with Bethesda and to an extent Silver Spring is there is no vacant property to build on. We lived in Maplewood (right next to NIH on the north side for those not familiar). Two properties were developed in the years we lived there. The first which I already noted above, was the former headquarters of the American College of Cardiology that sold the property to a developer. The second was a large parcel owned by the family of our former county executive. That is currently being developed with only SR homes (starting price $1.3M, IIRC). The number of units on that parcel is below the threshold to build an affordable housing unit. Maplewood already has some high rise condos, several townhouse groupings, one affordable apartment building and two more that will be constructed. This is not just a neighborhood of SF homes.
In the absence of close in vacant land, the status quo won't change at all. Certainly in further out developments (King Farm up in Gaithersburg, there is a much higher population density with townhouses and other multiple family housing.
I'd say that part of the solution here is upzoning in a way that allows for building up in a way that isn't hyper focused (with the Purple Line eventually increasing the land area of transit accessible housing. Like it's pretty frequent to see smaller houses replaced by big houses in a way that could potentially be duplexes or quads or what have you. If you settle on some nice form factors and allow them to be built by right, then suddenly the potential holding capacity of that presently filled areas picks up as housing naturally turns over or a big developer payout makes downsizing much more appealing for a retiree individual or couple or the like.
When the rules all heavily lean towards SF home with lots of potential veto points and slow rolling to do other things, it's not surprising that SR homes becomes the profitable option of choice.
I'm all in favor of building up as well as townhouses as a way of increasing population density. We live in a 10 story condo and I have no problems adjusting from being in a SF home for over 30 years. Zoning should be much more flexible than it currently is. If you look at NW DC there is a mixture of apartments, condos, SF homes, and row houses. Unfortunately, a lot of these are also high price properties.
Our former house sat on a 13K sq ft lot that could have easily supported a two family dwelling. I don't know what the neighbors would think of that.
Well, as long as housing is scarce, and the land is high-priced, the property will be high-priced at all—either from the value of the land it takes up, or from the added costs of building tall...
"His $74K income is below the median for this area and yes he was priced out of close in properties."
You write as if this were some exogenous law imposed by space aliens, when in fact it is just selection effect. Yes, of course if there is only enough housing for 30% of the people who want to live in a region, then the people who live there will mostly be drawn from the upper 30% of the income distribution. And why on earth you think it should be impossible for someone with income "below the median" to purchase housing, I can't imagine. Do you believe the correct number of inhabitants is zero?
I never said that it is impossible to purchase housing. It's that he could not purchase housing where he wanted to buy. He could have found something further out that still would have been accessible to Metro for his commute to work. I am not indifferent to him. We look at the low rise apartments on our street that are going to be replaced and wonder whether new ones will be as affordable. There is so much building going on in our area of Bethesda but these are all in the 'luxury' price range whatever that means.
This area is crazy in terms of real estate prices and development.
Berkley is going to have a meeting on Wednesday about this very topic -- I encourage you to join!
https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/legislative-body-meeting-agendas/2022-07-06%20PC%20Agenda%20Packet.pdf
It includes discussion of the housing element, which includes a lot of upzoning decisions for the next ten years or so.