Category Archives: Affordable housing

08.27.20
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Cincinnati’s Bold New Law Could Help Renters Survive The Eviction Crisis

The article first appeared on HuffPost Impact

Jeneya Lawrence with her son, Jy’aire. Lawrence lost out on a rental home for her family because she couldn’t afford to pay a security deposit up front. Credit: Jeneya Lawrence

Cincinnati native and resident Jeneya Lawrence dreams of living in a house with a garden big enough to fit a trampoline for her two young children, on a street with neighbors from diverse communities.

The 28-year-old community health worker and single mom is determined to stay in Cincinnati, near family and friends, despite gentrification and seeing average rents double over the past decade. When Lawrence found a rental unit earlier this year with separate bedrooms for her 12-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, close to good schools and her work, she couldn’t believe her luck. Then the landlord asked for a $1,300 security deposit in advance.

“I just did not have that. I asked him if I could split it over two payments but he said no,” explained Lawrence, who then had to wait another six months to find a rental in a less-convenient location where she could afford the deposit.

Lawrence’s story is a familiar one for many lower-income renters across the U.S., who have found it increasingly difficult to find homes as the housing crisis tightens its grip on cities across the country.

Disrupting the system

But Cincinnati is trying to do something to ease the burden. In April this year, it became the first city in the U.S. to require landlords to accept alternatives to a security deposit. Cincinnati’s bold move has been hailed as a way to disrupt a broken system for renters. Other cities and states are now also offering deposit alternatives to make housing more accessible to low-income renters.

The new program, dubbed “renters’ choice,” came into effect too late for Lawrence to benefit from it when she was last looking to move. But she hopes it will make it easier for her and other lower-income renters to find homes in the future.

The program could also level the playing field for the city’s homeless population, said Kevin Finn, president and CEO of Strategies To End Homelessness.

“On any given day, we have 200 families that have a first month’s rent but they still can’t find an apartment,” he said. “Having a more realistic arrangement for what the deposit looks like will make it much easier to get those households into an apartment.”

Homelessness in Cincinnati disproportionately affects the city’s Black community (62% of the homeless population) and people under the age of 35 (55% of the homeless population). And the number of unhoused people is expected to increase this year and next due to the effects of COVID-19 on job losses and evictions.

Even before COVID-19 hit the U.S., millions of low-income renters were struggling. Nationwide, there should be at least 7 million more homes for those who earn the least. “For every 10 of the lowest-income renters, there are fewer than four apartments that are affordable and available to them,” Diane Yentel, president and CEO at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, told HuffPost.

The pandemic has exacerbated the situation. More than 40% of low- and moderate-income households in the U.S. said they had no emergency savings, while over 12% would not be able to pay for a $400 emergency expense, according to an April survey published by Brookings.

Avoiding evictions

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed in March, added a weekly $600 federal supplement to unemployment payments and implemented a federal eviction moratorium. But both provisions expired in July.

More than 1 in 5 renters were behind on payments in July, and widespread evictions are expected?unless states extend moratoriums or introduce rental assistance. The replacement lost wages benefit ― reliant on joint funding with states ― offers claimants a maximum $400 a week.

Cincinnati resident Seth Weber lost his job in March when the restaurant he worked at was shuttered due to COVID-19. He got work at a bakery — but the bakery burned down in August. He’ll be counting on unemployment benefits to make his monthly rent of $700. But Cincinnati is looking at an eviction crisis, and he’s aware that this fate could be just around the corner for him.

“That’s the worst thing a tenant can face,” said Weber, a volunteer for Cincinnati Tenants’ Union. “Once you have an eviction on your record, you’re only going to be able to get into substandard housing.”

Many renters avoid getting an eviction on their records by downgrading their housing ― perhaps moving from a two-bedroom to a one-bedroom ― but doing so requires having enough money saved to put down a security deposit. “The new legislation will help them be able to get into less-expensive housing and avoid getting an eviction on their record,” said Finn.

The new legislation could come in handy if Weber has to move soon to avoid eviction.

Councilmember P.G. Sittenfeld (D) introduced the legislation last November after reaching out to local tenants and landlords to address the city’s need for more affordable homes. He says renters’ choice will give low-income renters greater access to housing in a city where median household monthly income is around $2,800, and a two- or three-bedroom apartment can cost $1,000 or more.

“The ‘north star’ for me throughout the crafting of this legislation was how can we remove an upfront barrier that is the traditional, steep, cash security deposit?” he said. “And can we replace it with something that lets people get into the housing they desire, while also still giving landlords the protection they need?”

For many people, especially those on limited incomes, it has long been all but impossible to find the cash for security deposits — often, one or even two months’ rent — that landlords require upfront but which aren’t covered by a tenant’s Section 8 housing support voucher.

“When you have such limited income, any extra expense ― such as security deposits or requirements to pay the first and last month’s rent upfront ― can be an insurmountable hurdle to finding an apartment you can afford,” said Yentel.

Cincinnati’s renters’ choice legislation applies to all landlords with 25 units or more and offers three options: an insurance premium, in which the tenant pays a small monthly, nonrefundable fee instead of an upfront deposit; an installment plan to spread the deposit equally over six months (or more if the landlord agrees); or a reduced security deposit, paid upfront, of no more than half the monthly rent.

Sittenfeld says security deposit insurance could mean a tenant paying just $5 a month to protect the landlord against damages or rent default, instead of a $1,000 security deposit. “I don’t pay $100,000 a year in health insurance premiums anticipating that I’m going to have a catastrophic heart attack. You pay a little bit each month, then it’s pooled risk.”

The “ongoing economic repercussions” of the pandemic — with thousands out of work or underemployed — only serve to highlight the need for renters’ choice legislation in Cincinnati, and across the country, says Sittenfeld.

Elected officials, nonprofits, and landlord groups are collaborating to publicize the new rules. “While it is still early on, we’re optimistic that the legislation will be successful in ensuring renters have the ability to secure an apartment without a large upfront cash security deposit,” said Sittenfeld, “and look forward to seeing the legislation expand across the country to help renters in cities large and small.”

Overcoming housing hurdles

For many people, especially those on limited incomes, it has long been all but impossible to find the cash for security deposits — often, one or even two months’ rent — that landlords require upfront but which aren’t covered by a tenant’s Section 8 housing support voucher.

“When you have such limited income, any extra expense ― such as security deposits or requirements to pay the first and last month’s rent upfront ― can be an insurmountable hurdle to finding an apartment you can afford,” said Yentel.

Cincinnati’s renters’ choice legislation applies to all landlords with 25 units or more and offers three options: an insurance premium, in which the tenant pays a small monthly, nonrefundable fee instead of an upfront deposit; an installment plan to spread the deposit equally over six months (or more if the landlord agrees); or a reduced security deposit, paid upfront, of no more than half the monthly rent.

Sittenfeld says security deposit insurance could mean a tenant paying just $5 a month to protect the landlord against damages or rent default, instead of a $1,000 security deposit. “I don’t pay $100,000 a year in health insurance premiums anticipating that I’m going to have a catastrophic heart attack. You pay a little bit each month, then it’s pooled risk.”

The “ongoing economic repercussions” of the pandemic — with thousands out of work or underemployed — only serve to highlight the need for renters’ choice legislation in Cincinnati, and across the country, says Sittenfeld.

Elected officials, nonprofits, and landlord groups are collaborating to publicize the new rules. “While it is still early on, we’re optimistic that the legislation will be successful in ensuring renters have the ability to secure an apartment without a large upfront cash security deposit,” said Sittenfeld, “and look forward to seeing the legislation expand across the country to help renters in cities large and small.”

A reliable solution?

Some landlords argue that an insurance-based system would create more problems since they’d have to extract funds from an insurer rather than having cash in hand to make any repairs necessary at the end of the lease. Charles Tassell, chief operating officer of the National Real Estate Investors Association, commented recently: “I’ve got to deal with an insurance claim and get my attorneys involved. And they’ve got their high-priced attorneys in-house.”

And others warn that over a year or more, the total paid in nonrefundable insurance premiums could exceed the upfront security deposit and that renters may be unaware that such insurance does not cover them against damages or repairs that exceed the policy’s coverage.

Weber worries that because the policy only applies to landlords with more than 25 units, it limits choices for tenants.

Finn adds that while tenants are learning of their options from housing nonprofits, landlords may still be in the dark, so cities and states need to do more to educate them about their new responsibilities.

Yentel says alternatives to security deposits provide creative and much-needed additional assistance to get families into homes. However, she argues that there is an urgent need to tackle the underlying issues contributing to the housing crisis. Solutions include more sustained, substantial federal investment in the Section 8 voucher program so all those in need receive help, and building more housing for low-income people through programs such as the National Housing Trust Fund.

In Cincinnati, where there is a 40,000-unit housing deficit, the city is hoping to help low-income renters with several new building projects. These include the Willkommen and Perseverance developments supported by the nonprofit Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation, which is working in partnership with the city to set aside 101 affordable rental units for those making 50-80% of the Cincinnati area median income.

Lawrence — who is still seeking out a rental that checks all the boxes — is optimistic that Cincinnati’s recent renters’ choice legislation will offer renters like her access to homes like these next time they need to move.

“I’m happy that we can pick where we want to stay but also have three options on the money side,” she said. “This time, I will look at places where I have the stores I need, the schools convenient for my children. As long as property owners are open-minded and not money-hungry, it won’t be hard.”

03.10.20
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California’s Housing Crisis Is So Bad, People Are Turning To Rent Strikes And Squatting

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Perez with some of his fellow rent strikers and ACCE staff including Israel Lepiz (pictured back, left) and ACCE Oakland director Carroll Fife (pictured front, right).

Francisco Perez is an unlikely activist. The retired roofer and his wife, Graciella, have rented their one-bedroom apartment in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood for the past 20 years.

Perez lives a quiet life and enjoys spending time with family and friends now that he doesn’t work. But for the last four months, he and fellow residents at his 29th Avenue apartment complex have been on a rent strike to protest poor housing conditions and to urge their landlord to sell them the building.

It’s a move that has attracted extensive media coverage and now appears to have delivered a coup for the tenants following the Feb. 27 news that their landlord had agreed to let them purchase the building through a local community land trust, a nonprofit which acquires land for the permanent benefit of low-income communities.

The Fruitvale rent strike is the latest example of how renters, often with the support of grassroots organizations, are taking radical steps to preserve or secure housing in cities where gentrification and spiraling rents are forcing them out of their homes.

It followed the Moms 4 Housing direct action, where three homeless mothers and their children started squatting in a vacant West Oakland house last November to draw attention to the lack of affordable housing in the city. Their eviction in January by sheriff deputies who battered down the door led to widespread controversy which culminated in an agreement in January by the owner to enter negotiations for the sale of the property to Oakland Community Land Trust (OakCLT), the same organization that hopes to acquire the Fruitvale complex. 

Rent strikes, squatting and public rallies are the new face of the affordable housing crisis in California. And it’s no surprise.

In Oakland, the median house sale price is $765,350 and median rent is $3,000 a month. Latest figures show that there are almost four vacant homes for every one homeless person in Oakland.

Across California, house prices continue to rise. They are up 2.5% over the past year, according to the website Zillow, which predicts they will increase by 4.2% within the next year. Latest government research shows the state has a homeless population of about 151,000, up 16% in the last year. Meanwhile, U.S. Census Bureau data shows at least 1.1 million vacant homes in California.

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Perez hopes to draw attention to the poor conditions at his apartment complex

Located on a leafy East Oakland street, the 29th Avenue complex is a riot of colorful balconies lined with plants, bird feeders and cheery decor. Perez is one of seven tenants in the 14-unit complex who have withheld their rent since November 2019.

It’s a last resort, he said, spurred by what he claims is inaction by the previous and current landlords to fix dilapidated kitchen cabinets, leaky plumbing, mold and missing roof tiles.

It’s also a protest against rent hikes. Within the last three years, Perez has seen his rent double to $1,500. He’s worried that any further increase would mean having to choose between paying the rent and putting food on the table.

“I’m retired and I’m not working,” he said. “In the next one or two years, I won’t be able to afford the rent. What am I going to do? I have no other place to go.”

Having never been involved in a strike or action before, Perez is a little uncomfortable to be in the headlines and in front of TV cameras. But he was a natural leader when we met in his living room with fellow tenants and he describes the poor conditions that have led the group to the rent strike.

“We never planned to get this much attention, ever,” he said. “But now that we’ve got it, if we can spread the word, we can send a message to all the people who are struggling in this kind of situation. This is a problem all over the state, maybe all over the U.S. There’s something wrong.”

To help get their message across, the rookie rent strikers partnered with the Oakland chapter of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), a grassroots organization that helps its 15,000 members work collectively to bring about change in areas such as housing and employment.

Using tried and tested community organizing methods such as door knocking and neighborhood meetings, the rent strike campaign quickly attracted local support and propelled the tenants’ concerns and demands into the news and on to the agenda of local politicians.

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The 29th Avenue apartment complex where half the tenants are currently on rent strike

Israel Lepiz, an ACCE Oakland organizer who’s been working with the rent strikers, said the tenants have been putting their rent into an escrow account each month and are more than willing to pay their landlord if housing code violations are addressed.

“It’s not about them not wanting to pay the rent; it’s about calling attention to what’s happening,” she said. “We did try to defuse the situation at every corner but this is the result of feeling like we’ve exhausted all our options.”

Negotiations to buy the building were still underway at the time of writing, but ACCE said progress was being made following a positive meeting with owner Calvin Wong on March 4. Wong did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

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Walker: “Housing is a human right.”

When Moms 4 Housing co-founder Dominique Walker moved back to her Oakland hometown from Mississippi last April, she was shocked to find a very different city from the one she’d left in 2004 to study for a sociology degree.

Almost all her family members and high school friends had been forced to leave the city because of high rents and house prices. Tent encampments were a common sight. Housing lists were “a joke,” she said, with wait times of several years.

Walker and her two young children had left Mississippi abruptly because she was experiencing domestic violence. She registered on an emergency housing program, got a job as an organizer at ACCE in Oakland, and enrolled her children in daycare in Berkeley. With nowhere to live immediately, they had to sleep on the couches of various family members who lived in outlying cities like Antioch or Stockton and spend hours commuting into work and school every day.

“This is the new face of homelessness,” Walker told me when we met at her new home in Berkeley, owned by the Northern California Land Trust, that she moved into at the end of January. “I was talking to teachers, nurses, community organizers. Folks with master’s degrees living in tents. They’re housing insecure, or homeless. These are folks that help and serve their community and still can’t afford housing. And there’s not a scarcity of housing.”

Walker pointed to Oakland’s foreclosure crisis ― where one in seven mortgages entered default between 2007 and 2011. Black communities, often targeted for predatory loans, were hit particularly hard. While Black Americans make up around a quarter of the city’s population, they account for 70% of Oakland’s homeless population.

Moms 4 Housing was set up to attract attention to this issue. Walker and fellow community organizers decided the best way to do this was to occupy one of the city’s many vacant homes.

They chose the vacant Magnolia Street house because it was owned by Los Angeles County-based real estate investment group Wedgewood Properties. The company buys homes — often foreclosed properties — cheaply and renovates them for sale at market prices.

“It was owned by a corporation who plays a part in the displacement in Oakland,” said Walker. “The direct action was to bring awareness to this issue.”

Wedgewood spokesman Sam Singer told HuffPost that the company had planned to renovate the property as soon as possible and put it back into the housing market. “The company is in the business of buying, renovating, and quickly selling homes to first time buyers. It does not ‘hold homes vacant,’” he said.

The moms’ occupation of the house in November 2019 was supported by many in the community but also attracted criticism because it was illegal.“They should concentrate on finding a nonviolent and progressive way to address the Oakland housing crisis that doesn’t rely on the theft of other people’s homes to solve their problems and address this serious issue,” Singer said of the protest.Walker said, however, that it needed to happen.“Housing is a human right,” she said. “It’s a basic human need and it should be recognized in the U.S. Constitution as a human right as it’s recognized by the United Nations.”

“We hate that it had to come to that,” she added. “But pressure busts pipes, and it just shows the power of the people. When we organize, we can win.”After the moms’ emotional eviction in January, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf announced a “historic agreement” where Wedgewood agreed to sell the Magnolia Street house to OakCLT and also to allow the city or other affordable housing organizations first refusal on other Oakland properties it plans to sell.

Landlords selling homes to their tenants or to community organizations helps to reset a market that’s failing to serve people in a humane way, said OakCLT executive director Steve King. “It’s shifting the narrative from where the tenant has no control towards them becoming owners,” he said.

Housing activists are already making inroads with lawmakers. Later this month, Oakland City Council will vote on an ordinance that would allow tenants first right of refusal if their landlord plans to sell.Inspired by the Moms 4 Housing action, the Tenant Opportunity To Purchase Act (TOPA) would also create opportunities for community land trusts and nonprofit affordable housing developers to purchase homes first. Councilmember Nikki Fortunato Bas, who introduced the ordinance, said that the goal is for tenants to be able to stay in their homes, not just as renters but as homeowners.

In February, the city of Berkeley proposed a similar ordinance that would give renters the right of first refusal and right to purchase when apartment buildings and non-owner-occupied single-family homes are put on the market. And at the state level, inspired by the Moms 4 Housing action, state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) introduced a bill in February to give tenants the right of first refusal to buy foreclosed properties ― and after them cities, counties and affordable housing organizations ― and to enable cities to fine corporate owners of properties that let them sit vacant for more than 90 days.

Carroll Fife, director of ACCE Oakland, said residents’ increasingly bold action is the result of not being listened to.“Waiting for legislators to legislate proper solutions has not worked,” Fife said. “That’s why it’s gotten to here ― direct action ― because there’s not been the action that’s necessary by our elected officials.”“We’re not asking people to riot,” she continued. “But the reason that it’s come to people just taking back properties and going on rent strikes is because their voices and their pleas have gone unheard. These are the only steps that they have left.”

Fife said several organizations and individuals across the country have contacted ACCE about advice on direct action. 

These direct actions in California mirror what’s been happening on the East Coast, where a 14-month rent strike by tenants against substandard living conditions ― including a mice and roach infestation and mold ― at 1320 Nicholson Street N.W. in Washington, D.C., recently ended with the building being sold to a developer chosen by tenants. 

Tenant organizer Citlalli Velasquez, who works for the Latino Economic Development Center, which helped the renters organize, said the rent strike not only garnered media attention but also helped to keep the sale price low.“The previous landlord wasn’t able to market the building at a really escalated price because of these concerns,” explained Velasquez.

“It wasn’t our goal but it was great because they sold it at a really low price because of the ongoing press and the rent strike. Because of that, tenants had a lot of options.”

Having now helped launch several rent strikes, Velasquez said LEDC believes that it has “set a trend” in D.C. “I’m glad to see that where there is rising rent, there are rising rent strikes and resistance,” she said.

Back in West Oakland, Walker’s 5-year-old daughter proudly showed me her new room and the bed her mom is assembling for her 1-year-old brother. Walker said she is determined to stay in the East Bay where residents like her grandfather built up successful businesses and strong communities. Watching her children run around their new home together, she said quietly, “I want them to know that their mother was on the right side of history, that she was fighting.”

02.27.20
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A New Housing Option for Squeezed Middle Income Americans

This article first appeared in YES! Media

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Missing Middle Housing is a range of multi-unit or clustered housing types—compatible in scale with detached single-family homes—that help meet the growing demand for walkable urban living. (Credit: Opticos Design, Inc)

Retirees Mary-Jo and Joe Ginorio have lived in the same modest house in the West Winston Manor neighborhood of South San Francisco for more than 30 years. It’s no surprise: They know all their neighbors, have relatives living nearby, love the area’s diversity, and enjoy being able to walk to their local stores. More surprising to them is that their adult son and daughter (plus her family) have all returned to live at home in recent years because of high rents and house prices in the Bay Area.

The Ginorios, who are in their early 60s, always expected that their children would live near where they work, as they themselves had done for nearly 40 years in the Bay Area. But a few years ago, that looked increasingly unlikely.

Their son, who works for a local city council, was paying a hefty $800 a month to rent a single room in a shared house without laundry facilities or parking before he moved back home. He earned too much for housing assistance based on local low income limits, but not enough to comfortably afford market-rate rents.

Meanwhile, the Ginorios’ daughter (a part-time dance instructor) and son-in-law (an artist) needed to move in with them temporarily while they saved for a mortgage for a home for themselves and their two young children.

“None of us saw any of that happening,” admits Mary-Jo Ginorio, who grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District with her Mexican and Italian parents before she got married and moved out of the city. “But prices out here are ridiculous: Houses in our neighborhood are selling for over $1 million and renters need at least $5,000 for the first and last month’s rent. Most people just can’t afford that.”

Faced with housing five adults, two young children and a dog in their 1,050-square-foot, three bed/one bath home, the Ginorios decided to create an additional living space on their 6,000-square-foot lot. Known in the trade as an accessory dwelling unit, it comprises a detached structure with a single bedroom and bathroom in their backyard. Their son pays toward utilities and upkeep in return for access to cooking and laundry facilities in the main house.

The Ginorios’ situation is one shared widely, especially among public sector workers such as teachers and nurses in the prohibitively expensive Bay Area. In the best circumstances, these people have to take a lengthy commute from cheaper outlying towns. At worst, it means sharing cramped housing or even taking on a second job to cover the rent.

Historically, single-family zoning across the country has contributed to racial and economic segregation.

Finding creative solutions to this problem is one aspect of what Berkeley-based architect Daniel Parolek and his firm, Opticos, have been doing for more than a decade. Parolek coined the phrase “missing middle housing” back in 2010 to describe what he identified as a gap in the market for house-scale buildings with multiple units in walkable urban neighborhoods. He argues that dwellings such as duplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts provide much-needed diverse housing options for those middle-income renters and buyers.

Typically, these options have been “missing” because they have been made illegal or discouraged by the country’s planners since the mid-1940s. And they sit in the “middle” of a spectrum between detached single-family homes and mid-rise to high-rise apartment buildings.

“The concept of missing middle housing for us primarily started out with a focus on the range of housing types that historically has delivered a broad range of housing choices across the country,” Parolek explains. “First, it’s about scale; then we talk about it delivering affordability, particularly for middle income households on 60 percent average median income or higher.”

In one triplex near Parolek’s home, for example, his son’s kindergarten teacher lives in one unit, while her mother—a first-grade teacher at the same school—lives in the second unit; the third is occupied by her brother, a P.E. teacher at the local middle school. Parolek is convinced that the trend towards multi-generational living and the need for middle-income professionals to live near the workplace, combined with an appetite for more walkable environments, is enough to support public transport and neighborhood services such as shops and restaurants.

Even more compelling perhaps is what missing middle housing represents to racial diversity. Historically, single-family zoning across the country has contributed to racial and economic segregationbecause it creates a physical divide between affluent and working-class households. Missing middle housing promises more of a neighborhood blend, based on socioeconomic commonalities.

The Census Bureau’s building permits survey shows single-family homes still dominate the housing market, with 4.6 million permitted in the last five years.

Opponents such as San Francisco’s residents’ associations argue that such developments put added pressure on already dense neighborhoods and that rezoning threatens to change the character of single-family home communities. Another argument used by tenants’ groups, including the Alliance for Community Transit LA, to defeat California’s SB 50 housing bill in the state Senate in January, is that this approach could further exacerbate displacement of low-income residents.

SB 50 would have rewritten zoning laws to support multi-unit buildings near transit centers. It could have helped meet California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ambitious target of building 3.5 million new homes by 2025.

Kristy Wang, community planning policy director at Bay Area civic planning organization SPUR, hopes any new iteration of the legislation will keep up the pressure on legislators to support multi-unit buildings. “It’s really important to change these rules to allow for more people to live in our neighborhoods,” she says. “Zoning is a barrier to missing middle housing.”

According to U.S. census data, almost two-thirds of California residences are single-family homes. And a 2018 survey by U.C. Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation estimates that between one-half and three-quarters of the state’s developable land is zoned for single-family housing only. While widespread rezoning has yet to come, the state has in the past year passed legislation to make it easier to build dwelling units like the Ginorios’ backyard cottage, plus in-building ‘junior’ ADUs—effectively creating up to three units on one lot.

The Census Bureau’s building permits survey shows single-family homes still dominate the housing market, with 4.6 million permitted in the last five years, compared to 215,400 two- to four-unit homes over the same period. Parolek attributes developers’ slow response to building missing middle housing to local planners being stuck in their ways: “I think so few cities have policies and zoning in place to enable missing middle housing that it’s not a huge incentive to be in that arena. They have a proven system that’s been working for decades so it’s really hard to make change within that institutional system.”

But the system clearly is no longer working for everyone. In 2019, Berkeley city council members unanimously approved a proposal for a missing middle survey based on initial report recommendations for multi-unit dwellings that are compatible with single-family homes and affordable for people who earn 80% to 120% of the area’s median income. A key proposal expected from the survey, anticipated this year, is for existing houses or zoning envelopes to be divided into up to four units.

Council member and report co-sponsor Rashi Kesarwani says missing middle housing could give young adults who grew up in Berkeley the opportunity to remain or return to live in a unit built on their parents’ property, or help an aging senior who needs to create a second unit for an on-site caregiver or for supplemental retirement income.

Berkeley’s median house price of around $1.2 million excludes many from living there, she says. “There’s a vast middle class—teachers, firefighters, police officers, electricians, small business owners—who make our community what it is and who also need housing options,” Kesarwani says. “Duplexes, triplexes and backyard cottages are part of the solution.”

Even though California has become notorious for its sky-high housing prices, the lack of housing for middle income people is a nationwide problem. Other cities across North America also are taking steps to increase the housing supply for those who can’t afford expensive single-family homes but make too much to qualify for local assistance.

The most radical solutions so far came from Minneapolis, which made headlines in December 2018 when the city council voted to end single-family zoning in favor of zoning for multiple-unit housing, such as duplexes and triplexes. As part of the city’s plan to tackle many issues such as housing affordability, racial equity and climate change, the move is designed to provide more housing options and more walkable communities in a city whose population grew by 37,000 between 2010 and 2016, but which also has lost about 15,000 low income housing units since 2000.

To stimulate missing middle housing, the Minneapolis City Council launched a $500,000 pilot program in summer 2019, inviting proposals for developments with between three and 20 units. Project recommendations will be announced in February.

Kevin Knase, Minneapolis’ senior project coordinator for residential and real estate development, anticipates getting approval of several projects from among the 21 applications, with city funding supporting affordable units that help spur larger private developments.

“Say someone is building a triplex,” he explains. “They can build one that is market rate and two will be affordable. We’re providing financing for the affordable units.”

Other cities and states are advancing missing middle housing:

• In Oregon, whose population grew by more than 400,000 new residents in the past decade, the passage and signing into law of House Bill 2001 in 2019 effectively put an end to single-family zoning, and re-legalized duplexes statewide, and fourplexes in cities with 25,000 or more residents.

• Portland, Oregon, is now in the public hearing stage on a plan to permit fourplexes on all lots — a response to “McMansionization” that would lower the maximum size of new buildings in low-density areas while allowing buildings to contain more homes. Michael Andersen, senior researcher, housing and transportation at Sightline Institute, a Pacific Northwest think tank, says Portland’s residential infill project stands to become “the most progressive reform to low-density zoning in American history.”

• Vancouver, British Columbia, legalized duplexes in 2018 and is actively encouraging ADUs such as basements, secondary suites and backyard cottages as part of its Making Room program to deliver 10,000 missing middle homes over 10 years. The city issued permitsfor 479 ADUs in 2019 and 38 already in 2020. The city is supporting “gentle densification” of residential blocks near major arterial routes, which in future could include triplex, fourplex and multi-unit dwellings.

• Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan convened the city’s first Affordable Middle-Income Housing Advisory Council in January 2019 to explore ways to fill the gap between market-rate housing and the housing needs of middle-income families. According to the council’s first report released in January 2020, Seattle has added nearly 140,000 jobs and 122,000 people in the past decade, but 85% of jobs remain in occupations that pay on average less than $100,000 per year. Recommendations include increasing the number of triplexes and cottages, adding to the city’s progressive ADU legislation passed last year that allows two ADUs per lot, and a size limit on new houses.

• And Washington state’s Senate Bill 6536 would relegalize duplexes, triplexes and up to six-plexes in certain areas. Dan Bertolet, Sightline’s research director for housing and urbanism, asserts that state standards “hold cities accountable to do their part and work together across city boundaries,” while giving each community flexibility to make it work in their local context. Microsoft recently announced a $500 million commitment to supporting affordable housing in the greater Seattle area, an implicit acknowledgement of the tech industry’s role in driving up housing prices.

Creative financing solutions such as the Minneapolis program can help incentivize middle missing housing. The San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund was created by the city in 2014, amid rising rents and a spike in evictions, as an independent financing agency that could work more quickly and more flexibly than the public sector to fund affordable housing development. It makes bridge loans to community-based nonprofits to buy and preserve rent-controlled properties in the city and prevent tenants from being replaced.

Kate Hartley, chief lending and investment officer at the fund, believes such interventions can help spur the growth and development of missing middle housing: “It really gets to what our cities need, which is to help protect our existing communities, help create housing stock where there are a wide range of incomes, and stop the change in demographic through vacancy decontrol that is driving up average income in our cities.”

In South San Francisco, Mary-Jo Ginorio welcomes a return to multigenerational living in her neighborhood, which perpetuates the diversity she so loves there. And she’s excited to see sector-specific housing solutions, such as nearby Jefferson Union High School District’s voter-approved, bond-backed development that broke ground Feb. 5 and will create a four-story building of 122 below-market rate housing units exclusively for teachers and school employees.

Parolek of architectural design firm Opticos has been engaging stakeholders through local walking tours in Berkeley, and nationwide talks to spread the word about the benefits of missing middle housing. His book, Missing Middle Housing, is scheduled to be published in July 2020. In it, he shares ideas and best practices in missing middle housing development that is he hopes will encourage greater support for this approach.

“I would hope that some of those bigger stakeholders, for example employers, will step up and realize they need to put mutual support behind trying to find solutions,” he says.

01.18.19
by

What Happens When Teachers Can’t Afford To Live In Their Own Cities

This article first appeared in HuffPost’s This New World section

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Teachers like Sarah are being forced to leave the Bay Area because they can’t afford the outlandish housing costs

A few years ago, Sarah was living in a drafty garage belonging to one of her friends. Despite being a smart, highly qualified teacher to sixth- and seventh-graders at a public middle school not far from San Francisco’s international airport, she simply could not afford to live anywhere else in the city.

San Francisco is facing an unprecedented housing affordability crisis. That was the conclusion of an analysis published in July by the city’s planning department documenting the huge challenge facing the city and the wider Bay Area. Rapidly rising rents and soaring property values, combined with high construction costs and prohibitive zoning policies, have stymied the “missing middle” housing options needed for public sector employees like Sarah, who earn too much to qualify for low-income housing, but not enough to afford the Bay Area’s often outlandish market rates.

While teachers may be invaluable to society, their pay and working conditions are deteriorating as housing costs rise. On Monday, Los Angeles public school teachers began their first strike in 30 years after more than a year of failed negotiations over issues that include pay.

“It’s so important for our public servants to be able to live in their communities,” says Kristy Wang, community planning policy director at the nonprofit San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association, or SPUR. “But we live in such a high-cost housing market that it’s really difficult for them to do that because they just don’t make enough.”

Desperate measures

Sarah (who asked that her real name not be published to protect her privacy) is a 32-year-old originally from the East Coast who moved to the Bay Area after gaining her master’s degree and teaching credential in Southern California. In 2011, she was living with her boyfriend and their young daughter on the outskirts of San Francisco in a one-bedroom apartment that cost around $1,500 a month. When she and her boyfriend split up four years later, the market rate for a similar apartment was at least $2,400. As a newly qualified teacher earning $2,700 a month, she just couldn’t make her budget stretch that much.

“Basically, we had nowhere to live,” she says. Then her best friend, also a single mom and struggling to afford her duplex rent, suggested that Sarah move in. “My daughter shared a room with my friend’s son — they’re the same age, went to preschool together and know each other well,” Sarah says. “And I lived in her garage for a year.”

Listening to Sarah’s matter-of-fact account of how she bought carpet and space heaters to make her new sleeping quarters more comfortable, the rationale is compelling. Her rent was now $1,300 a month, and sharing grocery shopping with her friend also cut costs.

But, she says, the situation was ridiculous. The poorly insulated garage was stifling hot in summer, uncomfortably cold in winter, and lacked direct access to the duplex, which meant going outside at night to reach the bathroom. The move added up to 40 minutes each way to her daily commute. And she had to buy a baby monitor so that her daughter could hear her mom’s voice before she fell asleep.

“It’s really upsetting to be a working adult who can’t even afford a one-bedroom apartment by myself,” she says. “That makes me very angry.”

She criticizes tech companies — whose presence in the Bay Area has been blamed for rocketing rents and house prices — for not helping to manage the problems they’ve created.

The salary/housing cost divide

The Bay Area’s affordable housing crisis has made stories like Sarah’s shockingly common. Assuming a household spends no more than 30 percent of income on rent, it would need to earn $180,000 a year to be able to afford the median rent in the city, according to the planning department’s analysis published last summer. In San Francisco, the starting salary for a credentialed teacher is $55,461.

Two-thirds of teachers spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, according to a 2018 survey by Stanford University for San Francisco Unified School District. Of those, 14.7 percent say rent accounts for more than half their income. Annual teacher turnover is around 12 percent, which translates to the district having to fill an average of 400 classroom vacancies each school year. Housing affordability is the biggest reason given for teachers leaving, according to Daniel Menezes, SFUSD’s chief human resources officer.

“Educator turnover hurts a school because children need to experience safety and stability,” says Elaine Merriweather, executive vice president of the United Educators of San Francisco union. “Educators develop relationships with students that really help to support their growth and learning.”

Collective bargaining and the parcel tax approved last June ― which will provide teachers with a 7 percent wage rise over the next two decades funded by a $298 annual tax on San Francisco property owners ― have increased basic teacher salaries by over a third since 2014, according to SFUSD’s Menezes. But, he says, the costly housing market means these pay increases aren’t enough to attract and retain educators, particularly those just starting out or who have a family.

“Every year, it is getting harder and harder to go out to national universities and convince a teacher to come to San Francisco because of the affordability issue,” Menezes says.

Dedicated solutions

To address the crisis, SFUSD has partnered with the city and the teachers union to build its first teacher housing complex, with occupancy expected in 2022. The Francis Scott Key development in San Francisco’s Outer Sunset neighborhood in the west of the city will convert a surplus school district site into 130 apartments, costing from around $1,600 for a studio to $2,300 for a three-bedroom.

 

An artist's impression of the Francis Scott Key development in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco.

BAR ARCHITECTS FOR MIDPEN HOUSING
An artist’s impression of the Francis Scott Key development in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco.

“We’ll have teachers at the higher end of that scale and we’ll have para-educators — special needs teachers and assistants in the classroom — who earn less,” says Kate Hartley, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development. “We’re really excited about being able to serve that wide range of school employees.”

While Sarah welcomes the idea of dedicated housing for teachers, she says she wouldn’t be able to save any money or afford a house if she stayed in the Bay Area and had to pay those kind of rents.

To genuinely address the teacher housing crisis, the Bay Area needs protections for existing tenants and a deluge of new housing units, says Sonja Trauss, founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Renters’ Federation.

Trauss, who was a high school math teacher in the East Bay, quit her job a few years back when housing and commuting costs became too much for her to afford. Since then, she has campaigned for higher-density zoning.

“Too much of the city is zoned for low-density housing in a place that is incredibly in demand,” Trauss told HuffPost. “It’s not just San Francisco, but all over the Bay Area.”

Trauss has also fought against homeowners who block development to preserve neighborhood character. “The situation we have now is that people who already have their homes really don’t care if there’s a [housing] shortage”, she says. “Their feeling is that allowing the city to grow would change neighborhood character … But these are the people that the city needs to survive.”

In a recent example of the kind of Bay Area nimbyism Trauss has called out, more than 6,500 people signed a petition against proposals to build low-cost teacher housing in the wealthy Almaden Valley neighborhood of San Jose. San Jose Unified, the largest school district in the South Bay and a good one-hour drive from San Francisco, is considering converting eight schools with aging buildings or declining enrollment into affordable teacher housing. The plans, however, have attracted criticism from residents.

Meanwhile, Jefferson Union High School District just outside San Francisco plans to use a $33 million voter-approved bond to fund 116 low-cost apartments for teachers and other staff, due to break ground this year. Teacher pay in the district is reportedly among the lowest in the county — $49,500 to $87,300 a year.

“The plan will definitely be a game changer for a lot of people and would really help me out because housing will be low market rate, which would allow me to have more of a long-term outlook in the district,” says Mike Rodriguez, a 12th-grade math and economics teacher at Jefferson Union’s Thornton High School.

Rodriguez, 30, has a master’s degree and has been teaching for four years. He makes $50,000 a year and has $100,000 of student debt. He drives for Uber for at least two hours each day to boost his income, lives with three others and looks forward to the day when he might not need to rent a room in a shared apartment.

The region’s teacher housing crisis needs both investment and political will, says Wang from SPUR. While there is no magic bullet, she adds, European models such as Germany’s baugruppen co-housing communities and Vienna’s affordable social housing, which offer city-based, lower-cost accommodation with shared facilities, could provide solutions for middle-income earners such as teachers and other public-sector workers.

For Sarah, change isn’t coming quickly enough. For the last two years, she has been living with her parents and her daughter in Redwood City, a 30-minute commute to her current school. Once the school year ends, she plans to move to a more affordable city like Sacramento.

“It would have been nice if there had been rent control and better salaries,” she says. “I do love teaching here, but I am being driven out.”