By Calvin Welch, HANC Board

There is a new urban policy sweeping the nation: “den­sity bonus.” A density bonus program is an urban development policy aimed at addressing the nation-wide shortage of affordable housing in urban America by allow­ing for-profit developers more units on smaller lots in hope that afford­able prices will result.

The fact that the two most dense US cities—New York and San Fran­cisco—have the highest housing costs in the nation does not seem to inform the support in governing cir­cles for the approach.

In every city that has a healthy economy, from Denver to Portland, from Boston to Dallas-Fort Worth, from Raleigh-Durham to Seattle, housing costs, both ownership and rental, are beyond the reach of work­ing and middle-income residents. Job growth in post Great Recession America is centered in cities and federal subsidies continue to flow mainly to banks and Wall Street, fueling endless waves of urban real estate speculation, soaking up wages of the new urban worker.

Astounding Public Silence

With federal and state subsidies for affordable and middle-income housing development at historic lows, with the privatization of pub­lic housing sweeping every major US city, and with the resultant homelessness of the urban poor and displacement of the urban middle-class ignored as even issues to be discussed at both the national and state levels, an astounding public silence characterizes the situation. Not even Bernie mentions housing affordability as one of the issues and Clinton has yet to discover the issue either. Trump, an urban developer, has actually profited from the cri­sis and has no incentive, economi­cally or politically, to even mention the issue.

The battle, then, is fought out at the local level, a level of govern­ment least able to effect, what is at heart a national problem demanding national solutions.

The central concept of the “den­sity bonus” policy is the notion that the affordability crisis we face is caused by insufficient supply of market rate housing. This is a notion akin to the belief of an alcoholic that more alcohol is the “solution” to his problem.

While San Francisco has some 50,000 new units in its “develop­ment pipeline” (http://sf-planning.org/pipeline-report) to add to its cur­rent inventory of 380,000 units, the argument is continually made that we are producing too few units and have an overly restrictive set of planning and land use regulations.

Not one major housing devel­opment has ever been denied in San Francisco and the sale of exist­ing units outstrips new construc­tion nearly 3 to 1 and thus exerts far more influence on price than does new construction. Moreover, short-term rentals, corporate suits, and illegal institutional uses divert thou­sands of new units each year to non-residential uses, merely adding to the high costs of housing.

Finally, adding density to a city in which nearly all available residentially-zoned land is devel­oped means demolition of existing housing (much of which is rent-controlled) and the displacement of residents and businesses already there.

Density bonus programs threaten to be the new “urban renewal,” demolishing homes and displacing existing residents in hopes of attracting a “new popu­lation of up-scale urban dwell­ers.” Moreover, such programs let national and state leaders “off the hook” for providing real affordable housing assistance through grants and direct subsidies which would maintain people in their homes and produce truly affordable housing.

Currently in San Francisco, a broad coalition of labor, community, tenant, small business, affordable housing advocates, and neighbor­hood groups have formed an orga­nization—San Franciscans for Community Planning (of which HANC is a member)—which has proposed a program which it calls “Density Done Right: Development Without Displacement.”

Building on work done by the “Affordable Divisadero Coalition,” SFCP proposed trading density for real affordability by limiting a density bonus only to develop­ment that would offer housing able to be afforded by households earning no more than the “neigh­borhood median income” in the neighborhood in which they were built. Moreover, SFCP would limit such developments only to sites that would not displace existing housing or neighborhood-serving retail uses. The proposal is being drafted into legislation sponsored by Supervisor Peskin and is expected to be heard before the Board later this year.

Watch this space for more information.