Want Affordable Housing? Stop Overregulating Development
An editorial in the New York Sun scoffs at Mayor Bloomberg's desire to see more affordable housing built when the zoning code is as thick as a phone book and developers are nickel and dimed every step of the way.
"Mayor Bloomberg says he wants more affordable housing in New York City, but the plight of one developer hoping to build just that is becoming a scandal on Mr. Bloomberg's watch. Toll Brothers Inc., a Pennsylvania-based developer famous for sprucing up the Jersey suburbs with upper-middle-class subdivisions, has been waiting since 2004 for the Department of City Planning to certify the rezoning of a two-block slice of land along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn."
"It hasn't always been this way. In 1916, the zoning code book was a svelte 35 pages, which helps explain how the Empire State Building could be built in a mere 13 months. During the construction boom of the 1920s, buildings were going up at the incredible rate of one a working hour, and many of them offered apartments that the construction workers themselves could afford."
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sad but true
it's hard to feel sad for Toll Bros now or at any other time.
however, the article points out something planners seem reluctant to admit - that overregulation is one factor in the affordability crisis for market rate housing.
despite the good intentions of the ever-increasing regulations, the planning profession should:
a) better recognize the financial impacts of added regulation (particularly for delays).
b) identify and minimize NIMBYs who abuse the process through frivilous meddling.
Reluctance.
a) Planners understand this quite well sir.
b) It is not up to planners to minimize NIMBYs, tyronus.
The job of planners is to ensure everyone gets a voice and the democratic process can work.
If the public is reluctant to act to negate NIMBYism in this framework, or the political process finds that the NIMBY interests are more important, that's not the planner's fault per se.
HTH,
D
good point
some planners do understand the economics very well. other planner see it as their social duty to extract a pound of flesh from the development community. and others care only to serve the bureacratic machinery, regardless of outcome.
this discussion gets to the point of my concern with planning today - because it is the job of planners to reduce NIMBYism.
where is the line between democratic process and professional expertise?
just because the public has an opinion about something doesn't meant they're correct. just because somebody doesn't like more traffic in their neighborhood doesn't mean they are correct in claiming that a new project will cause gridlock. god forbid if staff actually follows direction from these people.
planners are placed in a very difficult position within the public realm.
at a nice restaurant, do you question the chef's selection and preparation of a meal? or do you get an opportunity to be involved in the design of your car? would most people know how critique or improve what these experts are doing? while consumer goods are much different from a development project, it illustrates that planners are forced to deal with a public that in many cases reacts on emotion and *has no idea what it is talking about*.
clearly there must always be a forum for rational public debate on development issues. that said, I would support measures to diminish the role of radical opposition to projects, hence reducing the time of project approval and making the resulting real estate product that much more affordable.