For those of you who read my weekly musings, this column might be a bit different. The thoughts that follow are ones I’ve voiced to many over the past 10 years or so regarding the future of housing and cities in the United States – thoughts that we must think about, deliver and reconstruct for our next generation to have affordable lives.
There is an ebb and flow to life, history, cities, products we use. Some things go up in price. Neighborhoods become sought after, or, conversely, they may decline into a dump. Roads deteriorate. Others are nicely paved over on a regular basis.
If you look at development in this country over the past 50 years or so, the industrial northern cities have declined. The southern cities, with the introduction of air conditioning in the 1960s, have flourished, adding population and youth from the declining manufacturing cities in the north (a broad, but also targeted observation).
Housing prices followed this trend, with growth and new homes popping up more quickly in Dallas, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, etc. With more construction, based on demand, prices rose.
Many factors go into the rapidly rising costs of homes (and cars and college and medical care) – cost of raw materials, safety requirements, energy, labor. In those southern and coastal cities, with the added push of population growth, prices accelerated.
Conversely during this period broadly encompassing the past 50 years, cities like Toledo, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Buffalo and more have stagnated or declined. The urban core became a skeleton. People left. The housing stock deteriorated. You could buy a small home or a condo more cheaply.
If we are going to have affordable housing for more people in the United States, it’s these cities that we must focus on. Builders, private capital and investment should more and more target those cities to reshape their future in a vibrant way. It’s about the only way I can see the next generation achieving what has been an American dream to own your home.
The Boston, L.A., New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Seattle metro areas are totally unaffordable in terms of a home purchase for 95-98 percent of our population from what I read and discuss with people I know who live in those urban areas. Those cities all face problems in terms of finding people to fill jobs of all types who make less than (insert your high dollar amount here) dollars. If you don’t make XX, you can’t live there, and often can’t live anywhere remotely nearby, so you live in a tent, at the YMCA, 62 miles down the highway (with a 90-minute commute, or more) a van down by the river or buddy up with 12 other people in a group home. I don’t know how, but some people make it work.
The broader, conceptual point we must consider as a country is “where should people be living?” When places become so popular, only the uber elite can afford to live there (and raise a family), we must look elsewhere.
That’s where my reinvigorating Toledo perspective comes into play, something, as I noted above, I’ve ranted about to many people for at least 10 years. Offer incentives. Cities must look for ways to bring youth to their core, to invest in such a way to create that attractive environment that reverses decline into an incline. Move up rather than move out.
This can be done. Make no mistake about it. In some ways, due to necessity, it is already happening. Major smart growth and rehabbing is occurring in Milwaukee and Detroit, and I would be confident in other similar cities (without having that exact data in front of me).
Affordable homes can drive this equation, or actually become the reward for those who choose to take the personal initiative to bring back a declining neighborhood. This IS happening and will continue to happen, but with greater visibility and local pushing, we will find the livable cities in the future are the industrial declining cities of the past.
There is an ebb and flow to life, history, cities, products we use. Some things go up in price. Neighborhoods become sought after, or, conversely, they may decline into a dump. Roads deteriorate. Others are nicely paved over on a regular basis.
If you look at development in this country over the past 50 years or so, the industrial northern cities have declined. The southern cities, with the introduction of air conditioning in the 1960s, have flourished, adding population and youth from the declining manufacturing cities in the north (a broad, but also targeted observation).
Housing prices followed this trend, with growth and new homes popping up more quickly in Dallas, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, etc. With more construction, based on demand, prices rose.
Many factors go into the rapidly rising costs of homes (and cars and college and medical care) – cost of raw materials, safety requirements, energy, labor. In those southern and coastal cities, with the added push of population growth, prices accelerated.
Conversely during this period broadly encompassing the past 50 years, cities like Toledo, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Buffalo and more have stagnated or declined. The urban core became a skeleton. People left. The housing stock deteriorated. You could buy a small home or a condo more cheaply.
If we are going to have affordable housing for more people in the United States, it’s these cities that we must focus on. Builders, private capital and investment should more and more target those cities to reshape their future in a vibrant way. It’s about the only way I can see the next generation achieving what has been an American dream to own your home.
The Boston, L.A., New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Seattle metro areas are totally unaffordable in terms of a home purchase for 95-98 percent of our population from what I read and discuss with people I know who live in those urban areas. Those cities all face problems in terms of finding people to fill jobs of all types who make less than (insert your high dollar amount here) dollars. If you don’t make XX, you can’t live there, and often can’t live anywhere remotely nearby, so you live in a tent, at the YMCA, 62 miles down the highway (with a 90-minute commute, or more) a van down by the river or buddy up with 12 other people in a group home. I don’t know how, but some people make it work.
The broader, conceptual point we must consider as a country is “where should people be living?” When places become so popular, only the uber elite can afford to live there (and raise a family), we must look elsewhere.
That’s where my reinvigorating Toledo perspective comes into play, something, as I noted above, I’ve ranted about to many people for at least 10 years. Offer incentives. Cities must look for ways to bring youth to their core, to invest in such a way to create that attractive environment that reverses decline into an incline. Move up rather than move out.
This can be done. Make no mistake about it. In some ways, due to necessity, it is already happening. Major smart growth and rehabbing is occurring in Milwaukee and Detroit, and I would be confident in other similar cities (without having that exact data in front of me).
Affordable homes can drive this equation, or actually become the reward for those who choose to take the personal initiative to bring back a declining neighborhood. This IS happening and will continue to happen, but with greater visibility and local pushing, we will find the livable cities in the future are the industrial declining cities of the past.