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Health & Fitness

Suburbs: Housing Matters

Elected officials: Suburbs must provide housing for people at all income levels to accommodate a multi-generational and multi-economic reality.

“No tenements for some and castles for others.”  These words from the 19th century social reformer Henry Demarest Lloyd are etched on the base of a statue of a homeless working man on Sheridan Road in Winnetka, as a call to conscience.

Today, suburbs are learning how to care about those who are not rich.  This was not always the case.  After all, postwar suburban America was built on a promise of escaping from the problems of the city, such as density, aging schools, crime, and concrete and dirt.  As the New York Times declared matter-of-factly last July, “The suburbs were not designed for the poor.”

But in truth, the suburbs have not been bucolic retreats or bedroom communities for city jobholders for more than a generation.  Major employers, attracted by low land prices and no longer tied to railroads and transit systems, moved en masse to the suburbs.  In 1994, the Chicago Tribune found that there were more employers along the “Edens Expressway corridor” than in downtown Dallas.

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Today, immigrants are moving directly to suburbs – the “new Ellis Island,” as a developer characterized it at a conference – instead of landing in city neighborhoods. 

Moreover, those young families who settled in the suburbs during the post-World War II boom are aging.  Not only are they having difficulty remaining in auto-dependent, service-starved towns, but so are their children and grandchildren – the first two generations to do worse economically than their parents.

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The era of suburban escapism is over. 

Suburban governments must catch up with the times and accommodate a complex multi-generational, multi-ethnic, and multi-economic reality.

No suburb can afford to cater exclusively to the affluent and be sustainable over the long haul. They have already tried that, allowing developers to build condos targeting “young professionals” and “empty nesters,” gated subdivisions, and sprawling districts like the Glen in Glenview which was subsidized by tax dollars.

Today we see the result: vacant lots, belly-up multi-million-dollar developments, home and condo foreclosures, and an astounding increase in the number of homeowners burdened by their housing payments – up from one in 11 in 1990 to nearly one in three today on the North Shore.  Even in “successful” wealthy suburbs, the strict income- and lifestyle-based homogeneity means that different generations are forced to live far apart, and workers commute great distances to get from their house in one suburb to their job in another. 

So the next time you hear a suburban politician tell you that affordable housing is bad for the economy or the community or the tax rolls, don’t believe it. 

An affordable housing set-aside in a multi-family development simply captures a small portion of units that would have been built anyway.  That this portion will rent or sell at less than “market” rate means that the profit is a little lower on those units.  But that is often offset by incentives, allowing the developer to build an extra unit for every affordable one, or otherwise increase density.

Here are just a few of the things that quality affordable housing can do for a community:

It allows families and generations to stay near one another.

It provides housing options for workers and service providers who make the community run.

It strengthens community continuity and feeling by allowing residents to remain in one place through different phases of life, from childhood to old age.

It stabilizes the real estate market by diversifying the portfolio of housing choices by type and income level.

It allows diversity of every type – including income, age, race, religion, ability level, and national origin – to flourish, reinforcing the social fabric.

It eases traffic congestion, thus improving air quality, reducing noise, and decreasing commuting time and stress.

A suburb that accommodates people at all income levels is a genuine community, not a brand identity – which is to say, a real estate bubble in the making. The millions of “underwater” homeowners today know that when housing is treated not as a basic human need but as a pure commodity, the consequences are disastrous for both families and communities.  And even when times are good, an insensitive and greed-driven housing policy turns housing prices into a fetish, prompting residents to see new neighbors as potential enemies of their investment. 

The role of government is to provide for the well-being of its people, rather than fighting change in the interest of maintaining a status quo that serves few and excludes many. That means showing leadership on the critical issue of affordable housing, which will determine whether the suburbs of the future will be open and welcoming places, or gated compounds that cater not to real human beings but to abstract property values.

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