For Star subscribers: Communities seem have three choices: grow wider, grow taller or stop growing.
Note: This story is part of Squeezed Out, a series from Lee Enterprises that focuses on the escalating housing crisis in the West. Across the region, costs associated with renting or buying property have skyrocketed, forcing many individuals and families to redefine the meaning of home. More than one dozen reporters, photographers and editors across the West contributed to this project.
Sprawling out to create affordability means scraping open land and creates long commutes for those who can’t afford to live in the urban areas where they work. They can build up, but taller buildings inevitably draw the ire of neighbors who don’t want their views blocked and dread the congestion or the noise.
Instead, builders could be offered incentives for building along transit corridors, Bonnenfant said. That way, they could create developments with fewer parking spots because residents wouldn’t necessarily need to rely on a car. At the federal level, one provision of the White House’s plan to get more homes built is to reward jurisdictions that reform zoning and land-use policies with higher scores in certain federal grant processes.
“We know what the solutions are,” Bonnenfant said. “It’s just, how do we do it without ruining existing neighborhoods, without gentrifying, without making the government go broke?” Address community members’ legitimate concerns, such as the location of the entrance driveway or the design of the building to better fit in with the existing community.
“Cities and suburbs across the U.S. have spent decades lying to themselves: ‘If we don’t plan for population growth, people will choose somewhere else to live.’” And they now face hundreds of homeless encampments that have popped up in the shadows of their high-rises. “Unfortunately, many places continue to chose No. 2,” he says, “to the great misfortune of renters, younger generations and those without the luck of being born to wealthy parents.”
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