Author says Ohio should require cities to build more housing
When it comes to housing, author Shane Phillips says, you might see “a lot of development and think like, ‘wow, look at this housing boom.’” But if you actually look at the building permits over the past 60 years, it’s been a steady decline nationwide. In his book The Affordable City, Phillips, a biochemist turned urban planner, has 54 ideas to put housing within reach.
During an interview with Brick by Brick, Phillips pointed to one idea outside of the 54-get states to push cities to build more housing. Phillips says, “There’s a kind of collective action problem where no one wants to be the first one to move, because if I do all these things to try to make housing more affordable and endure all this disruption, if no one else does it, it’s probably not even going to work and so we really need some kind of state level guidance and a holding everyone to some minimum standard.”
California and a handful of other states are holding cities to a standard.
California
California requires each city to project housing needs for an eight-year period. If they don’t submit a plan or if it’s not adequate, the state can enact a “builder’s remedy.” That’s when the developer no longer has to go through a community to get approval, allowing them to bypass local zoning laws and build what they want.
That creates problems for some communities. Kriston Capps reports for Bloomberg that Santa Monica was deemed out of compliance and “developers deployed the builder’s remedy to advance 16 projects, including buildings as tall as 15 stories.” Santa Monica suddenly got its plan in order, he says, and avoided the forced building.
“It’s a chaotic situation when the builder’s remedy kicks in,” California State Senator Scott Wiener told Bloomberg. “Ideally we don’t want it to kick in.” Wiener wrote the 2017 amendment to the 1982 Housing Accountability Act which allowed for the builder’s remedy to be enforced.
Some cities are fighting back. Huntington Beach passed a local law banning builder’s remedy. The state sued. Capps told The Big Take podcast builders don’t want a fight with the communities they work with daily, so sometimes they take their housing projects to poorer neighborhoods to avoid a confrontation. Capps found it is housing advocates who are suing cities to get more housing. One court fight lasted 12 years.
New York
New York Governor Kathy Hochul tried to use the builder’s remedy and other strategies to try to get more housing. Her plan was voted down by lawmakers, in part because of alarmed voters in affluent suburbs.
Capps reports Hochul tried to not only borrow the builder’s remedy from California but also Massachusetts’ affordable housing prescriptions.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts lawmakers are in the process of updating their builder’s remedy law. The 1969 law requires at least 10-percent of housing in every community to be affordable for 80-percent area median income.
Many of the applications are in Greater Boston and the Housing Appeals Committee oversees them. The Boston Globe reports in most places the law is working and points to the affluent suburb of Newton, with a median housing price of $1M. It has achieved nearly 10-percent of the affordable inventory.
What Phillips says Ohio should do
Author Shane Phillips says the West Coast, Florida and Montana have all reached the same conclusion and Arizona and Colorado are on the same path. It’s going to come down to the states to mandate more housing. “And so perhaps that’s going to be a next step in Ohio,” he says, “as it has been in six, seven, eight other states already in the past several years.”
Ohio Senator Bill Blessing (R-Colerain Township) recognizes the challenges and told The Statehouse News Bureau, “People, I think, intuitively understand the need for more housing, but they also have a lot of issues, like, ‘Well, I don’t necessarily want a lot of this new housing in my backyard.’ It’s become more of a state issue because of that.”
Blessing, Sen. Michele Reynolds (R-Canal Winchester) and others crisscrossed the state for six months and developed “Housing Reimagined” with 23 recommendations. Some of those ideas are being proposed as legislation.
One would create residential stability zones to provide partial property tax exemptions and another hopes to expand the Department of Development to the Department of Housing and Development.
Representative Adam Matthews (R-Lebanon) and Rep. Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati) have proposed awarding local governments grants of up to $200M a year for passing and implementing “pro-housing policies,” The Statehouse News Bureau reports.
What would make a difference nationwide?
In his book, author Shane Phillips acknowledges there’s no easy fix to the housing crisis. To make progress he argues we need to pursue the three S’s:
- Supply-because scarce housing is always unaffordable.
- Stability-because people have to have affordable housing and can’t be evicted for reasons beyond their control.
- Subsidy-because a well-regulated market can serve most people.
He prioritizes his 54 ideas, calling them “do without delay.” Two of the ideas Brick by Brick covered in previous podcasts:
Brick by Brick asked Phillips of the 54, what are the hardest, what are the easiest and which ideas create the biggest change?
He gets the most pushback on rent control. Phillips says, in the past it has deterred new development, encouraged the conversion of existing rental housing into condos, which further constrained and put more pressure on the rental housing market. Ohio prohibits rent control at the state level.
The easiest, he says, could be adding backyard cottages on single-family properties. Brick by Brick looked at that possible solution in episode seven.
Phillips points to increasing the supply of housing as to what will make the biggest impact. “And so, policies to encourage an abundant supply need to happen that can take a lot of different forms.”
He stresses none of this can get done without groups, often in opposition, sitting down at the table to make changes. He’s talking about renters, homeowners, affordable housing builders, market housing builders, architects, labor unions, faith groups, environmental groups, businesses and more.
According to Phillips, “The goal is to get these different groups on the same page and make sure everyone has their interests and needs met to some extent.”
Shane Phillips continues to study possible housing solutions. His list has surpassed 54. He told Brick by Brick, “I am hopeful. I look back on where we were even just five years ago where we didn’t have those kinds of protections at the state level anywhere in the country, where nowhere had gotten rid of single-family zoning. And now Oregon, California, Washington, Montana and one or two other states have effectively gotten rid of it.”
Follow Phillips, podcast host of UCLA Housing Voice, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ann Thompson – Host, Producer
Over the last thirty years in Cincinnati, Ann Thompson has brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her reporting. She has reported and anchored for WVXU, WKRC, WCKY, WHIO-TV and Metro Networks and freelanced for NPR, CBS and ABC Radio. Her work has been recognized by the Associated Press and she has won awards from the Association of Women in Communications and the Alliance for Women in Media. She is a former News Director and Operations Manager. Ann has reported from India, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Belgium as part of fellowships. Ann thinks of the Brick by Brick project as “journalism for good.” She serves as host and producer. Ann lives in Anderson Township with her husband Scott. They have two boys. Jake graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2022 and Kurt attends West Point.
