This op-ed appeared on StrongTowns.org on June 9, 2022.
A house is many things. It is shelter, a place to live. It is an investment, a store of wealth. It can be a repository of memories and it can be a dream for the future. “The American Dream,” as a home is sometimes called, is part of our national identity, a narrative many Americans like to tell themselves about what it means to lead a good life.
Yet can a house really be all of these things? Moreover, should a house be all these things?
We all need a place to live. We all need shelter. A functioning and responsive housing market should provide adequate amounts of housing at prices people can afford, yet that is not what we experience today.
In cities of all sizes and geographies, we witness housing markets that are broken. The cost of housing is elevated at nearly every income level. Demand seems to vastly outpace supply, especially in our largest cities. Development of new housing is constrained in a marketplace that seems rigged to protect the largest players. It all feels very unfair.
Yet, existing homeowners experience many direct benefits from this unfairness. Housing as an investment constitutes the largest portion of most families’ net worth. When homes appreciate in value, their owners build equity, real wealth that is a source of strength and stability. Many homeowners demand zoning regulations and other market interventions that constrain supply and support elevated home values. For those struggling to find housing, and those forced to pay beyond their means for shelter, this also feels unfair.
Trapped in the tension between housing as shelter and housing as investment is the local government. Cities benefit from a rising tax base, especially those places that rely on the property tax. That’s true even when the gains in value are part of a financial bubble, a dangerous distortion Americans have experienced in the housing market multiple times over the past half century. Most local governments are inclined to support rising home prices, regardless of the cause.
But, when housing bubbles eventually burst, local governments struggle, and they do so at a time when people are hurting, when competence and capacity at city hall is most needed. It is extremely difficult for a local government to provide essential services, let alone support a growing number of people without homes, when their tax base is shrinking. Volatility in the housing market makes local governments unstable.
When it comes to housing prices, it is stability that is most essential. Over the long term, stability is achieved not through price controls or other artificial interventions, but by having a dynamic local housing market, one that balances supply and demand at prices responsive to the capacity of those living within that market.
How do we create a dynamic local housing market? How do we build the housing we need at the pace we need it? How do we protect local housing from distorting capital flows? And what is the role of local government in all of this? These are difficult questions with no clear-cut or easy answers. When it comes to housing, every policy has a tradeoff.
At Strong Towns, we believe that housing markets need to be sensitive to neighborhoods and the needs of people living within them, rather than macroeconomic policy goals and the institutions that dominate them. Such a bottom-up orientation requires strong local leadership.
To that end, we have come to rely on a simple truth: No neighborhood should experience radical change, but no neighborhood can be exempt from change. It is not healthy for neighborhoods to radically transform, uprooting people and distorting established price relationships. It is equally unhealthy for neighborhoods to be locked in amber, artificially stagnating despite market demands or the needs of people within the community.
No neighborhood should transform in ways that make it unrecognizable to those rooted in that place, but the rate of change for every neighborhood must be greater than zero. There should be no substantial barrier — nearly zero regulatory friction or fiscal impediment — that prevents a neighborhood from evolving over time in response to local needs. Whatever the next step of development maturity is for a neighborhood, the local government must actively facilitate that transition.
A city built by many hands is one that is dynamic, responsive to local needs and capacity. The Strong Towns approach to incremental housing is not a miracle cure, but it creates positive feedback loops so that success can emerge over time.
You can support the Strong Towns Incremental Housing campaign, and our other efforts to make cities stronger, by becoming a member of Strong Towns.
Charles Marohn is a Professional Engineer (PE) and a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP). He’s the Founder and President of StrongTowns.org . He was named one of the 10 Most Influential Urbanists of all time by Planetizen in 2017.