Nature and affordable housing can coexist
COVID reminded scientific researcher and author Nils Peterson that multigenerational living does work and people used to do it more often. He sees it as a way to control urban sprawl and preserve the nature we so desperately need. One way is by building accessory dwelling units or backyard cottages. Peterson is working with his community to do just that.
Balancing housing and nature
North Carolina State researcher M. Nils Peterson has changed his thinking slightly since writing The Housing Bomb nearly a decade ago. It advocates for fewer and smaller houses to preserve nature.
But recognizing the U.S. is short millions of housing units, Peterson has some thoughts on how to create more housing while maintaining access to nature that is important for our health.
He advocates for a greater number of people living in every house. “There are these social trends and pressures to sort of kick kids out of the nest early, split families up, and avoid multi-generational households. And I think bringing some of those households back together can also help address the housing shortage while avoiding the need for building new homes, he says,”
ADUs
Multigenerational living can also include a backyard cottage. He told Brick by Brick, “In terms of meeting the needs of wildlife and other forms of biodiversity, you can allow things like accessory units on existing properties and not just allowing them but purposefully designing the rules so that they’re easier.”
He’s working with an NGO in Raleigh, North Carolina called Wake Up Wake County, which promotes ADUs. Since March of 2020 when the city legalized them, residents have applied for more than 250 permits. Most are finalized and some are still in review.
Cincinnati allows ADUs by-right, as Brick by Brick explained in this podcast episode but they have been slow to take off. Cincinnati gives a residential tax abatement. Under the tax exemption program, people who build an ADU can get a tax reduction for up to 15 years. In Dayton, ADUs are allowed on a case-by-case basis (conditional zoning).
Most backyard cottages are in California, Oregon and Washington. BuildinganADU.com estimates there are 100,000 permitted ones in those three states and about 10,000 for the rest of the nation. The government, combing through real estate data, identified 1.4 million informal ADUs. Kol Peterson, the founder of Buildinganadu.com, says that is wildly inaccurate.
Peterson points out oftentimes zoning rules are written to make it very difficult, where you could only do that if you have a certain acreage that’s maybe larger than half the parcels in your town or you can only do it if that accessory unit is very, very fancy.”
The one owned by Gerald Bates in Cincinnati’s West End is very fancy and featured in this Brick by Brick episode: https://www.pbs.org/video/adus-container-homes-and-modular-builds-4bdwqp/
Preservation
Maintaining the housing we already have is also an important step to take, says Peterson. He points to preservation. That’s a topic Brick by Brick studied, with a focus in Dayton.
https://watch.cetconnect.org/video/preservation-saving-the-housing-we-have-gpgf8s
U.S. homes are an average of 41 years old. The newest public housing units are 50 and the oldest are 90.
The most recent American Housing Survey finds 6.7 million households live in moderately or severely inadequate housing. In 2021, 7.5 percent of occupied homes had structural problems like big holes in the floor, cracks in ceilings or large areas of peeling paint.
Harvard researchers at the Joint Center for Housing Studies “link substandard housing to health problems, as well as to financial hardship, energy insecurity, disaster vulnerability, social isolation and neighborhood instability.” Their 2024 report reviews housing deterioration and repair programs, organizational challenges and makes recommendations for a revised national and local policy framework.
The research points out, “As lower-income renters are cost-burdened, many households may sacrifice housing quality to secure a unit at a lower rent,” and “Among homeowners and renters alike, Black and Hispanic households are disproportionately exposed to substandard housing.”
The average age of a Cincinnati home is 46 years old. That’s 17th in the nation. Here’s an interactive Cincinnati house age map.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the U.S. lost more than 3-million low-cost rental homes between 2012 and 2017. And the numbers continue to rise. Between 2019 and 2022, the U.S. lost another half million.
Many of these are old apartments. In a Brick by Brick Solutions Sidebar with Marjy Stagmeier, we reported most apartments are at least 44 years old. That average two decades ago was 34 years, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The article says, “The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia estimated it would cost $51.5 billion (about $160 per person in the US) to address the repair needs of the occupied rental stock.”
Public housing units are falling into disrepair too. Since the mid-1990s, housing authorities have demolished more than 200,000 public housing units. They were deemed obsolete, partially because of deferred maintenance.
Researchers believe preservation doesn’t just save housing, it saves money. Estimates to replace and maintain the federally subsidized housing units projected to be lost from 2020 to 2025, mark the cost at $6.4 billion. To preserve and maintain (rather than demolish) that stock for fifty years would cost $4.8 billion.
Dayton’s housing survey
Like so many other cities, Dayton is trying to save its affordable housing. More than 1,000 homes were slated for demolition and another 5,000 were on the brink. A recent housing survey rated the exterior of every single Dayton home. A Building Survey Digital Dashboard lists the condition of Dayton homes. Ten percent need major repairs. Brick by Brick drove to the border of Miami Chapel and Lakeview with Dayton Housing Inspection Division Manager James McDaniel, to get a better idea of how a street could be transformed. Here’s a link to the overall project.
Transportation is key
Nils Peterson says new housing should be built near transportation. “If you can design your zoning in such a way that higher density housing or more houses are going in near transportation corridors, particularly public transportation corridors where the costs are low, you can do a lot to reduce that burden.”
The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University also recognized that and did research.
The study focused on Los Angeles finding:
- The number of units proposed annually has more than doubled.
- Developers were more likely to include income-restricted units.
- Units were more likely to be proposed and permitted.
Health and nature
Peterson’s research also focuses on how exposure to nature impacts wellbeing, both physical and mental. He found a minimum of 30 minutes a week helped reduce stress levels.
His most recent study “compared people that were just grinding in their office, doing the normal thing, to people that minimally did weekly nature walks, to people that minimally did weekly birdwatching trips of the same duration in the same place,” he says.
A forest canopy on the North Carolina State University campus was the site of the research and Peterson says, walking just a couple of minutes in any direction off that greenway and you’d see big tall buildings with concrete everywhere.
His advice to people is, “Get outside in nature and a lot of the research does show that for some reason forests help. Find yourself some trees and walk for at least 30 minutes five days a week.” There’s a term for this and it’s called Forest Bathing.
His ideal community would have, “affordable housing near transportation corridors, protecting remnant patches of forests so people can be happier and healthier.”
UC Health has started prescribing time in nature for patients in Cincinnati. This video explains it:
Proximity and process matter. What role do you think location and method of adding housing units can have on residents, society and nature? We want to build community around context and solutions in our cities. Your feedback is very important to the effort, as we continue to dig deeper into the responses to some of our most pressing social issues, including the housing crisis. Click on the green button to take a short survey to help reinforce and refine our work. Thank you.
