Conversations with Advocates of Fair Growth
Overview | Conversations with Advocates of Fair Growth | Living on the Fenceline
Debra Stein
Debra Stein is president of GCA Strategies, a community relations firm specializing in controversial land use issues.
Interview
Steve Lerner (SDL): Tell me about your work helping developers who want to win community acceptance of an affordable housing project they want to build.
Debra Stein (DS): I am the author of several books on NIMBYism including "Winning Community Support for Land Use Projects" and "Making Community Meetings Work" published by the Urban Land Institute; and "Managing Community Meetings" published by the International City Managers Association. Most recently I wrote "Building Community Support for Master-planned Communities in Suburban Communities." I am an attorney and we do work all over the United States because there are unpopular projects all over the U.S. We do a lot of work with master-planned communities, mixed-use projects, low-income housing, and a lot of research based work on building community support for housing for the homeless and special populations.
SDL: Are you likely to take a job with a big developer who just wants to build some big buildings; a project that doesn't involve any of these controversial issues such as affordable housing?
DS: All our clients have projects that are either already controversial or have the potential to be controversial. Our work runs the gamut from hotels to half-way houses and from high-rises to homeless shelters. Our job is to do two things. We minimize opposition and we mobilize support for these projects. Those are separate activities, separate audiences, separate motivations, and separate messages. And you want to different outcomes.
SDL: Would it be fair to say that a lot of this involves resistance to the introduction of affordable housing, or low-income housing, or housing for the homeless. Is that a large part of your work.
DS: Virtually all our work involves resistance to change including change to community character. And community character is often the existing set of social and economic patterns of a community. That is another way of saying that there are a lot of euphemisms for classism, racism, and ageism.
SDL: But a project can also be controversial because it is perceived as gentrifying a neighborhood. Or it can be perceived as problematic because a project involves affordable or low-income housing. So do you work at both ends of that spectrum?
DS: Our projects have faced community concerns on both ends of the spectrum and sometimes simultaneously: both that we are gentrifying a community and that we are introducing lower socio-economic characteristics. And I would like to comment on both of those.
Let me start by commenting on America's fundamental values. The Protestant Ethic says that through hard work you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you can succeed, and you can achieve. So wealth can be seen as evidence of moral worth. If you are poor or homeless it is your own damn fault that you are a lazy bum. The Protestant Work ethic looks at poverty or lack of social status as being a result of internal causation: you are an alcoholic, you are lazy, you refuse to get a job; and not a result of social problems. And we [followers of the Protestant Ethic] don't give handouts to lazy bums. So for Protestant Work extremists socially supported housing or affordable housing could violate their moral ethics.
On the flip side, in the same way that Americans follow the Protestant Work Ethic, we also believe in the social gospel that all men are created equal, all deserve a piece of the pie, and those who are too weak to reach the pie plate should be handed their piece. If you are poor or homeless it is not your fault: it is society has failed you. There is not enough job training, there is not enough affordable housing, and there are not enough drug treatment programs. It is not you that needs reformation it is society. And where Protestant Work Ethicists believe in opportunity people, who adhere more to the Social Gospel believe in equality of conditionthat everybody deserves a basic level of housing, shelter, and social services.
[These two contradictory philosophies mean that] no matter what position you take with regard to affordable housing you are being unethical. Either you are violating the Protestant Work Ethic by giving handouts to lazy bums; or you are violating years of Sunday school teachings when people told you that you had an ethical responsibility to help the less fortunate. If you have two conflicting ethics you can only comply with one and you feel guilty about violating the second. Guilt is a major motivator of anger. And that is why these are very angry issues and people can morally justify the positions they take.
One of the problems with the Protestant Work Ethic is that equating wealth with moral value means that people who earn less than I earn or who don't live like I live I presume are more likely to engage in anti-social behavior. For example, we did a project where we built multi-family housing in the middle of a single family neighborhood. These units were selling for one third the median sales price of the surrounding neighborhood. So we heard the usual protests one would hear they were going to have pickup trucks in the driveway and boom boxes and loud parties Steve, these units were going to sell for $900,000. It was in a neighborhood where the median sales price was $1.2 million. And these neighbors did not want a scumbag who could only afford $1 million.
And so what we are seeing is not opposition to people who are poor. It is relative. It is opposition to people who are poorer. It is not that I necessarily oppose poor people as defined by some vague standard but rather [I oppose] people who are not as rich as I am, which is why in lower income neighborhoods you will still find resistance to low-income housing. I may live in a $75,000 house but I don't want someone who is living in a $60,000 house.
SDL: Were you once told by someone that they had worked hard for a living and didn't want to live next to a school teacher?
DS: Steve, I haven't heard that once; I have heard it numerous times. The story I just told you is about people who don't want to live next to millionaires. They only want to live next to billionaires.
You asked me a question about gentrification. This raises another important distinction when it comes to siting housing projects. And that is that people who support development in general tend to be people who are looking for more jobs, higher tax revenues, more housing, and more social services that tax revenues fund. They tend to be lower socio-economic people looking for a better quality of life. They want change in their life. They want a better life. People who support development proposals tend to do so because they want new benefits they do not currently enjoy and those often tend to be quantity of life benefits like jobs, affordable housing, tax revenues, and the public services paid for by tax revenues like affordable housing, education, public transportation, and police protection.
By comparison, people who oppose development projects tend to do so because they oppose change of any kind. They have the fundamental quantities of their life and they are now looking to protect the quality of their existing lifestyle. I already have a job and a nice house. I can afford private substitutes for government services in the form of private schools, private car, and private security services. People who oppose development tend to do so because they want to preserve the status quo from any change. People who support it are seeking the new benefits that change can bring. And this is often the case but not always the case for affordable housing.
SDL: When you are trying to help a developer who wants to introduce affordable housing into a neighborhood where people fear this would introduce an element into the neighborhood that they are not comfortable with, what do you hear from them? Do they worry that people who will live in affordable housing are different than they are, they come from a lower class, they behave in a way they are not comfortable with, crime is going to increase, and property values will drop? Is that generally what you hear?
DS: Let's try to look at that in terms of classifications. You hear objections to the structure. We know from public opinion research that most people believe that low-income housing will be unattractive. And, not only is that a popular belief but it is also tremendously persuasive. It causes people to develop hostile attitudes towards affordable housing.
So that is one reason why sponsors who are proposing affordable housing, unfortunately, need to invest in pretty pictures because people do not believe that affordable housing will be attractive and fit in. They believe it will stand out and look bad. But if you could convince them otherwise it would be very persuasive.
We also have objections to the impacts of the use of that building that are not related to resident behavior. For example, your affordable housing is going to cast shadows on the park. Or you are going to use up all the parking supply. Or you are going to overcrowd the schools. These relate to the nature of the structure or its residential use and not the behavior of the residents.
Then we have tremendous opposition because of the expectation that pro-social behavior is linked to income; and the reverse that lower-income residents will behave in a less desirable manner. They won't engage in antisocial conduct such as prostitution and drug dealing, graffiti, wild parties, refusal to maintain property, standing on the doorsteps smoking cigarettes, and that leads to another category of opposition which involves visual distinctions. The obvious expectation is that residents will look different, they will not dressed in designer wear.[People have stereotypical fears about lower-income residents]: will this resident shuffle down the street talking to himself with flies circling over his head in tattered clothing.
There is an American obsession with individualism. In America there is an extraordinary focus on individualism, on my personal life, liberty, and happiness, on my rights and the protection of my rights. Americans place a high priority on private property rights, on contract rights, and on creativity. The me generation is no longer willing to make sacrifices for the good of society. In fact I am entitled to protect my individual rights which is why you will often hear neighbors saying: "It is your fault I am opposing your housing project because you forced me to oppose it to protect my own interests. I had no choice since it is a self-help, individualistic world."
By comparison, other cultures, the classic example being Japan, have an emphasis on social harmony. The rights of the individual are subsumed to the rights of society. Individuals seek to avoid social conflict. What this means for projects [in the U.S.] that are meeting social needs is that their social contribution is less important than their individual impact to many people. I want that sewage treatment plant in somebody else's backyard.
Our polling, which we have done across several states, shows that most people who oppose housing for the homeless believe that homelessness and neediness are criminally caused by the fact that most homeless people don't want to stop drinking or using drugs or don't want to work. About two thirds of Americans believe that this is more socially caused but it is the Protestant Ethic extremists who are overwhelmingly objecting to housing for the needy who can be blamed for their own condition. Have you read Michael Dear's reports? He did a series of reports for the foundation that does all the health funding. He did a number of meta-analyses on social attitudes about housing for social service facilities including housing for the homeless. They are very interesting.
SDL: You haven't mentioned the property values argument. Is that not a major objection to the introduction of affordable housing?
DS: Unfortunately it is. What I tell sponsors of affordable housing is that it is more politically important for them to be building support than it is to try to placate opposition. And I tell them to stick with their own pro-housing messages and not get into endless rebuttals and argumentation with opponents. Unfortunately opponents do have an argument that is highly credible and very persuasive and that is about property values. Project sponsors often believe that the only way to rebut property values is to do direct rebuttal accompanied by rebuttal from random economists and real estate brokers; or dredging up of reports from some other community in some other circumstances. Those are of very limited persuasive value. There are two ways you can rebut the property value argument. One is the experiential testimony of neighbors living near similar projects who are able to give an immediate direct report. This is peer to peer communication. People who share similar values, similar ethics, and similar lifestyles are able to credibly and persuasively affirm that the project will fit in and fitting in is the [what controls the impact on] property values. The way you rebut property values objections is not to do direct rebuttal. It is to stress your secondary arguments and that is that the reasons your property values will not go down is because the project will be attractive and we will screen residents to ensure that they have pro-social characteristics, and because we will have on site management or requirements to participate in supportive services.
I do a lot of speaking around the country to affordable housing groups and the biggest place of interest to speak is in the state of Washington where the highest court has now issued a ruling that communities must build housing for sex offenders and cannot turn it down despite NIMBY opposition, they must build housing. And someone asked me how to build community support for housing for sex offenders and there were other questions of more general relevance that I addressed.
SDL: Did you do what you recommend in one of your papers and that is restate the question and divert it into another answer altogether?
DS: He has been doing his homework. Did you read my papers?
SDL: I did and I am being cautious to keep my hands in sight and not to look at you for too long right eye to right eye.
DS: And to not cover your lips while listening. These are all social psychology books on the back there.
SDL: Do you think the population is segregating itself residentially by income?
DS: You need ULI's book on residential development in suburban communities, which just came out, and which traces the history of suburban development: its transition from urban fringe to the abandonment of the inner city for the suburbs. The extension of suburbanization and now hopefully turning back to more smart growth principles, restoring the inner city, and doing infill in suburban areas to create a there [town center] there. We built a new town center in North Richland Hills Texas which was such a nothing suburban area that at the intersection of two major freeways I was unable to identify when I was there. And I spent an hour driving those freeways to try to find a there [town center]. However, the community had decided that it wanted to create a real town center and on the remaining 200 acres it did extensive planning and built a very exciting New Urbanist town center. There is a great example of suburbs redefining themselves into intense urban uses. I did North Richland Hills with Andres Duany.
SDL: Do you perceive a trend in building income segregated housing so that more people with the same incomes are living in the same areas? Is what you are doing creating a counter trend to that by helping developers introduce affordable housing into more affluent areas? Would that be a fair characterization of some of what you are doing?
DS: I would love to take credit for my own activities but rather than that let's look at some of the issues you have raised because it is not so simple. As you were speaking what goes through my mind is how few developers are willing to build anything except single family housing in the suburbs because single family housing is what sells. And because it sells it is what developers build. And where they wish to build it the regulatory requirements are overwhelmingly loaded on the side of single family housing and are tremendously punitive for multi-family developments. Planning regulations can make smart growth virtually impossible. For example, if you require turning radiuses for fire trucks that were designed in 1975, then you need massive roads that people can't talk across. This promotes a non-neighborly lifestyle.
SDL: As a result, smart growth developers have to get a variance.
DS: You have to redefine your community. Let's compare something like North Richland Hills, which wanted change and did not like the status quo, with someone who says they live in a neighborhood because they like it exactly the way it is. Neighbors who live proximate to the [building] site frequently define the public debate. You are putting this housing project in my neighborhood. Those people who live closest should have more to say about the new development than those people who live far away. We look at housing proposals not as serving an entire community but as somehow being oriented so that they serve the neighborhood in which they will be located. And very often you find people saying that you are going to import homeless people to this neighborhood. We don't have any low income residents who live in this neighborhood. And that is why when we go in and work on these housing projects the first thing we do is go out and build the support.
SDL: Do you think there are more people of a single economic class living together than in the past?
DS: The trend is at the graduate school level. There is a book called "The Tragedy of American Compassion." A lot of my commentary about the American Gospel and the Protestant Work Ethic is plagiarized from his book. He is a right winger who believes in faith-based charity and believes the entire collapse of the American value system was caused in the 1930s by social work graduate programs that went out and preached this Social Gospel of humanitarianism that all men are created equal. He blamed the shift from the Salvation Army system where you must listen to a reformatory or go out in the woodlot and earn your handout to in the Depression era getting handouts free. He blamed it entirely on the graduate schools of social welfare and social work.
In my opinion, because I am not a right wing Nazi, the planning schools, transportation planning, environmental planning, are starting to embrace and train their professionals in concepts of smart growth. That has certainly not filtered down to the grassroots. I was at a national conference of real estate brokers who were committed to affordable housing. I talked about reaching out to smart growth proponents to this group of housing people and somebody had to raise their hand and ask what was smart growth. So, do I see trends? Yes, but it is driven by professionals who are shaping values. I think the trends we are seeing are very much at the graduate school level.
SDL: I just met with a graduate school student in Boulder who was looking at how new urbanist developers were doing in terms of introducing affordable housing into their developments. It is one of the items they list in what constitutes new urbanism that includes a variety of housing types and includes affordable housing.
DS: I do not think you could do a new urbanist project that was not a mixed-income. You couldn't build a homogenous new urbanist community. It would not be possible.
SDL: She would agree with that in terms of the definition but on the ground many new urbanists ignore it. One of the questions I am asking is can you have smart growth if it is not also fair growth? Can you have smart growth that does not deal with the equity issues of a mix of incomes?
DS: My first question, before you sat down, was: what is the definition of fair growth because there is in my mind a substantive difference between talking about housing that has quantitative distinctions on issues associated with income; and qualitative discussions about entitlements and morality, ethics and justice, and fairness. I don't think either of us have vastly different ethical perspectives you and I probably agree about what is fair -- but let's get back to why most of those who oppose affordable housing for the homeless do so: they feel those individual recipients are not entitled.
Too many affordable housing proponents feel they need to go out and tell opponents that they are unethical and try to persuade them to adopt other ethics. And it is not necessary. For example, many fiscal conservatives will support high-density housing because it is prudent from a perspective of expenditure of tax revenues and provision of public services.or, at the lowest end, because they want to get he homeless people off the street. Whether you and I share that ethic is not the point. Are we talking about providing affordable housing for people who need it or are we talking about convincing people that those individuals deserve it? And when you talk about Fair Housing what you are talking about is first changing people's ethics to get them to agree with your ethics and if they agree with your ethics of entitlement then that will lead to support. If we can get Hollywood to propound itbut if we are talking about creating affordable housing today we can do so even with those people who don't agree with your sense of justice or fairness.
SDL: I understand that and if you are trying to sell the concept it may not be the wisest thing to start out with fairness as the issue. But I put it out there because I find it is provocative. I'm coming at this from the perspective of low-income people and I am asking the question: Does the current development paradigm set up in a way that is unfair to the poor? I am also interested in the question of what we should be doing. And that is where the mixed-income model is of interest. I saw the Foothills and Holiday developments in Boulder. They are doing mixed-income development in Boulder.
DS: It is true that we have had policies that are facially discriminatory and have had policies whose outcome has been so blatantly discriminatory that their perpetuation is intentional. Who will your book address?
SDL: I hope it will speak to a number of different audiences. I want to provoke people to think of this in a new way. After years of going to smart growth meeting I have seen an evolution or a progression as some of these equity issues begin to move onto the agenda. Now, with this up coming gathering in January in Portland, there is a whole section based on equity issues. Smart growth is beginning to grapple with the issue of including affordable housing in the same way that the new urbanists are. Bruce Katz when he talks about this says there is smart growth and then there is smart growth lite.
DS: That's development next to a freeway. I'm next to a freeway exit so I am smart growth.
SDL: When you begin to deal with the mixed income issue, or introducing a new class of people into a community, it becomes politically explosive and a lot of these developers do not want to touch it.
DS: When you talk about words like "should" are you advocating a moral position. You can be doing advocacy when you try to get someone to adopt your viewpoint or you can help people to frame their own thoughts. One of the least persuasive arguments you can make is: "You Should," particularly as it challenges fundamental ethics of right and wrong. The problem I have when I watch social justice panels is they are harangues where the speaker expounds on their moral righteousness and the audiences moral ignorance or venality. And the venal will be looking at the speaker and rejecting what is said. And you can change society by appealing to other than your own moral values or by getting control of the social instruments of control.
SDL: I just finished a book on a fernceline community in Louisiana. I think it was advocacy in choosing my topic. That was the advocacy.
DS: You are absolutely right. Just getting people to think about things they haven't thought about. This book, "The Tragedy of American Compassion" made me think about things differently even though it was a different moral perspective than my own.
SDL: I am not going to shy away from the fairness issue here. But much of the book is devoted to a description of what people are doing and what practical problems they are running into and what the obstacles are to creating mixed-income communities. And it will describe the experience of the people who live in these communities. I have just been sitting with a woman with an oxygen tube up her nose who was moved out of a bad public housing project and into a mixed-income development with people who have more money than she does. Does she enjoy that?
DS: That is a big book. You are talking about land use patterns about the social impact of this housing on non-residents, the internal experience of residents. This is going to be the textbook they are using in graduate schools.
SDL: It will be a first cut at this. I come at this as an innocent. I feel this is an area that is not being looked at comprehensively. There are a lot of problems in society that can be traced back to a less than intelligent land use policy and pattern of development that has been skewed by various policies and subsidies in a way that is dysfunctional for society. Then you look around and say: well, are there some experiments that are promising? I am interested in the mixed-income approach. Would it be easier for you to work with a developer who was proposing a mixed-income development as opposed to an affordable housing development where all of the new housing was affordable and subsidized?
DS: When you build single use affordable housing or below market rate housing there is the potential that you are building a self-contained little ghetto. We built 44 miserable units of high density housing on the peninsula that had no below market rate housing within two mile radius. Because it was a wealthy area these 44 units were a ghetto. So the answer to your question is that certainly mixed income communities are easier because you can disperse opposition to the affordable units with less opposition to the market rate. There are more advocates in many communities for low income housing who will not get excited about building three bedroom three baths for Beaver Cleaver. But the falsity of this trend is this issue of inclusionary housing which says: if you your 15 percent affordable units you don't get the generation because they will zone for maximum development and credit themselves at maximum density every lot is not going to be built out to maximum capacity. They will say that you have a single family home and you are zoned to build an in-law unitbut you are not going to. So they will get credit in their Housing Element or their Comprehensive Plan or Housing Plan as if there were two units on your property and there are not. So this housing unit would have built 400 housing units to get 44 below market rate and the land is built out so there is no room for this. So I am unenthusiastic about using inclusionary housing as an alternative or an excuse to avoid accepting or encouraging proposals for truly high-density housing.
SDL: Are you saying that inclusionary zoning sometimes allow developers to find a way to get around building a bunch of affordable housing?
DS: First of all cities and jurisdictions use this when they are creating their zoning and land use policies. They will in response and to perpetuate NIMBY attitudes (including their own) and perpetuate their continuing community character as single detached family home community where we don't want any multi family housing. We have always been wealthy [they will say]. And it is amazing how many communities are just explicit about being income targets. They will exclude affordable housing by using inclusionary zoning.
SDL: So it is a ruse.
DS: Of course it is. And in most communities where the courts coming down and saying they are ridiculous and have failed to provided any affordable housing and have to build your fair share they will say: Oh, well, we zoned Steve property so he could have built an in-law unit [but he never did]. Have you talked to National Multifamily Housing Council? They are fighting all the lawsuits. Their political director just moved onto Lieberman's staff. They are in DC and are taking the lead on a lot of the big federal litigation on this. Look at communities like Tuxedo Park. Mike Allison is the one who just went over to Lieberman's office. Speak with their general counsel. They are fighting a lot of this up at the Supreme Court level and at the federal court level on the issue of single family communities that, in order to avoid affordable housing/ multi-family housing, [are using the inclusionary zoning ruse]. In America the best way to avoid low-income residents is to burden everybody with a moat of private property. It is ok if you are poor [you can join our community] as long as you put 2.5 acres around you in all directions. And the best part is that they will adopt inclusionary housing ordinances.
My clients are building higher-density housing and that is why they are unpopular. My clients are fighting jurisdictions that will privately tell you they embrace the ethical position I'm not opposed to those kinds of people -- but my constituents say. And I have not worked on a housing project yet that did not have pressure to reduce its density. It is unit or population density. The difference is between a two bedroom and a three bedroom.
SDL: Is density a stalking horse for affordability? One issue is density but the other issue is does greater density get you more affordable housing. In Boulder they cut a deal with the city where they got greater density by including some affordable housing. There are density bonuses you can get if you do affordable housing.
DS: In San Francisco it is the reverse. You get nothing in the way of density bonuses. If you don't walk in the door with the legal minimum, which in most cases is 12 percent affordable housing units per project, then you can't get your application looked at. And you better be ready to volunteer more than 12 percent if you want your project to be approved politically. It is 12 percent of your units at 100 percent of Area Median Income if you are selling. You need to talk to Dan Kinsley at SKS on the edge of the Mission that is traditionally Hispanic population trying to hold onto its power.
Three years ago we got permission to build a dot.com office building.total gentrification in other words. There was tremendous social resistance from people saying we were gentrifying the area. We were bringing yuppie dot.coms, we were displacing lower-income businesses, and we were changing social character. There were enormous land use objections. The Mission Anti-Displacement Commission formed itself and this anarchist was walking around with signs that said "Blow Up Blowfish Sushi" which is a yuppie sushi bar and "Scratch the Hoods of BMWs." The project was approved but never built. Fast-forward to today: we have a hole in the ground from the foundation we excavated and the market is no longer there. It was the right decision at the time but not the right decision now. Last month we got it approved for 76 units of housing of which 58 units were family units, which is a very big deal in a high-density community where there is a disincentive to build large units. We actually had the endorsement of the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition because not only did the project meet the 12 percent affordability, which in SF is an enormous subsidy, but we had 9 of the 12 units subsidized not at 100 percent but 80 percent AMI. You should talk to Dan Kinsley (415.970.0800) who is en example of one of the most socially responsible urban developers I have ever pleasure of working with. That project was approved last month with artist studios, California Layers for the Arts.
SDL: How did this turn around. Now it is approved for 76 units.
DS: From [the initial proposal for] 100,000s of square feet of office space it changed its use and its structure. It is now shorter and smaller. We filled in one of the floors with parking so it has less of a land use impact and it is more socially consistent with the status quo. It was a dot com (snot.com) building. Now it is all residential but it is part of a master-planned block that has live/work lofts and work only work spaces and a mixed-use courtyard. SKS owns the whole block. It is between 21st and 20th and Bryant. Here are all our neighborhood endorsements. The dot.com economy collapsed, the land use demand wasn't there. The developer re-evaluated land use opportunities and probably did a much better job of working with neighbors.
SDL: What is your experience with mixed-income developments? Is this mixed-income?
DS: Basically all the housing projects I work on are mixed-income because you have fewer developers going out there and putting a rubber stamp of checkerboard onto the land. You have developers realizing they can build within the land formation rather than hauling bulldozers out to do physical land reorganization in order to put these plots. Virtually all the housing projects I work on are mixed-income in some way all across the country. Those are the people who hire me. Why, because they are controversial projects. Many of them are large. The entitlement costs of 100 affordable units is going to be more than the entitlement costs of 100 luxury units because you are going to face generally more resistance and you are going to make more financial return on the profitable stuff. But your ability to go in and develop five affordable units is going to be the same as your costs to develop fifty. Opinion research shows that one of the least persuasive concessions you can make to build community support is to cut units. It is very popular. Just like blue is the most popular color in the United States but painting your apartment complex blue isn't going to make it acceptable. People will hate your project as much with 95 units as they will with 100.
Our clients are building master-planned communities and focusing on the concept of a community that is often evolving. Now you have people selecting a new urbanist life style but they are recognizing, for a variety of reasons, that cookie cutter subdivisions may not be their choice of development patterns. Developers who are building cookie cutter subdivisions are doing so in areas where there is little or no controversy. This developer calls me and says I just finished doing 23,000 units of housing in the Arizona desert and I found two articles on the Internet. There was no opposition. There was nobody at the hearings. Most of my clients are doing large projects which are not cookie cutter subdivisions.
SDL: But buildings can look different and cost the same.
DS: That is not a true statement. If buildings look different often they cost different. Andres Duany is quite adamant that you can only afford to put architecture on one side of the building. That is one of his directives. I don't think every architect agrees with that but it is going to cost you x dollars to build and your land costs and finance costs are fixed whether you build luxury or not.
You should talk to Castlerock Development in Colorado. They got permits to build thousands of units. Talk to Sandy Thomas (303.394.5500) and use my name. They got an enormous area in a suburban planned community approved at the General Plan level in the 1980s and now they are going back and re-planning it because they want to do more mixed income. Instead of building 20,000 of the same kind of houses they want to do estate homes there and townhouse developments. And what is interesting is that even though we are reducing density there is resistance because we are bringing change half way between Denver and Colorado Springs. It is in Douglas County the fastest growing county in the United States. I also did Happy Canyon Ranch there, which the owners thought would be the next Denver Tech. When we got involved it was proposed as 16,000 units and it had 18 percent favorability. By the time we were done we had twice as many supporters as opponents at the last hearing. But there were less than 2,500 units. The project that was approved was a very socially responsible project that clustered units and preserved 82 percent of the open space. It was called Happy Canyon Ranch. The different owner stepped forward to take control of the project, a guy named Lee Alpert. And he had a different attitude. He must have gone to a couple hundred home owners association meetings. When I got involved, every homeowner organization in the county got together and voted that they would not let the developer come talk to them.
SDL: This makes your point that what is negotiable is the quantitative parts of the project.
DS: Yes. I was about to say that you cannot negotiate behavior but you can. For example, one of the most persuasive tools you can use in the creation of most any project, but particularly housing for special populations, is a "Good Neighbor Agreement." What reasons do people use to object to high-density housing or housing for special populations? They object to the building: it is ugly; they object to the land use impacts: it has too much parking; they object to the presumption that different people have less desirable behavior. So developers often address that by greater education about resident selection: financial screening, criminal record screening, reference checks, and psychiatric screening. If you had a social service facility you would certainly not wish to admit someone with serious problems that your program couldn't resolve. A lot of this is educating people about normal business procedures. Sometimes there is not this screening and there are concessions made in terms of external enforcement. I can't screen out people who have intrinsically undesirable character flaws through a criminal check, however, I can enforce that by having a one strike deal: if you bring a weapon to this housing project you are out. Or I can externally enforce it through covenants, conditions, and restrictions which say that you can't have wild parties. Or pass rules which say that you can't put your diapers on the front balcony or park your RV. So you can have social enforcement. I could require you to attend at least one neighborhood association meeting a year. We can screen out undesirable characteristics and compel pro-social behavior through enforcement.
SDL: If you were to name a couple of developers who are doing mixed-income developers.
DS: Any developer in San Francisco is compelled to do mixed-income development.
SDL: If it is over a certain number of units? What is 12 percent of two?
DS: It is one unit. I think it is ten units. The tallest building in San Francisco has been approved for 80 stories of residential units located downtown. It has an enormous amount of affordability right on top of the BART station in downtown but it isn't getting built because it isn't getting financed. You should talk to my husband, who is the architect, Jeffrey Heller of Heller and Manis. They specialize in controversial projects. He is doing that project and all the big residential high rises in San Francisco. They are up-zoning by the Bay Bridge for two new towers. He was involved in writing the downtown plan and he is deeply involved in land use planning and politics. He is now on the state board of architects. He will tell you everything there is to know about high density housing politics. He is doing new urbanist town centers in the Bay Area. It is all well and good if you can go out to virgin land and take 1,000 acres and build a new life but the trick is how do you take 14 acres, 3 acres, and 9 acres and change social patterns. Ask him about Hayward and Freemont.
It is easy to be the best in the field [about dealing with NIMBY issues] when no one in their right mind will go into the field. You didn't ask me how I got started in what I do. Someone one spat on me in a public meeting. It was my arm. As I wiped my arm off I said to myself that I was going to find out why that happened and I am never going to let that happen again. And that was what led me to recognize that, at least then, there were no books written for developers who wanted to anticipate and avoid opposition.
Now there are a host of books on the subject including: "Not in My Backyard Handbook," "How to Fight Developers and Win," "How to Save your Neighborhood, Your Community, Your Town," and "Just Say No." In America in the 1960s everyone was going to write the Great American Novel, in 1990s everyone was a consultant and the easiest way to be a consultant is to write about what you do.