Housing
Desired Growth
Housing has been a critical area of focus in multiple years of the Menino Survey. It remains a salient issue underlying a range of other urban concerns, including inequality, health, economic growth, and displacement. It is also a key local policy area where mayors are particularly well-informed and have significant latitude to signal priorities and affect change. This year mayors were asked a range of new questions pertaining to desired changes to their housing stock.
Mayors broadly want to increase the amount of housing in their cities, though most aim for only modest increases over the next 10 years. Half of the mayors indicate that they want to increase the number of housing units in their cities by 0-10 percent over the next 10 years, while half aim for more substantial growth. Twenty-three percent favor a 10-20 percent increase in their housing stock, and 27 percent want at least 20 percent growth. These mayors pushing for sizable growth may be responding, in part, to growing demand for housing. In general, though, while mayors see high housing costs as a top obstacle to social mobility, their housing stock goals are quite modest.1
Figure 19: Housing Needed in the Next Ten Years
*How many new housing units do you think your city needs to add in the next ten years? *
Mayors of higher- and lower-cost cities have fairly similar views on the (relative) additional number of housing units they want to see built over the next 10 years. Compared with their counterparts governing lower-cost cities, mayors of more expensive cities are slightly more likely to favor increases in their housing stock of greater than 50 percent, and somewhat less likely to endorse increases of 0-10 percent.
Figure 20: Housing Needed in the Next Ten Years by Housing Costs
Mayors of bigger and smaller cities differed somewhat more on their preferences for the construction of additional housing. Relative to their peers in smaller cities, big-city mayors favored more modest growth in their housing stock (0-10 percent). While 38 percent of small-city mayors wanted their housing stock to grow by more than 20 percent, only 18 percent of big-city mayors favored similarly significant changes to their housing stock.
Figure 21: Housing Needed in the Next Ten Years by City Size
Mayors preferred that 58 percent of these potential new units be owner-occupied, with the remainder as rentals. This reflects the high demand for both types of housing. Mayors highlighted shortages in units available for purchase, particularly smaller “starter homes” for young families, as well as a need for more apartments and other rentals. Democrats tended to emphasize more rental housing than Republicans. Democrats, on average, split their housing allocations about evenly between rental and owner units. Republicans split them, by a two-to-one ratio, in favor of owner-occupied.
Figure 22: Allocation of New Housing Between Owners and Renters
Of these housing units, ideally what percent should be owner-occupied and what percent should be rentals?
Mayors also preferred to see a variety of new housing types. On average, mayors said that “ideally” 30 percent of new housing would be single-family homes, and preferred a mix of higher-density, multi-family housing for the remainder of the new housing units. Mayors were evenly divided across different types of multi-family housing, including mixed-use buildings (20 percent), townhouses (18 percent), market-rate apartments (17 percent), and subsidized apartments (15 percent). The similar levels of market-rate apartments and subsidized apartments demonstrates the perceived need for both types of new housing. While there is high demand for market-rate apartments in many cities, there is also a need for subsidized apartments for residents who cannot afford market-rate housing and are being priced out of their neighborhoods as home prices and rents rise. Interestingly, mayors’ preferences for multi-family units do not correlate with city size. Small-city mayors allocated 31 percent of their ideal new housing units to the single-family category and big-city mayors allocated 28 percent.
Figure 23: Allocation of New Housing by Type
Ideally, how would you like to see these new housing units allocated across the following categories? Please allocate 100 percent of these new housing units.
Nearly two-thirds of mayors see affordable housing as part of the city’s infrastructure. When asked to consider whether affordable housing is a part of the city’s infrastructure or a distinct sector, 62 percent of mayors said it is interwoven with the city’s infrastructure. Housing thus appears interconnected in mayors’ minds with a variety of other salient urban policies, like roads, transit, and water systems. Indicative of this thinking, one western mayor pushed back on what he sees as the misperception that affordable housing is “government housing poor people” and instead advocates for viewing it as infrastructure because “affordable housing is linked to city service providers. It’s all linked.” Another mayor, from the Midwest, states that housing is “a distinct sector for the time being… [but it] is shifting, particularly for high-cost cities.” Finally, some draw a sharp line between housing and infrastructure; for example, one mayor says “the city is not in the affordable housing business, but we facilitate affordable housing.”
Figure 24: Is Affordable Housing Infrastructure?
Do you think affordable housing should be thought of as part of the city’s infrastructure or as a distinct sector?
When implementing major infrastructure projects, two-thirds of mayors prefer to seek municipal bonds rather than partner with the private sector. Given limited financial resources and diminished federal and state support, cities must frequently secure extra financing to implement major infrastructure programs. Mayors were asked about how they weigh two common choices — municipal bonds and public-private partnerships — to raise money for infrastructure spending. Two-thirds of mayors preferred issuing municipal bonds. A sizable minority, though, are increasingly turning to partnerships with the private sector. In general, mayors said they are supportive of public-private partnerships and intrigued by expanding their use, but that in core infrastructure projects there were some downsides. They cited trade-offs like the short- vs. long-term costs, less control over projects including, for example, jobs they produce when partnering, and their belief that private money is often not available for core infrastructure projects. One mayor said the “P3 (public private partnerships) models do not work for core infrastructure, they don’t want to pay for sewer lines, no money in it for them.” Another mayor differentiated infrastructure from other areas such as housing: “We do it for affordable housing. We self-finance infrastructure.” On the other side, some mayors emphasized the possibilities of debt reduction. According to one mayor, partnering “minimizes liability to the city, brings in new partners, and more creativity.”
Figure 25: Financing Major Infrastructure Projects
When financing major infrastructure projects, are you more likely to partner with the private sector for financing or seek to issue municipal bonds?
- We asked mayors, “How many new housing units do you think your city needs to add in the next ten years?” We then calculated the percentage of housing stock growth using the number of housing units in each city from the 2016 American Community Survey. [return]