Affordable housing in the US means different things to different people but one thing is undeniable, there simply isn’t enough of it. Service employees, teachers, police and fire employees are forced to live many miles away from the communities they serve because they can’t afford to live there.
On top of that are the people that can’t even “afford” affordable housing. Where are they supposed to live?
It is well known that there are not enough affordable and suitable housing units for all Americans. Now a new “Housing Underproduction in the U.S.,” quantifies just how lacking the housing supply is and outlines a policy framework for creating adequate inventories.
According to the report, the U.S. underproduced 3.8 million units of housing between 2012 to 2019. The shortfall is double what it is was seven years ago.
Further, the report finds, while four years ago, housing affordability mostly beset markets on both coasts and the Southwest, it is now a problem of national proportion, with 47 states and Washington, D.C., having seen underproduction rise.
In addition to the “artificial barriers” of zoning and NIMBYism, the problem is exacerbated by crumbling infrastructure, racial inequality, climate change and climate events. And, while undersupply impacts residents at all income levels, lower-income and residents of color suffer the most.
If housing development continues on its current pattern, 54 percent of the needed units would be single-family. Forty percent would be “missing middle” and medium-density units, and 6 percent would be towers.
If, on the other hand, a “smart growth” approach of leveraging existing infrastructure and favoring higher-density housing in transit corridors, is applied, 10 percent of the units would be single-family, 61 percent would be missing middle and medium density, and 29 percent would be towers, according to the report.
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Gary Fleisher is the Editor in Chief of Modular Home Source and Offsite Builder. Email at [email protected]
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