Affordable housing 2/15/23
Major issue with affordability is highly complex. Not hard to understand really, just has 1000 moving parts.
As it has many causes it is likely to have many solutions.
Possible approaches to poke the bear of affordable housing shortages are:
a)1st is education and understanding the playing field and the breadth of the problem in your area.
Lean into your local REALTOR association for data. Associations are replete with resources, knowledge, and experts. Also they love to help solve problems for the greater good of the community. NAR is well known to be ready with grants for housing studies which produce extremely valuable information for this and other considerations
b)Local and municipal regulations or incentives to
Attract—actively seek cooperation from builders and developers and land owners
Incentivize—by adding language to goals and comp plans, local supervisors can begin to discuss offering incentives to developers, remodelers, investors if they agree to other defined terms that are affordable housing friendly.
regulate new construction in a way that is affordable housing friendly. New HOAs could be asked to allow certain percentages of rental units, perhaps higher than originally intended
Definition—affordable housing friendly could mean a lot of different things ranging from density of lot sizes, connectivity, home size. Remember that affordability is not just for sale and often affordability of homes can be found or lacking in the rental market.
c)States can also step in and legislate from any number of directions. California has a state code recently passed that will set a floor on the percentage of rental units. Some HOAs might not allow rentals or have stipulations that 10% of units are able to be rented. The CA law increases that to 25%
Civil Code Section 4741
d)There are federal measures that could be taken as well regarding loans in communities which have ‘too many units’ rented as a percentage of all of the units.
e)But lastly, if you really want to impact the availability of rentals and create a stabilizing pressure or downward pressure on rents, then you should learn your own association and what it’s stance is on the number of rental units. You could become involved and suggest the owners have more rights to rent their property as is currently in the regulations and that by giving owners more flexibility, they are helping solve a major crisis of the lack of affordable housing.
One steps that Virginia is taking to combat some of the problems associated with fear of rental units, specifically short term rental units, is to propose legislation that units managed by a professional licensed REALTOR be exempt from certain restrictions, which are delineated. The reasons they are able to relax the rules for the professionally managed units is that they tend to produce fewer problems many associate with absentee landlordism, and also when a problem does arise, the professional REALTOR anager is easier to contact and more available to address the issues.