Backgrounder - Vol 3

Article Source: HLC

• Gen Z needs to start saving early to afford a home at 30

  The Mercury News
  If you are part of the generation born between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, a study shows you will need to save $304 every month for the next 12 years if you want to buy a median priced home with a 10 percent down payment, plus closing costs. According to the study, "The Home of Home Search," the median priced home in the U.S. is projected to cost $386,310 in 2031, when today's 18-year-old members of Generation Z turn 30. Read More Urban economist, Joanne Brion, of Brion Economics, has reviewed the Existing Conditions Report for City of San Mateo's General Plan Update and made some interesting observations. She notes that the report cites an ABAG 2040 population growth forecast of 28,000 residents from 2018, giving rise to new housing demand for some 10,000 units. However, she observes that the direct driver of housing demand is not population, but employment growth. Based on a Woods and Poole forecast for job growth in the same report, new housing demand would increase to 15,000 units. We have heard similar comments from City staff that believe that the ABAG count is low. Five thousand more new homes is much more than a "rounding error." Since San Mateo is, for the most part, fully developed, with only limited undeveloped acreage (plus additional acreage which could be redeveloped to higher and better uses), we are going to have to plan carefully to accommodate this growth. If we want our community to remain diverse and inclusive, we will have to look at new metrics for housing development, including greater heights and densities at strategic locations, creation of a wider variety of housing types and sizes to meet new generations of demand, and abandonment the single-family detached residence as the default housing strategy to accommodate growth. One of the existing conditions not specified in the Report, is the nature and extent of the City's "housing opportunity sites." We all need this data, and the sooner the better, to begin to think about how the San Mateo can accommodate its share of the region's growth. Not growing is not really an option. All our surrounding communities are facing the same issue. The State is not about to let San Mateo, or any of our neighbors, shirk its responsibility. And, even if we could, what does San Mateo then become? Evelyn Stivers, Executive Director, HLC
  

  About the Backgrounder

  As San Mateo moves to try and find solutions to the housing crisis, we at the HLC are committed to providing facts and data to help inform our decisions. We are not the only community facing crisis and we can learn from how communities throughout the country are solving problems. We hope you find this information useful as San Mateo embarks on its own process of redefinition.
  

  The productivity problem: Young workers can't fly the nest, and we're all suffering for it

  The Telegraph Twenty-somethings have little option but to live with their parents as high house prices make it tough to leave home, particularly if they want to save up to put down a deposit on a home of their own. This is not just a case of whining millennials complaining that they want a property without working for it. It is a problem for the entire country. Read More
  

  Young people living in vans, tiny homes and containers

  BBC News For many young people, the pleasures of their own hearth and home are out of reach. About 40% of young adults cannot afford to buy one of the cheapest homes in their area in the UK. So, many are turning to radical, innovative and sometimes mind-boggling alternatives. The owners of three unorthodox homes explained why they've turned away from bricks and mortar. Read More
  

  Downsizing the American Dream: The new trend toward 'missing middle housing'

  The Washington Post After years of catering largely to the more affluent market, resulting in slowing sales from too few houses that moderate-income buyers can afford, many developers are starting to address the "missing middle housing." It's growing into a movement aimed at building more housing for middle-income people at smaller sizes, which leads to peripheral benefits, such as walkability and a greater sense of community. Missing middle housing includes duplexes, courtyard apartments, bungalow courts and multiplexes. Read More
  

  500 years: That's how long it could take some Bay Area cities to meet housing goals

  The Mercury News Housing construction in California is lagging so badly, it would take some towns and cities centuries at their current construction pace to meet state goals to build homes for low- and middle-income families, according to a new analysis. But in some Bay Area cities, new construction for high earners is way ahead of schedule. Read More
  

  Will Google, Amazon and Facebook fix the affordable housing crisis?

  USA Today Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, along with some of his tech peers and civic leaders, say it's time for corporations in general, and tech companies specifically, to contribute financially toward fixing a problem that looms large from Seattle to Boston. Activists, meanwhile, warn that housing stock has lagged so severely in some cities that even huge infusions of cash will struggle to make an impact. Read More
  

  California housing crisis podcast: Will a boom in building make housing more affordable?

  LA Times Today's guests are Michael Lens, an associate professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, and Yonah Freemark, a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Freemark is the author of a new study showing that a recent plan to encourage more density around transit stops in Chicago increased home values while not immediately leading to more construction. Listen In
  

  Seattle's plan to upzone 27 neighborhoods clears key hurdle, set for final vote

  The Seattle Times The plan would upzone blocks across the city where apartments and commercial structures are already permitted, including in the urban cores of 27 neighborhoods. It also would allow denser housing on about 6 percent of lots where new construction now is reserved exclusively for single-family houses, with the aim of locating more people near transit hubs. At the same time, the plan would trigger the city's Mandatory Housing Affordability policy, which requires developers to support affordable housing, either by building some rent-restricted apartments in their projects or by paying into a city fund. Read More

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Robert Riechel

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