Jake Wegmann

Restructuring, Race, and Real Estate: Changing Home Values and the New California Metropolis, 1989-2010

The wake of the foreclosure crisis warrants renewed attention to geographies of race and real estate. This case study of the San Francisco Bay Area shows that outlying exurban communities on the metropolitan fringe, which saw major in-migrations of communities of color over the past three decades, were hard hit by the real estate crash, after having seen substantial housing price increases during the tail end of the boom. The potential impact on wealth and asset accumulation for these communities is significant. Rather than traditional forms of segregation, this new geography of crisis suggests a form of peripheralization, where minority communities in particular were lured out to the far suburbs under structural conditions of neoliberalism, far different from the federally supported suburbanization of two generations ago. This new reality is reminiscent of the urban roots of the foreclosure crisis, and of the need to view the crisis at a metropolitan scale.

Hidden density in single-family neighborhoods: backyard cottages as an equitable smart growth strategy

Secondary units, or separate small dwellings embedded within single-family residential properties, constitute a frequently overlooked strategy for urban infill in high-cost metropolitan areas in the United States. This study, which is situated within California’s San Francisco Bay Area, draws upon data collected from a homeowners’ survey and a Rental Market Analysis to provide evidence that a scaled-up strategy emphasizing one type of secondary unit – the backyard cottage – could yield substantial infill growth with minimal public subsidy. In addition, it is found that this strategy compares favorably in terms of affordability with infill of the sort traditionally favored in the ‘smart growth’ literature, i.e. the construction of dense multifamily housing developments.

Informal Housing in the United States.

Research on informal housing tends to focus overwhelmingly on less developed countries, downplaying or ignoring entirely the presence of informality in United States housing markets. In actuality, a longstanding and widespread tradition of informal housing exists in the United States but is typically disregarded by scholars. In this article we draw on three definitions of informality-as non-compliant, non-enforced, or deregulated economic activity-to characterize examples of informality in US housing markets, focusing in particular on five institutions that govern housing market activity in this country: property rights law, property transfer law, land-use and zoning, subdivision regulations, and building codes. The cases presented here challenge the notion that informality is absent from US housing markets and highlight the unique nature of informal housing, US style-namely, that informal housing in the US is geographically uneven, largely hidden and typically interwoven within formal markets. We conclude with a discussion of how research on informal housing in the US can inform research in the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring Informal Housing Production in California Cities

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Planning scholars and practitioners once assumed informal housing was largely absent in the developed world; today they increasingly acknowledge its role in the United States. Recent evidence suggests that informal housing, or non-permitted construction, is a significant phenomenon inside incorporated cities, despite widespread regulations and code enforcement. Informal housing is a de facto source of otherwise scarce affordable housing in many locations, but also compromises health and safety and strains municipal infrastructure and fiscal health. Planners lack a means of measuring informal construction at the scale of individual cities. We propose such a method, and apply it to incorporated cities in California. Data limitations prevent us from precisely estimating the magnitude of non-permitted construction, but our findings suggest that informal channels are an important source of housing production, especially in the places where permitted construction is constrained. Takeaway for practice: We urge planners to engage with informal housing issues, given the considerable importance of this hidden yet vital portion of the housing market as a means of providing living spaces amid tight housing market conditions. Our method for calculating the rate of informal housing addition is a useful tool for planners to gather basic facts about the informal housing market in their communities, a prerequisite for policy interventions.

Breaking the Double Impasse: Securing and Supporting Diverse Housing Tenures in the United States

Abstract What might be described as a double impasse characterizes debate on U.S. housing tenure with advocates fighting for rental or ownership housing on one side and Third Way or mixed-tenure solutions on the other. Breaking this impasse requires disengaging from conceptions of an idealized form of tenure and instead advocating making virtually all tenures as secure and supported as possible, so that diverse households are able to live in homes that best fit their changing needs over their life cycles. This essay (a) presents data on the variety of tenures in the United States; (b) conveys a new two-dimensional map of tenure according to their degrees of control and potential for wealth-building; and (c) shows how U.S. institutions shape their risks and subsidies. Most U.S. tenures are at least somewhat risky, including those that receive the greatest federal subsidies. A new housing system is needed to secure and support as many tenures as possible.

The Growth of Control? Changes in Local Land-Use Regulation in Major U.S. Metropolitan Areas From 1994 to 2003

ABSTRACT Amid concerns that increasingly stringent local land-use regulations are constraining housing development across the United States, there is a need for an empirical investigation into whether, how, and where such regulations are being enacted. In this article, we report the results of a nationwide (n = 728 jurisdictions, representing almost a quarter of the U.S. population) survey of local land-use regulation, unprecedented for having been conducted at two distinct points in time (1994 and 2003). Using descriptive statistics and logistic modeling, we arrive at four main findings. First, we find that regulations are in flux to an underappreciated degree, being frequently enacted but also often abandoned. Second, we find a strong regional orientation to the use of certain regulatory tools. Third, we find more evidence in support of land-use regulations being used to solve local problems than to intentionally exclude new residents. Finally, we find that high levels of education are frequently associated with the use of tools that have a redistributive or proaffordable housing intent.

Measuring What Matters: A Call for a Meaningful Metric of Affordable Rental Housing Production Cost-Efficiency

The metric commonly used in debates and research concerning the cost-efficiency of multifamily rental housing production, total development cost per unit, sacrifices too much analytical power in return for its ease of computation. This article proposes a replacement metric, the subsidy per housing affordability equivalent (SHARE) ratio. This measure is applied to a set of 399 nonprofit-sponsored rental housing developments completed in California over the past decade. Evidence suggests that the use of SHARE would evaluate deeply subsidized family projects and mixed-use projects with commercial space more favorably than total development cost per unit would. The reverse is true for projects restricted to seniors and for those financed with Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.