Getting more expensive by trying to be more affordable
Conventional wisdom says that less square footage in a house means a more affordable house. Building a 2,000 square foot house should sell for more than an 1,800 square foot house on the same lot. This convention is not necessarily true, but it doesn't stop planning commission members from utilizing this logic to force smaller square footage homes in effort to bring prices down.
Not all square feet are created equal. For example, one square foot of house on a main level is substantially more valuable than one square foot of house on a basement level. Basements, even with window wells, are dark and cold spaces that tend to not be as pleasant to be in compared to above ground living which has much more opportunity for light. Two story houses achieve higher density, therefore can achieve lower costs per square foot compared to a single family home. Land in the Bay Area is expensive. A house that takes up more land will cost more for the house you get.
At a planning commission meeting in a city in the East Bay, two commissioners were bemoaning the lack of single story housing despite the inclusion of a single story in character house where the second floor tucks into the rear of the house. The design guidelines only suggest 15% of the houses be single story, but it's not mandated. We showed how there were no single story houses built in any development in a similar part of the city on our size lot. We mentioned that their shining example of a great similar development contained no single story houses. We explained that the target audience are families and that they need the space only a two story house achieves. The assistant city manager even testified that not a single development has adhered 100% to the design guidelines we fell under. Undeterred, one of the commissioners said, "There is such a thing as 'affordable by design,'" and that a single story would achieve this by reducing the square footage of the house.
Let's take a closer look at this claim. I looked up the term "affordable by design" and it doesn't appear to actually be a thing, as the commissioner claimed. A few articles came up with it as its title. Ironically, the first Google hit talked about how San Francisco's planning and building codes make it very difficult to build houses that are "affordable by design". But there was no long list of articles and papers utilizing this phrase. No Wikepedia entry. No research done by any architecture school utilizing this phrase.
While her direction to make housing more affordable is rooted in a good place, her direction doesn't actually make it so. As stated above, a single family house tends to have higher prices per square foot. Just reducing the amount of house may lower the total price, but the cost per unit of house you get is higher. As we stated in the hearing, the target demographic would be for families, likely with multiple children, and our designs reflected this. Forcing us to design a house that is too small for most people's needs in the area would just make it so people with those needs have to buy elsewhere or settle to buy a house ill suited for their needs. It's somewhat like telling a group of twenty families with 2-3 kids each that there are twenty cars they can buy from. Eighteen are minivans and SUVs. Two of them are subcompact economy cars in the name of affordability. What's going to happen is that two families are going to have to buy cars that don't fit their needs or be forced to go elsewhere where this silly restriction doesn't exist.
Sure enough, there is a housing project a few miles away from our project that offers a single story house amid their two story offerings, which we can compare prices with. We didn't have this information at the time of the hearing, but KB Homes is selling the single story at 1,973 square feet for slightly more than the two story at 2,408 square feet. As of this writing, the single story is $784/SF while the two story is $614/SF. The single story is 28% more expensive per square foot than the two story. While this area is likely less family dominated in a more open area than our infill project, it is still an instructive study on pricing and costs.
Teams of twenty people working on the project which includes market research analysts, developers studying housing trends, brokers, investors, architects, and civil engineers, will always know more about affordability than a panel of seven planning commissioners, whom appear to not even understand pricing in their own town. Planning commissioners' hearts are usually in the right place, but we can't afford them trying to make things more affordable.
At a planning commission meeting in a city in the East Bay, two commissioners were bemoaning the lack of single story housing despite the inclusion of a single story in character house where the second floor tucks into the rear of the house. The design guidelines only suggest 15% of the houses be single story, but it's not mandated. We showed how there were no single story houses built in any development in a similar part of the city on our size lot. We mentioned that their shining example of a great similar development contained no single story houses. We explained that the target audience are families and that they need the space only a two story house achieves. The assistant city manager even testified that not a single development has adhered 100% to the design guidelines we fell under. Undeterred, one of the commissioners said, "There is such a thing as 'affordable by design,'" and that a single story would achieve this by reducing the square footage of the house.
Let's take a closer look at this claim. I looked up the term "affordable by design" and it doesn't appear to actually be a thing, as the commissioner claimed. A few articles came up with it as its title. Ironically, the first Google hit talked about how San Francisco's planning and building codes make it very difficult to build houses that are "affordable by design". But there was no long list of articles and papers utilizing this phrase. No Wikepedia entry. No research done by any architecture school utilizing this phrase.
While her direction to make housing more affordable is rooted in a good place, her direction doesn't actually make it so. As stated above, a single family house tends to have higher prices per square foot. Just reducing the amount of house may lower the total price, but the cost per unit of house you get is higher. As we stated in the hearing, the target demographic would be for families, likely with multiple children, and our designs reflected this. Forcing us to design a house that is too small for most people's needs in the area would just make it so people with those needs have to buy elsewhere or settle to buy a house ill suited for their needs. It's somewhat like telling a group of twenty families with 2-3 kids each that there are twenty cars they can buy from. Eighteen are minivans and SUVs. Two of them are subcompact economy cars in the name of affordability. What's going to happen is that two families are going to have to buy cars that don't fit their needs or be forced to go elsewhere where this silly restriction doesn't exist.
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| Nearby
development where a single story house is selling for more than a larger two story house. Screenshot from KB Homes website |
Teams of twenty people working on the project which includes market research analysts, developers studying housing trends, brokers, investors, architects, and civil engineers, will always know more about affordability than a panel of seven planning commissioners, whom appear to not even understand pricing in their own town. Planning commissioners' hearts are usually in the right place, but we can't afford them trying to make things more affordable.
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