How I Changed My Mind About Change

Over the summer, I read an article from The New York Times called “Twilight of the NIMBY.” I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It made me reckon with my own NIMBYistic tendencies, bringing to the surface a conversation with myself that had been largely subliminal.

I wonder how many of you are having similar conversations with yourself, subliminal or otherwise.

NIMBY stands for “not in my backyard.” It refers to people not wanting stuff they don’t like being built on their street or in their neighborhood or town. It might be a power plant, an apartment building, a backyard cottage, a train station, or—in the case of the article’s focus—a row of townhouses in Mill Valley, California.

In the article, housing and economics reporter Conor Dougherty paints a complex and not unsympathetic of portrait of a former school teacher named Susan Kirsh who has spent the last 18 years organizing to keep a 20-unit townhouse development out of her affluent Marin County town. When Kirsh moved to California in the 1970s, Dougherty writes, she was part of a movement fighting suburban sprawl and promoting environmentalism. Like many of her neighbors, she questioned the idea that growth is always good. Instead of building more roads and houses—instead of focusing on wealth and productivity—what if we tried slowing down, building less, and preserving more of the natural world?

I sympathize with that point of view. A lot.

If you had asked me 10 years ago how I would feel if Swarthmore implemented changes to make it possible to build more homes here, I would have said what I’m guessing Kirsh would have said: “I don’t want to see Swarthmore more crowded and built up! We’re fine as we are.”

Now, however, I think our town of 6,400 could accommodate a few hundred more residents—ideally from a range of backgrounds with a range of jobs and income levels.

Not only could but should. I believe we have a responsibility to welcome more neighbors into our lovely borough with its leafy streets and well-tended parks and independent merchants and good public schools.

So What Changed?

When my spouse started a teaching job at Swarthmore College in 2000, we bought a home in the borough. Twenty years ago, houses here were within reach for new faculty. But the median price of a single-family home rose from $258,000 in 2000 to $437,700 in 2020 and is now higher still.* This has pushed such a purchase beyond the means of most young faculty and their families. (I’m not saying Swarthmore College faculty, whose salaries start at about $90,000, are more important than other people, just that my awareness of how different my life would be if I had arrived here 20 years later than I did was part of what opened my eyes to the big changes we’ve experienced.)

Over the last few years, I’ve said goodbye to friends and neighbors who left Swarthmore because of the rapidly rising cost of housing. Mostly they were renters who had been planning to buy a home, then discovered that skyrocketing prices made that impossible. More recently, rents too have headed rapidly upward.

At the same time, I have watched as more of the Hondas and Subarus on our streets have been replaced by BMWs and Teslas.

I have seen the population of the Historically Black Neighborhood of Swarthmore become mostly White, and I have learned how the legacy of formal and informal housing segregation is still with us in the form of the racial wealth gap. In other words, one of the reasons White people have an easier time than Blacks moving to places like Swarthmore is that for decades African Americans were largely excluded from towns like ours. A friend recently told me that his Swarthmore Hills house deed still contains a (now unenforceable) restriction against selling to a Black family.

The Swarthmore Phoenix, March 22, 1955

I have walked past tent encampments in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Recent estimates put the number of homes the U.S. lacks upwards of five million.

I have read about the environmental costs of single-family homes on large lots and learned how more density near transit, work, and shopping can help fight climate change.

I love Swarthmore the way it is, but I believe I will love it just as much with more homes and people in it. And, if Swarthmore becomes a town where you don’t have to be rich to buy a place to live in it, I’ll love it more.

What I Don’t Want

I grew up outside Washington, D.C. Way outside. To get to our house, you drove past a small village center and kept going for miles, past horse farms and cow pastures, then turned onto a narrow dead-end road into the woods. My parents liked the trees and the quiet.

Gradually, sprawl surged toward us. New pricey developments branched off the main road. Cow pastures became the manicured grounds of gigantic mansions. The traffic got so bad my father shifted his schedule to go into work at off hours.

This demoralizing experience of development is one I think many people share, and it’s part of what makes us wish that house building could just stop.

But building homes can’t stop, because the number of households in the U.S. keeps growing. People need places to live.

The good news is that development does not have to look like sprawl. Many urban designers have spent time and effort on better ways to build. Support is growing for Daniel Parolek's "missing middle" idea of adding “gentle density” like ADUs (“accessory dwelling units” such as backyard cottages or in-law suites) or small multifamily buildings to make room for more people without changing the look and feel of a town.

Indeed, Swarthmore already has ADUs and small multifamily buildings, constructed before our zoning code was written in the 1970s. The fact that this kind of density is woven into our fabric bolsters my confidence that we can build more relatively inexpensive housing without significant disruption.

This is a single-family house in Swarthmore.

This similar house on the same block contains 5 living units.

Life Is Change

While working on this blog post, I came across an article by Addison Del Mastro about his own conversion from NIMBYism. Del Mastro writes about revisiting his hometown of Flemington, New Jersey, and thinking about how it has evolved over the years. As he learned more about its history, he saw how change had been a part of what kept the place not just alive but vibrant:

This perspective helps me step outside of the narrow point in time during which I knew this place most intimately, and to avoid mistaking my nostalgic memories for the place itself…NIMBYism can be a kind of distorted love, one that conflates a place’s present physical form with its essence, and ends up destroying both of them.

He goes on:

We owe it to ourselves and to the future to keep building where we live, to keep iterating, to see people as a resource, and to see growth not like cancer but like childbirth: something painful and beautiful at the same time, something that takes away some things while opening up many more.

Whether NIMBYism is in decline or not (and I suspect it’s not), Swarthmore is never going back to the place it was when I moved here in 2000. I wouldn’t want it to.

But as we move into a future that will necessarily be different from now, I hope we make room for people besides just the very affluent to share it with.

*The 2000 and 2020 figures come from the U.S. Census. According to Zillow, Swarthmore home values rose 8.5% between May 2021 and June 2022.

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Tags: Swarthmore, affordability, missing middle, NIMBY, ADUs

Categories: Swarthmore, affordability, race

More Affordable for the Planet, Too

Last week I heard the term “15-minute city” for the first time.

In the 15-minute city, people can walk or bike to everything they need within 15 minutes: stores, schools, workplaces, parks, and restaurants. Originator Carlos Moreno focused on city neighborhoods (he lives in Paris), but the 15-minute city applies to towns and suburbs too.

I learned about the concept in a webinar called “Housing Policy Is Climate Policy” from Joanna Gubman, environmental director of YIMBY Action and executive director of Urban Environmentalists. Gubman explained that the most effective way for people living in the exurbs to reduce their carbon footprint was to move to inner-ring suburbs or towns and cities. She said people should be able to easily access the things they need (home, food, school, work, fresh air) without using a car.

Which people?

All people.

Housing affordability is powerfully connected to the 15-minute city. Partly this is because the framework aims to transform the whole way we live on this planet. Dan Luscher, the creator of 15minutecity.com, calls it a “North Star” idea, acknowledging that most existing 15-minute communities (like the Noe Valley in San Francisco where he lives) are currently unaffordable for most people. “Walkable and bikeable neighborhoods need to be…accessible financially, not just physically,” he writes.

There is lots of overlap between the actions we need to take to make places where people don’t need cars in order to live there and the actions we need to take to create housing that people don’t need to be millionaires to call home.

The Many Benefits of Density

Toward the beginning of the webinar, Gubman shared a list of changes that would make housing policy more environmentally friendly. But Gubman's list would also have another positive result: her recommendations would also make housing more affordable. They are:

· Permit taller buildings and more homes per building (“upzoning”)—especially in high-opportunity, exclusionary neighborhoods in climate-resilient locations.

· Permit small lots and let people build on their whole lot.

· Don’t mandate off-street car parking for new housing units (because it significantly raises the cost of building them).

· Allow a mix of residential and commercial space in buildings.

· Allow small multifamily housing everywhere (triplexes, quadplexes, and the like are often known as housing’s “missing middle”).

· Increase tenant protections, too.

Image courtesy of YIMBY Action network

If we make neighborhoods a little bit more dense, and we make our communities more compact and walkable, more of us can take advantage of their offerings.

Legalized density can look different in different communities. In a city, or near a transit hub, it might make sense to allow buildings many stories high. In single-family neighborhoods, it might make sense to legalize accessory dwelling units (a.k.a. ADUs, in-law suites, garage apartments, etc.) or to permit some triplexes or quadplexes. “A mix of residential and commercial” might look like a small shop attached to a home (“accessory commercial unit”) or like a row of street-level stores with apartments upstairs.

Any of those ideas—ADUs, multifamily housing, mixed-use housing—probably means adding more smaller homes in among larger, existing ones. In any given location, a smaller home should be less expensive to buy or rent than a larger home, and it’s likely to use less electricity, gas, and water too.

Denser neighborhoods near amenities mean that people may not need a car to get to school or shopping. Because VMT—vehicle miles traveled—is a major contributor to climate change, this is good for the environment. (If you want to explore your personal carbon footprint, UC Berkeley’s CoolClimate Network has a handy calculator.)

And because cars and gas and insurance are expensive, living near jobs (or public transit) can save people a lot of money.

But my very favorite thing about the presentation was the way Gubman talked about density as vibrancy. Some people worry that more homes in their neighborhood will bring too much traffic or noise, or will make room for residents they consider undesirable. (Historically this has often been a coded way to talk about race or class.)

But what Gubman says is: “More neighbors are a delight.”

Swarthmore Is Already a 15-Minute Town

One of the things many of us who live in Swarthmore love about the borough is that it comes pretty close to being a 15-minute town. I live all the way at its southern edge, but I can walk to shops, restaurants, parks, the library, the school my children attended when they were young, and the commuter train, which I took into Philadelphia for the five years I worked in the city.

Of course, one of the reasons housing has gotten so expensive in Swarthmore is that other people would like to live in a town like this too. That’s why it’s so important to think about how to keep Swarthmore accessible to people other than the very affluent, and to make sure a wide range of people can afford to live here.

Another great thing about Swarthmore is that it’s full of passionate environmentalists. We have an active Environmental Advisory Council, and organizations like aFewSteps.org and Friends of Little Crum Creek Park do important work to keep our planet and our town livable. Meanwhile, Swarthmore College is making strides to fulfill its pledge of reaching carbon neutrality by 2035.

I’d like to think we could one day have as many groups and citizens working to solve the affordability crisis as we do taking on the climate crisis.

The good news is that these two major endeavors have so much synergy.

As people focused on the environment and those focused on affordability look for places to work together, we should be able to both get more done and find more community. These days, I’m increasingly aware how much the solace and pleasure of community will give us the strength for the work we need to do.

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What Is “Affordable” Anyway?

Photo courtesy of San Jose Library

When I got to the council room to set up for the affordability task force meeting, it was occupied by children and dogs. “What’s going on?” I asked the man outside the door, whom I recognized as Swarthmore’s children’s librarian. 

PAWS for Reading, the popular program in which children practice their skills by reading aloud to a therapy dog, was just finishing up, he explained.

PAWS for Reading is all about learning and support. It’s about progress and words. So is the Swarthmore Task Force on Development and Affordability.

Right now, in the second month of our one-year assignment, those of us on the task force are learning about what kind of housing we have in our town and what other communities are doing to address rapidly rising housing costs. We hope the preservation and expansion of reasonably priced housing in Swarthmore will support our residents and shape our town’s future in a positive way. At tonight’s meeting, we hope to get our minds around a slippery, tricky word: affordability.

Affordability is right there in the name of our task force, but what does it actually mean? Also, affordable for whom? 

After the dogs and children cleared the room, we began to wrestle with these questions. 

“I think allowing people who have been living here the ability to stay is important,” one task member said. “But,” he added, “I wouldn’t limit it to that.”

“Does staying in Swarthmore mean being able to stay in your house?” another asked. “Or does it mean being able to stay in town?”

A third wondered which Swarthmore properties might fit the zoning code’s criteria for conversion to cooperative senior housing. Seniors were definitely on our minds, but so were families with children, multigenerational families, and single people. How did affordability apply?

Dueling Definitions

As I talk to people in town about my concerns that the rising cost of housing is rapidly pushing the price of entry to our community beyond the reach of many—and changing the nature of the town in the process—I’m alert to what they hear when I say affordability. Some immediately picture public housing apartment buildings for people with low incomes. Others see condominiums selling for between $125K and $300K, or one-bedroom apartments renting for less than $1,000 a month. Still others imagine single-family houses selling for less than half a million dollars—an increasing rarity around here.

According to the department of Housing and Urban Development, households should spend no more than 30% of their income on housing costs: rent or mortgage payments, insurance, taxes, and utilities. If you spend more than 30% of your income on housing, HUD considers you “cost burdened.” If you spend more than 50%, you are “very cost burdened.” 

This table shows specific dollar amounts for that 30% depending on how much someone earns:

According to an assessment done by Local Housing Solutions of New York University’s Furman Center, 51% of Swarthmore renters were moderately or severely cost burdened in 2019. This was up from 38% in 2014. For owner households, the percentages were 23% in 2014 and 21% in 2019.

It’s clear that many of my neighbors are struggling to afford to keep living here.

Other Words and Terms 

I’ve contacted other communities that are trying to do something about the affordability crisis. In talking to town planners and council members in places like Mansfield, Connecticut, Norwich, Vermont, Leavenworth, Washington, and Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. I’ve heard various words and terms for what Swarthmore (and America) doesn’t have enough of. 

Attainable housing is defined by the nonprofit Urban Land Institute as “nonsubsidized, for-sale housing that households earning between 80 and 120 percent of the area median income can afford.”

But this framing raises questions too. If we’re talking about making it possible for families earning “area median income” to live in Swarthmore, what area are we talking about? Swarthmore only? The Wallingford-Swarthmore School District? Delaware County?

Workforce housing nods to the idea that people who work in a community should be able to live there. 

Of course, in any community, there is a wide range of occupations. People who work in the borough are small merchants and restaurant wait staff, elementary school teachers and Swarthmore College professors. With the housing market in its current state, few if any of these folks can afford to buy a home in town unless they have family money or a spouse who earns a lot. Renting is cheaper, but rents too are rising fast. 

Community housing is a term I ran across when learning about Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, an affluent town about the size of Swarthmore that built an award-winning multi-family mixed-used complex back in the early 2000s. (Now they’re trying to figure out how to follow up on that success.) According to resident Chris Olney, community housing means “homes that are well designed and priced to address the broad needs and aspirations of the whole community of Manchester, not just those wealthy enough to pay for stately new residences.” 

A Work in Progress

Back in the council room, our talk circled around retirees on fixed incomes, opportunities for newcomers to gain a foothold in our housing market, and recent changes in the Historically Black Neighborhood of Swarthmore, where few of the families who lived there for generations are left. We jotted ideas, definitions, and questions on big pieces of paper stuck on the council room wall. 

“I don’t feel we need to have one all-encompassing definition of affordability,” someone said. “It could be helpful to have multiple definitions, some more ambitious than others.” 

Someone else volunteered to assemble a working list of definitions to bring to the next meeting. 

Knowing we’d revisit the topic again and again, we agreed to set it aside for the evening. 

I’m guessing the early readers didn’t perfect their literacy skills in one afternoon with a therapy dog either.

If you have thoughts on the question or definition of “affordability,” please share them in the comments section below. 

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