Stepping Up Suburban Housing Easier Said Than Done – Gotham Gazette

Belmont and beyond, on Long Island (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor’s Office) To housing advocates, the solution to the New York City region’s affordability crisis is frustratingly simple enough: build, build, build, and build some more. To them, the suburbs and the single-family homeowners therein serve as selfishly guarded relics from an era long ago that aren’t doing their fair share. But painting the long vexing issue of housing affordability with such a supply-side broad brush ignores a fundamental tenet of sound urban planning – balance, and the need to accommodate growth that is both environmentally and economically sustainable for local governments to properly manage in the years ahead. Working towards this goal is especially important in areas that have key infrastructural limitations – a reality often ignored in a discussion regularly focused only on social justice or economic issues. As the frenzied housing market within the New York City metropolitan region proves to be more resilient than expected when faced with threats of a looming recession and 30-year fixed mortgage rates that are north of 6%, housing advocates have more aggressively urged suburban localities to loosen local land use restrictions to allow for more residential units. The issue that often…
Read More