Book Review: The Affordable City
The Affordable City completely changed the way I think about affordable housing advocacy. I’ve been working in the industry ever since my first job out of college at a non-profit affordable housing developer, so to say that this book completely changed my perspective is a real testament to Shane Phillips and the way he breaks down issues around housing affordability.
The three key policies that Shane structures the book around are the three S’s: Supply, Stability, and Subsidy.
The first and third of these S’s, Supply and Subsidy, I’ve understood well. I’ve always come to housing affordability through what has come to be the YIMBY view, that we need to build more housing so that housing supply will meet housing demand. It’s a simple, economics 101 view of the housing market. As someone who has developed affordable housing, I’m also keenly aware of the need for subsidy to build homes for the lowest income families in our communities.
What this book really opened my eyes to was the need for housing price stability. I have often viewed tenants rights advocates as a hindrance to long term housing affordability. Too often, tenant advocates fight against new housing, which in turn makes housing less affordable over the long term. Because of this, I’ve viewed tenants rights in opposition to long-term housing affordability, or at best the choice between housing affordability for current residents and housing affordability for future generations.
In its introduction, The Affordable City makes a convincing case that future housing affordability cannot be achieved at the expense of displacement of existing residents. For a city to be affordable, it must protect existing residents while making room for future growth.
From this starting point, Shane Phillips builds a case for specific policies that, over time, will build an affordable city. The policies are broken down into each of the three S’s. The policies that are most clearly laid out relate to building the housing supply. It is clear that Shane comes from a background similar to my own, and that housing supply is what he has thought about the most when it comes to housing affordability. As the book starts to talk about tenant protections, the lines of thought seem less clear and the passages are filled with more jargon. However, even these nascent policy ideas helped me round out my own thinking about housing affordability.
Most importantly, The Affordable City makes the case that tenants rights advocates and housing supply advocates need to come together and support one another to ensure there is enough political will supporting housing affordability policies. Cities need tenant protections and new housing to ensure that current residents aren’t displaced and that housing costs grow slower than inflation.
The different housing advocacy groups need to be working together to craft policies that work to achieve all of the housing goals simultaneously. In some cases, this might mean not upzoning parcels that already have naturally occurring affordable housing or supporting some rent control. But it also means that any rent control initiative needs to be structured in a way to ensure that it doesn’t create a constraint on future housing development.
The task for any community organizer working toward a more affordable city is to build the bridges between YIMBYs and those most at risk of displacement. Here in California, a lot of work is being done at the state level to marry the policy goals of the two groups (see the YIMBY support for SB 466, which would allow for rent control on newer buildings than allowed currently.) However, at the local level we haven’t yet seen the same coming together of the different advocacy groups. But without joint advocacy, neither group has enough political might to push through any policies that help create a more affordable city.
The Affordable City is required reading for anyone working for housing affordability. It provides the blueprint we need to bring together all of the different groups working in this space. I gave away my first copy of the book to the head of a local tenant union, and I plan to buy more copies to help spread the good word. It’s just that vital of a book if we hope to make our cities more affordable for everyone.