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Ben McAdams, who served as Mayor of Salt Lake County and in the U.S. House of Representatives, said the housing crisis could be greatly addressed if a combination of affordable and market rate housing were developed on city sites.

He said revenue from other development – where the city would continue to own the land and get a share of the profit plus enjoy revenue from land now on the tax rolls – could fund social services and infrastructure that also could be targeted for closing the wealth and homeownership gap found in cities throughout America.

“Understanding data that can help communities see what they have and how they can use it to solve some of their greatest challenges,” he said.

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Ben McAdams, who served as Mayor of Salt Lake County and in the U.S. House of Representatives, a Senior Fellow at the Sorenson Impact Center, housed at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. 

The center, with partners, is Putting Assets to Work Incubator to identify, map, and plan uses for underutilized government owned assets in various cities.

While mayor, McAdams worked with Urban3 to identify $13 billion in underutilized assets, such as city parking lots and obsolete properties, that could be worth up to $45 billion if co-developed with the private sector and Salt Lake City. 

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To address the inequity, South Bend revamped its zoning ordinance to allow more Missing Middle -- include duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes, courtyard apartments, bungalow courts, townhouses, multiplexes, and live/work units – housing that tends to be more affordable and better at serving diverse communities. 

South Bend won, in 2021, the 15th annual Richard H. Driehaus Award from the Form-Based Codes Institute at Smart Growth America for its new code aimed at addressing housing and investment inequity.

To further repair areas damaged by redlining and lack of private investment dating back to the 1960s, South Bend will grant $20,000 to cover the cost of connecting a property to the main sewer line – for homes built in urban infill areas.

Another ordinance prohibits extending new sewer lines into the County, to prevent subsidizing sprawl development into the fringe.

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“The output of the data showed suburban development doesn’t pay – it’s a potential revenue looser,” Tim Corcoran, city of South Bend, said. 

“Our urban areas were generating tremendously more value than suburban areas.

“Redlining devalued some urban areas, but the numbers prove that even some of our poorer neighborhoods were generating more value per acre than some of the wealthy areas.”

Corcoran said too many cities believe sprawled growth will help rather than deplete their budgets.

Cities create inequity by spending less on core areas viewed as decaying or too poor to spur investment.

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Tim Corcoran is the Director of Planning & Community Resources in the Department of Community Investment for the City of South Bend, IN.

And yes, for the record, he was hired by former mayor/presidential candidate turned U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

South Bend hired Urban3 to explore the disparity that happens when cities spend heavily on sprawl-based development rather than focusing on urban infill and supporting the more valuable existing and potential development in the urban core.

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Steve O’Connor, MBA’s Senior Vice President for Affordable Housing Initiatives, said data proves out vast inequity and data will be used to produce quantitative and qualitative measures of Convergence Columbus’ success.

 

“Part of what we’re trying to do is raise awareness around tools in the marketplace now -- programs for lenders to advance affordiblity,” he said.

Think of it like college scholarships that go unused.

There are down payment assistance and other programs that consumers aren’t aware of, that even some real estate pros aren’t aware of.”

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The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) represents more than 2,200 member companies and is the national association representing all facets of the real estate finance MBA’s Home for All Pledge represents the “industry's long-term commitment on a sustained and holistic approach to address racial inequities in housing.”

The effort to ensure fair, equitable and responsible lending and affordable rental housing for minorities includes place-based Convergence programs. Converge started in Memphis in 2020 and added Columbus in 2021.

 “These initiatives are about getting direct stakeholder input into the design and solutions.

These are pilots, we are experimenting with place-based solutions that come from the community. 

We know what’s been tried hasn’t worked well enough.

There’s a 30-point gap in home ownership between white and black/Hispanic households,” Steve O’Connor, MBA’s Senior Vice President for Affordable Housing Initiatives, said of Convergence’s role in narrowing that gap.

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Starting in 2019, the federal government began sharing mortgage data used to measure how well applicants manage their debt and how much of the property’s overall value is being financed. Those are two of the biggest factors lenders use before making a home loan. 

The Markup used the data to show continuing inequity even a half century after The Fair Housing Act of 1968 made it illegal to deny someone housing based on race or other protected categories.

“We found 89 metropolitan areas, spanning every region of the country, where lenders were more likely to deny people of color conventional mortgages than White people with similar financial characteristics,” The Markup reported, when it analyzed local data along with national numbers. 

“Of the biggest metropolitan areas, Chicago, had one of the widest disparities: Black applicants there were 150 percent more likely to be denied than White applicants.”

Despite exhaustive reporting backed by independent expert data analysts, much of the lending industry has disputed The Markup’s findings.

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The Fair Housing Act of 1968 made it illegal to deny someone housing based on race or other protected categories. 

Despite the law, The Markup found, people of color continue to be denied mortgages at higher rates than their white counterparts.

“We found that nationwide, Black applicants are nearly twice as likely to be denied conventional mortgages as similarly qualified White applicants,” the report stated.

“Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American applicants are also more likely to be denied mortgages at higher rates than White ones, even when they have the same financial characteristics.”

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“All of those things add up over the course of a person’s lifetime and give us this massive wealth inequality,” Crislip, now Executive Director at The Richmond Forum, told the Mercury.

The Mercury underscored inequality by sharing U.S. Census Bureau stats that non-Hispanic White households had a median wealth of more than $139,000. 

“That compared with less than $13,000 for Black households and $20,000 for Hispanic households. 

A key factor, the report said, is that most non-Hispanic White households owned their homes,” the Mercury stated.

The Markup is a nonprofit newsroom of quantitative journalists that pursue meaningful, data-driven investigations.

In 2021, the team researched racial disparities in federal mortgage data.

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The Virginia Mercury, an independent, nonprofit online news organization, covered the generational negatives impacts that African American families are subject to because of inequity in lending.

The Mercury reported: “Because homeownership is central to creating wealth, the racial disparities in homeownership represent `the bedrock of wealth inequality in America and in Richmond,’ said Heather Mullins Crislip, then president of HOME, which provides classes and counseling for prospective homebuyers.”

The 2020 Mercury report shared painfully unjust data-proven facts shared by Crislip, noting  African Americans:

• Are far less likely than Whites to ever own a home.

• Buy their first home on average nine years later in life than Whites (and thus enjoy less appreciation in value).

• Are more likely to buy a home in a racially segregated area that won’t appreciate as much.

• Often pay more interest or other costs for their home loan.

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“We have to put density in our city because of the light rail station. Around the station, along the freeway that the rail line will hug – we have to make it all multifamily,” said Kyoko Matsumoto Wright, a REALTOR with Coldwell Banker Bain and mayor of Mountlake Terrace, reminding that density does not equal skyscraper height.

“I’d love to allow all single family to allow duplexes and ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units) at least. 

The issue is the older people, who have been here 40-50 years, they like the bedroom community. 

They vote. 

The younger, newer people who support a diverse housing inventory, they don’t (vote).”

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“I’m going to be the voice telling cities you’re going to have to rezone this and add density.  

Cities are fighting a lot of this stuff, but otherwise, nothing will be available to the majority of families,” said Kyoko Matsumoto Wright, a REALTOR with Coldwell Banker Bain and mayor of Mountlake Terrace. 

“I’d love to get rid of single-family housing (zoning), but I also know that politically, that is difficult.”

 

Mountlake Terrace is getting a light rail station and while that is raising prices, it also can create opportunity, in the vision of Matsumoto Wright – who serves or has served on local, regional and statewide affordable housing boards.

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Kyoko Matsumoto Wright is a REALTOR with Coldwell Banker Bain and mayor of 

Mountlake Terrace, a Snohomish County bedroom community of about 20,000 people located 13 miles from Seattle.

 

In her position as mayor and in her job as a marketer of homes, Matsumoto Wright is seeing numbers that are pricing people out of housing. 

Before interest rates rose, it was not uncommon to see residential listings selling for more than $200,000 over the asking price. 

She sold a relatively modest home, listed at $615,000, for $807,000. 

While those stats look great for sellers and their REALTORS, Matsumoto Wright is gravely concerned.

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Chris Collier, the Alliance for Housing Affordability Program Manager for the Housing Authority of Snohomish County, said statistics show that some of these people will have to move farther from jobs to find affordable rent, or some could go homeless.

 

“People of lesser means are being financially disadvantaged -- paying more for far less plus having no equity that they can take with them when they leave.  

They will carry that financial burden for their entire life,” he said.

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“The king’s share of land is reserved for single family housing,” said Chris Collier is the Alliance for Housing Affordability Program Manager for the Housing Authority of Snohomish County. 

“People ask if zoning is discriminatory, and I say `of course it is.’ It’s constraining our ability to provide adequate housing for all different types of backgrounds.

 

Collier said, adjusted for inflation, data shows the cost of housing in Snohomish County shot up more than 50 percent in the past two decades, while median household income rose less than 10 percent.

 

“More and more people are renting out of necessity and many of those people are disabled, immigrants, or minorities.

Their rents are rising at a pace far faster than their income,” he said.

 

 

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“Households with a person with a disability have lower income earning ability, people with limited English-speaking capability, females in a system where the glass ceiling still exists, seniors on fixed income – all of those elements lower a household’s earning potential,” said Chris Collier is the Alliance for Housing Affordability Program Manager for the Housing Authority of Snohomish County. 

“People with disabilities have much higher medical and related bills – data proves it.

That shouldn’t remove them from having the ability to own a home.” 

Collier is a fan of cities, counties and states that have or are considering abolishing single family housing and allowing at least low density, low-rise multifamily in those formerly exclusionary and monocultured zones.

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Chris Collier is the Alliance for Housing Affordability Program Manager for the Housing Authority of Snohomish County in the northern reaches of the Seattle metropolitan area.

With soaring house prices experienced from California to the Pacific Northwest, he has calculated that to buy a single-family home in Snohomish County, a household must earn $156,000 per year.

 

Collier said part of the problem is expensive housing and a scarcity of quality affordable housing. 

But to get the big picture of inequity, he said policymakers must study the things that limit people from earning enough to be competitive in the home ownership market.

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The unfair disparity blows up off the page when Joseph Minicozzi, AICP is the principal of Urban3, found the tiny’s dwelling’s assessed value jumped $266% from 2017-2021, but the roomy one in the luxury community went up only 126% in the same time period.

Making things even more unequal, the pricy house enjoyed a much lower assessment hike despite major renovations, while the tax-burdened one had zero upgrades.

 

“There is no way you could look at the data and see that this is reasonable, fair or equitable,” Minicozzi said. 

“The thing about (practicing) class bias and race bias is when that’s all you do, you don’t know you are wrong.

“Tax assessors are not bad people, but they are operating off old standards and habits, they are reticent to change and they under value the wealthy (residences) because they are terrified of wealthy people.”