A friend recently asked me what policies I would put in place to address housing affordability?  This came up after an exchange of emails on the screwy way that folks calculate housing affordability as a percentage of gross income.  I think that is a good way to measure how much housing in sprawl costs, but it does not take into account things like the cost of transportation. For a more thorough exploration of this problem of lousy metrics I recommend the work of Scott Bernstein and the capable folks at the Center for Neighborhood Technology.  Their Housing+Transportation Index is particularly good.  http://www.cnt.org/tcd/projects/ht/

So what policies would I put in place to solve a problem that is poorly defined and badly measured?

Zero. If the game is rigged, why would the score matter?

What policies would I put in place to reform the culture of building?  That's actually a question I would rather answer, (even though nobody asked it.) Here's a list of those reforms with the likely level of authority needed to implement each measure in parentheses:

• Eliminate off-street parking minimums. (Local)

• Up-zone any parcel that is limited to one dwelling unit to four units plus 35% of conditioned space as workspace as of right.  I think spending time and calories fighting to get ADU's as-or-right is a waste of resources.  The goal is too timid, a half measure that will bring out all the same NIMBY's anyway with a fraction of the benefit. (Local)

• Revise the FHA, FAnnie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage underwriting requirements for 30 year loans to reflect the 4 unit/35% workspace frame.

• Eliminate the mortgage interest deduction. It is a moral hazard. (Federal)

• Get municipal building departments out of the business of issuing building permits for buildings for which they bear no liability. (State)

• Open the licensing of Architects to anyone with a contractor's license or with four years experience in a skilled trade, who can pass the exam. (State)

• Eliminate the upfront fees charged for new construction or renovation work by utility companies, public or private.  They can roll the cost of their administrative, engineering, and inspection staff into the operating budgets approved by each state's utility commission and recovered through the rates they are allowed to charge. (State)

• Get the SEC to complete the Rules for crowd sourced investments in real estate for non-accredited investors (Federal)

• Pitch John Oliver on a piece pointing out how ridiculous it is to believe that anyone is entitled to stable or  ever-increasing  real estate value. (some guy who knows John Oliver's producer)

Sometimes to build something decent you have to go through a really painful exercise of re-writing the local zoning code.

You could limit your brain damage to negotiating a re-write of the zoning code for just your site.  Lots of municipalities have rules for this on their books which allow for greater flexibility in site planning in return for higher quality design.  You can rewrite the rules for your site to you if you apply for something called a Planned Development Permit (PD) or Planned Unit Development (PUD).  This extra step can be frustrating if what you are proposing to build is completely in line with the town's big picture policy documents like the General Plan or the Comprehensive Plan,  it's just out of sync with the more specific Zoning Code of Development Standards.  Being inline with the big picture but out of line with the small-bore rules is tough.  The staff gets nervous and you get a heightened level of attention and scrutiny while the folks building schlocky snout houses, McMansions and regrettable strip retail get a pass because they are doing what the small bore rules in the zoning code require.

If you get your rewrite of the rules adopted as a PD or PUD you may be surprised when the local fire marshal shows up and tells you that they are removing the parking from the curb in front of your project.  And that's what's wrong with the PD/PUD.  It is a half measure that puts the developer/builder through a protracted negotiation with the staff and planning commission that still leaves room for a stunning and arbitrary decision by the fire marshall or the public works director after the project is built.

If you want greater certainty, build in places that already have the code in place that allows what you want to build as-of-right.  If the local zoning is messed up and out of whack with the big picture policies of your town, push to get the zoning code and the development standard brought in line, particularly if you intend to build more than one project in a place that you care about.  The best place to find the open source tools needed to rewrite a zoning code so that you can build walkable urbanism is The Center for Applied Transect Studies (CATS).  While that is certainly an extremely geeky name, they are providing Excellent Free Stuff from Smart People.  You can download the latest version of the SmartCode (Version 9.2).  The SmartCode is a framework that is already in place in many communities along with a host of interesting SmartCode modules you can use in addition to the base SmartCode.  All this great free stuff is available for download as  PDF documents and in editable files for Excel, Adobe InDesign, and Word.

http://transect.org/

There are also a ton of great photographs , drawings and diagrams.  It is a great resource that deserves your attention.

A 17 minute video on Urban Transect Theory https://vimeo.com/40099153.  There are lots of other Transect videos up on YouTube.  Please post comments with your favorites.

If you know Architect and urbanist Stephen A. Mouzon, you probably know what I mean.  He's a guy who has a lot of great ideas and observations to share and it seems like his mind is always running three paragraphs ahead of his mouth.  It can be real work to talk shop with Steve.  But I find that more often than not, it is completely worth the effort required.

In 2007 Steve published A Living Tradition - Architecture of the Bahamas.  I think this book was a real breakthrough for it's introduction of a framework for thinking about the pieces of a building.  On all the common building elements from the wall base, to door and windows, to porch columns and eaves, Steve starts out by stating WE DO THIS BECAUSE and then give the reason why those piece of the building need to be arranged and ordered in a certain way.  Then he illustrates a spectrum from  the basic to the fancy, his vernacular to classical spectrum with line drawings showing three levels of treatment; Organic, Median, and Refined for each element.  Below each example he lists what matters and what doesn't matter in the delivery of each example. Then you get 12 very nice color photos showing how that element shows up in real life in buildings in the Bahamas.

This approach to picking a consistent level of grammar for your building, deciding how plain or how fancy you want to build and staying within that zone is excellent.  I hope that Steve will post a comment letting folks know where they can get ahold of this book in hardcopy or in an e-book version.  (Powell's and Amazon show the book as out of stock, etc.)

A Living Tradition is a very ambitious book covering a lot of territory.  It covers some topics in much greater detail than others.  Steve continues to make me crazy with his habit of inventing proper nouns for pretty much everything he is trying to explain.  I mean the guy cannot help but Capitalize Stuff, which I find more than a little distracting.  It would bother me more if what he had to say was not so thought provoking.