Robert Venturi, the Covid Pandemic, and ADUs

What do you do if you live in an iconic, 1,800-square-foot gem of a house and your grown children want to move back in with you because there’s a pandemic? If you’re David Lockhard and your Robert Venturi house in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood has been featured on a postage stamp, you’re not going to build an addition.

Image courtesy of the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

You might, though, consider erecting another small building somewhere out of the way on your property. According to a February 4 column by Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron, that’s exactly what Lockhard did.

Lockhard bought the house (which the architect had designed for his mother) when his youngest child left for college. Lockhard’s wife had died, and he pictured himself living there alone. But by the height of the pandemic lockdowns, six family members had joined him.

Eventually they left again. But Lockhard knew there would be other times when he would have visitors and want more space. His mother was 94 years old and probably wouldn’t remain in her New Hampshire house much longer, and he had had hopes for grandchildren. So he hired architects Juliet Fajardo and Donna Lisle, who designed a low, wooden, Japanese-inspired house for the far corner of his acre lot.

That was the easy part.

ADUs: Benefits and Barriers

In zoning language, Lockhard’s backyard house would be an “ADU”—an accessory dwelling unit. A small house or apartment on the grounds of a larger home, ADUs—which can also be garage apartments, tiny houses, or attic flats—have many benefits, Saffron says:

With more multigenerational families, more blended families, and more boomerang kids, the basic single-family home no longer suits everyone. Many believe ADUs can make it easier for older people to stay with their families and age in place.

She adds that ADUs have a role in addressing the affordable housing shortage by increasing low-cost rentals, especially in suburban areas where new large apartment buildings may not fit in.

Philadelphia legalized ADUs in 2012. But Saffron reports that not a single one has been approved for construction. She attributes this to “maddeningly complex” laws and the requirement that an applicant go through many rounds of review.

But obstacles to ADUs are bigger than Philadelphia. Architectural scholar and law professor Sara Bronin points out that with its plenitude of size constraints, minimum lot size requirements, parking stipulations, and regulations about who can live in ADUs, our entire zoning system erects barriers to adding even low-impact density to the housing mix. Lockhard promised the Chestnut Hill Community Association not to list his on Airbnb—and he had a lot of money to spend—but he’s still jumping through regulatory hoops.

ADUs in Swarthmore?

ADUs are permitted in 98 of the 350 towns in the Philadelphia area, according to the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission.

With a narrow exception for caregivers, Swarthmore is not one of them.

This town does have them, though. Before the 1970s, when our zoning code was written, residents built them legally, and people are still permitted to live in those. A friend of mine lives in a former carriage house, and other residents make their homes in apartments over garages. I’m not sure many people notice them, let alone mind them.

Swarthmore’s comprehensive and thoughtful Aging-in-Place Task Force report (2015) called for the borough to re-legalize ADUs, both to provide income streams to make it easier for seniors to stay in their homes and as small dwellings for a caregiver or an elderly relative. In response, the borough legalized ADUs in the form of “caregiver suites” by special exception to the zoning code. So far, one has been built.

The last time the ADU issue was formally discussed in the Swarthmore Planning Commission was 2018. Since then, the affordability problem has only gotten worse. It might be time to reconsider whether they could benefit our town more broadly, offering relatively affordable rental options for some and income for others.

Saffron’s column shows that legalizing ADUs isn’t enough to get them built. And zoning regulations would need to be thoughtfully designed to provide safeguards but not barricades. But if the town decides it wants them, legalization would be a place to start.

 The Affordable Swarthmore blog is taking a vacation in August. See you in September!

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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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“Everyone Can Reap the Benefit”: Delaware County’s Housing Plan

When I first started looking into what other communities were doing to address the housing affordability crisis, my research took me west and north.

California and Minneapolis are well-known for using zoning changes as a tool to provide more reasonably priced housing. Connecticut and Massachusetts are actively working toward that goal as well. My uncle recently sent me this optimistic story from Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. The crowded tourist town is permitting property owners to rebuild some commercial spaces with up to 20 housing units if at least a quarter of them are deeded “affordable.” The proposal sailed through the town meeting.

(There are, unfortunately, cautionary Massachusetts stories too, like this one about wealthy suburban towns willing to forgo state grants rather than build more housing near transit hubs—transit oriented development being central to Republican governor Charlie Baker’s Housing Choice plan.)

What’s Happening Locally?

After learning about what was happening elsewhere, I started reaching out locally to see who is working on affordability closer to home.

I met with two staff members of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), who explained that they are at the very beginning of their work on housing affordability. Learning of Swarthmore’s Task Force on Development and Affordability, they offered their support.

The DVRPC staffers sent me links to articles on “missing middle” housing—like duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes—from the American Planning Association and Zillow; to their own study of how multifamily housing benefits communities; and to a report on how mixed-use development and a diversity of housing types helps make communities resilient.

Then they connected me to staff in the governmental offices of Delaware County.

Rebecca Ross, Principal Planner, worked on Delco’s comprehensive 2020 housing plan. This plan stresses the importance of housing diversity, urging all 49 municipalities to develop different types of housing at different price points.

Noting that local zoning often favors single-family homes, the plan encourages missing middle housing and promotes accessory dwelling units, a.k.a. ADUs, in-law apartments, or granny flats.

The Delco plan explains how increasing housing variety helps more prospective home buyers to enter the housing market. Smaller homes at lower price points enable more people to

build equity, eventually moving “up the ladder” of housing as their needs change. Allowing people to add ADUs to their properties and offer them for rent also provides a potential income source for homeowners, which could help alleviate costs.

Much of the county’s work on housing focuses on income-qualified projects that are eligible for federal, state, and county funding. But Delco is beginning to pay more attention to “attainable housing”—that is, market-rate housing for first-time home buyers, younger families, and middle-income earners.

Ross said she saw Swarthmore’s task force as a useful response to “a growing, ongoing need for our communities to look more holistically” at housing overall.

“No one community should be bearing the brunt of high housing prices,” she said. “And no one community should bear the brunt of disinvestment.”

If municipalities across the county work together, Ross said, “Everyone can reap the benefit.”

What Else Is Happening in Delco?

Ross and her colleague Sarah Carley pointed me to other local communities that are tackling the affordability problem. Mostly these places have different situations and populations than Swarthmore (more land, more people, less wealth). Phoenixville’s new Council on Affordable Housing is working on public-private partnerships for new development and is developing a grant program to help low-income buyers afford homes. Upper Chichester is experimenting with land banks. Media, which has experienced its own explosion in housing costs—has a new group addressing affordability.

On the one hand, I had hoped to see more efforts to alleviate the housing crisis.

On the other hand, it’s exciting—and a little sobering—that what we do here in Swarthmore can serve as a model for our neighbors.

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