Pittsburgh Will Force Private Developers To Build Affordable Housing
“Pittsburgh is expanding on a remarkably straightforward approach to creating new affordable housing: Force private developers to build it.
On Tuesday, the Pittsburgh City Council unanimously passed an ordinance expanding preexisting requirements that developers include below-market-rate units in their projects to more areas of the city. Now, builders of 20 or more units in Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill and Bloomfield neighborhoods must offer at least 10 percent of those new units at affordable rates to lower-income buyers and renters.
These types of “inclusionary zoning” policies are common across New Jersey, California, and the Washington, D.C., metro area. Supporters argue they ensure that existing residents see some benefit from new, luxury developments going up in their neighborhoods.
“There are imminent developments that could reshape our neighborhood, and we want to be able to preserve a balanced approach to development that ensures people of all income levels can find a home,” said John Rhoades of the Polish Hill Community Association to TribLIVE earlier this month.
Critics of inclusionary zoning say that even the best-designed policies have a poor record of creating new housing while raising overall housing costs. The theory is that developers raise rents on market-rate units to cover the lost revenue from the discounted, affordable apartments they’re required to build.
“It effectively becomes taxation on housing,” says Jim Eichenlaub, executive director of the Builders Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, to Reason. “You’re taxing those other units to pay for the subsidy.” Eichenlaub adds that if the market couldn’t support those higher rents, then the project probably wouldn’t have been built in the first place.”