We need to build a lot more housing in our cities
Americans everywhere are getting a very real lesson in the concepts of supply and demand. Gasoline, used cars, food and more — manufacturing constraints, input shortages and war have constrained the supply of goods, and sent prices up.
If you’re wondering why housing costs continue to soar, you need to look to supply, too.
By the end of 2021, Orlando had a record low number of homes for sale. The rental vacancy rate for multifamily housing is only about 5%.
Under-building is not just a recent phenomenon. According to the U.S. Census, the population of Central Florida increased about 1.5 times as fast as housing over the last decade.
It’s not letting up, either. The Orlando Economic Partnership forecasts that 1,500 people will move to Central Florida every week for the next decade. That means we need about 600 housing units built every single week just to keep up pace — not to mention the need to make up for lost ground.
For those who wonder if we really need to build more housing to contain costs, let me pose a question: if overnight, half of the housing in Orlando disappeared in a snap, would that affect the cost of housing? If so, why wouldn’t the inverse be true? Supply matters.
So, how do we get more housing? First things first: we should legalize it.
In large swaths of residential land in our region, it is illegal to build anything except for a detached, single-family home, which is the most expensive form of housing. And I am not just talking about rural areas 20 miles from downtown Orlando. I’m talking about single-family home mandates (called “exclusionary zoning”) in the core of our cities — places like College Park, Azalea Park, Dr. Phillips, and Winter Park. Arbitrary, government-mandated limits on housing density in the middle of our cities drive up the cost of living (and, by the way, they’re terrible for the environment, as they push sprawling developments to the furthest corners of the region).
“Density” isn’t a dirty word. In fact, it’s our only way forward.
Neighborhoods near jobs and transit must allow and promote more housing density, or else we will never generate enough supply to offset the large and growing demand. We need more duplexes, more four-plexes, more garden apartments, and more mid-rises. We need more tall buildings — and way fewer surface parking lots — in and near downtown. We have to diversify the types of housing available to residents; our cities and our neighborhoods cannot be frozen in amber.
We also have to speed up the time it takes to build in the core of our cities. Local leaders sure love process. This community meeting, that community review, this volunteer board, that commission hearing. You could go paint your single-family home bright pink tomorrow, but if you wanted to turn it into a duplex, you would need permission from a half-dozen unelected boards, and even then you better hope you don’t look at your district commissioner the wrong way.
Every piece of a process sounds fine in a vacuum — until you add them all up and throw them into the middle of a housing crisis.
On May 16, the Biden Administration released a series of federal actions meant to stem housing costs across the country. The very first policy that they name is to structure federal programs in a way that rewards local governments that update their exclusionary and restrictive land use policies. Kudos to the federal government for trying to encourage progress in this way, though ultimately it is our cities and counties that need to step up to the challenge.
Every government-mandated constraint on housing supply should be on the table for reform. Exclusionary zoning maps, minimum lot sizes, subjective appearance reviews, minimum parking requirements, height restrictions, unrepresentative neighborhood reviews, and more — all of these must be reconsidered, keeping in mind that there is an affordability crisis at hand.
I hope that our local mayors and commissioners know that the President of the United States wants to see our progress on this front. More importantly, the people need it. You should treat it like a crisis, because your constituents do.
Austin Valle is a Chapter Lead of Orlando YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”), an organization that advocates for housing affordability, smart growth and urbanist principles in Central Florida. He is also an Orange County Soil & Water Conservation District Supervisor.