A different kind of suburb
Potential housing crisis fix allows multiple units to replace single-family homes
A potential remedy for New York’s housing crisis — and the similar crises in other coastal cities — is on display in this small New Jersey.
Palisades Park is one of the few places in the New York metropolitan area where it is legal to replace a single-family home with something other than another single-family home. Over the past few decades, developers have bulldozed many of the old houses and replaced them with bigger, fancier duplexes.
There have been some growing pains, but many more people are now able to live in Palisades Park. Since 1990, the population has increased by 40%. The main street has revived and flourished, becoming a destination for Korean food. And the growth has allowed Palisades Park to reduce its tax rates.
One of the most important causes of the region’s housing crisis is the dearth of construction in communities around New York City, where most residential land is reserved exclusively for single-family homes.
It is illegal to build more housing on that land, and so it has become impossible to provide enough.
The homes get larger, and the prices go up, but the number of residents does not increase.
Opponents of allowing more homes in suburban communities have sought to scare voters — so far, quite successfully — by insisting any changes in building rules will end in skyscrapers.
Last year, after New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, proposed some minor leniencies to allow a little more housing construction, one Long Island politician said the plan would “turn Nassau County into New York
City.”
Palisades Park shows that a little more density can deliver big benefits. A quirk in the town’s zoning code, which dates back to 1939, allows two homes on most residential lots — but no more than two. The reasons for that unusual provision are lost to history, and for a long time it didn’t really matter.
But in the 1980s, Korean immigrants began moving to the area, and as demand increased, developers discovered that they could turn a single house into two homes.
The new duplexes are typically both more valuable than the homes they replace. That has allowed Palisades Park to cut property tax rates even as its budget has increased. In the early 2000s, Palisades Park and the adjacent town of Leonia, where it is illegal to build duplexes, both taxed homes at roughly the same rate. Last year, Palisades Park’s property tax rate was less than half of Leonia’s.
Allowing more density does not mean that existing homes are immediately torn down and replaced. It will take a few more decades before the supply of single-family homes in Palisades Park is exhausted. Edward Pinto, a co-director of the housing center at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank, has found that a typical annual rate of redevelopment is about 2% of the parcels in a given area that are legally available and economically attractive.
Like many proponents of increased housing construction, Pinto used to focus on the need to make room for larger apartment buildings. But on a visit to Palisades Park a few years ago, he was struck by how the town had changed.
His childhood home had been replaced by a duplex, as had many of the other homes. It caused a shift in his thinking — a recognition of the value of what he calls “light-touch density,” meaning the replacement of single-family homes with a few more units.
One key benefit is that this kind of construction doesn’t require large-scale government coordination or investment.
Versions of this idea are increasingly popular in other parts of the United States. While the specifics vary, the common theme is allowing the construction of a little more housing in areas previously reserved for single-family homes. California passed a law in 2021 allowing the construction of up to four units on singlefamily lots, although local governments have found other ways to stymie development. California has been more successful in allowing homeowners to add an apartment to any residential property. More than 80,000 of these “accessory dwelling units” have been permitted since 2016.
The cities of Minneapolis and Charlotte, North Carolina, and the states of Washington, Montana and Maine are among those that eliminated most single-family zoning in recent years. Communities across the country have made it easier to build accessory dwelling units.
It is understandable that residents like their communities and fear change. A few years ago, Halyna Lemekh, a professor of sociology at St. Francis College who has lived in Palisades Park for two decades, decided to study her own community, interviewing dozens of residents about its transformation. “Many people expressed their resentment that it became a citylike place with less greenery,” she said. “This wasn’t just a face-lift. It’s a very different place from what they knew as children.”