Exclusionary Zoning and Recode

Exclusionary zoning restricts the production of new housing and caps the number of people who can live in a desirable urban area.  The wealthy outbid the poor for homes, and high prices and economic exclusion ensue.

For more than a century, municipalities across the country have crafted zoning ordinances that seek to limit multifamily (read: affordable) housing within city limits. Such policies, known as exclusionary zoning, have led to increased racial and social segregation, which a growing body of research indicates limits educational and employment opportunities for low-income households. 

Take a look at the Recode Map 2, which shows great swaths of single family zoning (light yellow.) The orange you do see is mainly what is already built. In this proposed zoning map, development of new multifamily housing of any size has been largely relegated to the six commercial corridors:  Broadway, Magnolia, Western, Central, Chapman Highway, and Kingston Pike (strands of pink.)  You will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere in the city where Recode would allow construction of new multifamily by right.

MPC says that Recode opens all kinds of opportunities for development of multifamily housing along the mixed used corridors.  However, the properties along these corridors are among the most expensive within the city, high enough to make unaffordable any housing built on them.  And not every renter may want to live on a busy street.  By just looking at the map, MPC’s vision of a car-dependent, “suburbanized” central district is plain to see. Small multifamily housing plays a very small part within this vision.

The NAACP Housing Committee has expressed concern that Recode Knoxville will move the city to even greater exclusive single family housing zoning within the central sector of Knoxville by denying the right of constructing affordable small multifamily housing. Over time and through this highly restrictive zoning, Knoxville will follow the pattern of other cities in which the wealthy move back into the central city, the existing residents are displaced, and the lower income cannot afford to live in the central city.

Restricting nearly all of Knoxville’s central residential districts to single-family homes will inflate housing costs and rents, thus increasing inequity.  Neighborhoods will sort themselves out by class and race.  Such zoning will displace long-standing residents by pricing them out of their owned or rented homes.  Without affordable housing and transportation, it becomes even more difficult for working people to improve their lots in life, and more people become homeless.

Zoning in and by itself does not solve affordable housing.  Other policies are needed to encourage affordable housing development within downtown and throughout the city.  Yet zoning is fundamental.  Restricting neighborhoods to only single family homes will over time exclude affordable housing in the central areas of Knoxville because it excludes multifamily housing.

City policymakers have an obligation to carefully reassess restrictions on housing according to who wins and who loses, with special attention given to the people with the fewest resources.

The evidence seen from the experience of other cities is irrefutable. Knoxville can become an equitable and affordable city, or it can accelerate Knoxville down the proposed Recode path to exclusivity.  It cannot do both.

A City of Cost-Burdened Renters

Renters make up 53% of Knoxville’s population.  The increased demand for rental properties and their limited supply, along with the lingering effects of foreclosures, demographic changes, and a decline in the rate of renters transitioning to owning, have led to higher rents. In turn, rising rental prices have outpaced wage increases and inflation across America, leading to a growing number of rent- burdened households.

Workers find it difficult to purchase a suitable home or rent an affordable apartment close to their places of employment. Overall, employee wages are not growing fast enough to keep pace with the county’s rising housing costs.  Between 2000 and 2015 in Knoxville,  

• Home prices up 9.8% 
• Rental prices up 15.1% 
• Wages up 2.3%

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a household is considered “cost burdened” when residents spend more than 30% of their monthly income on housing costs, which includes rent/mortgage payments, insurance, utilities, and taxes.  In Knoxville, 44% of the rental households are cost burdened.

The number of renter households continues to grow along with their cost burdens.  As of September 2018, average rent for an apartment in Knoxville, TN was $907, a 3.75% increase from last year when the average rent was $873.

One bedroom apartments in Knoxville rent for $796 a month on average (a 2.76% increase from last year) and two bedroom apartment rents average $918 (a 2.51% increase from last year).   A minimum wage worker can afford housing at $377 per month.

The growing number of rent-burdened households suggests that a rising share of Knoxville residents may be experiencing serious financial fragility. Unless the current national trends toward increasing inequity and a dwindling middle class get turned around, we should expect an even greater rise in rent-burdened households along with more renters.

Policymakers should be aware of the increase in rent burdens.  The lack of affordable housing limits household consumption and reduces the economic mobility and financial resiliency of our community’s families.

In 2015, the national African-American home ownership rate was 41.2 percent, compared to the rate of Euro-American rate of 64%.  Put another way, African-American homeownership is as low as it was when housing discrimination was legal back in 1968.  That means 60% of African rent.  Segregation is alive and well in America.

Recode Knoxville needs to help define the pathway toward construction of more affordable housing throughout the city.  A greater supply of housing will moderate rising housing costs.  Increasing the rental housing supply, from duplex to high rise, begins with increasing city-wide the density of housing allowed by zoning. 

Renters are woefully under-represented on City Council, the MPC, and the Recode Advisory Stakeholder Council. The neighborhood groups largely represent the concerns of homeowners and often resist the inclusion of rental development within their neighborhoods.  In absence of adequate renter representation on decision making and stakeholder groups, the City must make a special effort to recognize the need for more and affordable rental housing throughout the city.  After all, renters are the majority.

Transit Oriented Development has many other benefits besides increased density and more affordable housing:  a strong transit system, healthier and more vibrant communities, attraction of talent, and climate mitigation.  Transforming the way our City develops and functions is a long-term enterprise, but removing the zoning barriers to multifamily housing by right and Transit Oriented Development opens the way for these infrastructural changes to occur so that we may reap its many benefits.

Zoning for Climate Change

Climate change unfolds as the largest game changer our city faces in terms of how we live and move.  We witness an ever more massive reordering of our civilization as we move deeper into the age of climate change.  The policies and infrastructure that the City puts in place today will have a large impact on how well Knoxville weathers the worsening storms of climate change.

Future plans need to focus both on reducing our carbon emissions and to adapting to the all-encompassing effects of climate change.  If we imagine the future will resemble the past, then we dangerously ignore the reality of climate change and put ever more people in harm’s way.  It is critically important that we align our zoning map with Transit Oriented Development so that the City has the bone structure we need to move us toward a zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Zoning codes do affect our community’s carbon emissions.  Compact neighborhoods typically generate 20-40% less vehicle travel per capita than conventional, lower-density neighborhoods. An EPA found travel to a building often uses as much energy as is consumed in the building. Residents reduce total building and transportation energy consumption 64% by living in an attached energy efficient (green) home in an urban location, and by 75% by living in a multifamily energy efficient home, compared with the same household living in a typical detached single-family house in an auto-dependent suburb. Housing location and type have greater impacts on total energy use than do vehicle or home energy efficiency.

Transit Oriented Development has many other benefits besides climate mitigation:  affordable housing, strong transit systems, vibrant communities, and attraction of talent.  Transforming the way our City develops is a long-term enterprise, but removing the zoning barriers to multifamily housing by right and Transit Oriented Development opens the way for these infrastructural changes to occur so that we may reap the benefits.

Good news is that many within the city, especially our mobility agencies, understand and value transit-oriented development.  Increasing density along all of our transit corridors, as pictured by KAT in its comments, is the important step that only Recode Knoxville can take.  Coupled with city investments to make these same areas more equitable, walkable and bikable will both reduce carbon emissions and prepare our city for a climate changing world.

Did the City Get What it Bargained For in Recode?

In December 2016, the City Council approved the contract with Camiros, the Recode Knoxville consultant.  Let’s look at how the original agreement with the City has changed its purpose since then.    

             

The Camiros’ contract (beginning page 67) stated its understanding of the City’s vision, which the Recode process would advance:    

• "This (zoning) update should provide standards to guide the continued development and
  
  redevelopment of the city in a manner that uses resources efficiently and builds a strong, sustainable, walkable community."
• “Any new development based on the anticipated population increases should be compact and sustainable.” 
• “The City has acknowledged that more transportation choices coupled with compact, sustainable development improves the quality for Knoxville residents.  Good zoning can advance the goal of greater mobility options.” 
• “Transit-oriented development (TOD) requirements, tied to key transit hubs, help to increase public transit use and reduce vehicle miles traveled.  Zoning regulations must link to those initiatives so that as development grows around new investment, the City’s return on the investment grows as well.”

These were the understandings between Camiros and the City back in 2016.  Fast forward to the October 2018 Recode draft. The stated purpose and goals no longer include the contractual agreement’s stated understanding of resource efficiency, sustainable, walkable, transit-oriented development, compact development, population growth, transportation, mobility options, complete streets, public transit, reduce vehicle miles traveled.

At the recent City Council workshop on Recode, two of the four City Council members who were on the Council when it approved the Camiros contract back in 2016 expressed confusion, and we can understand why.   The recent drafts presented by MPC have strayed far from the City’s vision of sustainability.  While mixed used is now allowed by right along the major transit corridors, the ‘preservation of neighborhood character’ seems to have thoroughly trumped the other goals for sustainability, compact development, walkability, and a robust public transportation system.

KAT wants and needs increased density throughout its bus system.  Moving toward greater density along the KAT bus routes will bring us closer to the original sustainability goals that started the whole Recode process.  Specifically, Recode can,

• Revise the recode zoning map to provide opportunities to build small multifamily housing (2-20 units) by right (RN-4) within ¼ mile of all KAT bus routes. 
•  Provide ample opportunities for small multi-family (RN-4) within ½ mile surrounding development nodes and other major intersections.
• Reduce the required lot size for duplexes within single-family districts and RN-4.
• Develop design standards for new construction that ensure new housing types are consistent with existing housing.