Being Intentional About Housing

Curbed: When a New High-Rise Means Less Housing

In the race to build more housing to address our national housing crisis, many community members are wary of developers simply erecting high rise apartment towers on every block. When it comes down to it, we need more housing–as much of it as we can get. So while we shouldn’t necessarily fear high rises, we should ensure that they are at least doing their job of creating additional housing units. Increasingly though, this is not the case.

When a high rise goes up in the place of an existing three to five story complex, we’d expect the total number of apartment units to increase. When the new units are more than twice the square footage of the existing units though, it can result in a net loss of housing, leaving the community worse off than before.

There are plenty of other ways to create more housing that don’t involve building giant luxury apartment towers anyway, and adding housing doesn’t have to come at the expense of the character of the neighborhood or community. Mixed-use developments can add housing and revitalize our downtowns while preserving their charm. Development types such as cottage courts, ADUs, duplexes and infill housing can blend seamlessly into a community, even in single-family neighborhoods.

Ultimately, we need to be intentional and conscientious of the housing needs of a community, regardless of what type of development we are building. New developments (as well as retrofits and renovations of existing ones) need to create more units, every time. We are past the age where new buildings can be frivolously planned and put up just for the sake of making a buck. We need to build for the betterment of our communities, not for the pursuit of profit.