How to Escape the Housing Crisis, With Jeff Speck
Today, Chuck is joined by Jeff Speck, a city planner, author, and principal of an urban design and consultancy firm. They discuss the ideas shared in Chuck’s book “Escaping the Housing Trap” and how those concepts play out in the real world, including examples from Jeff’s own work.
Their discussion covers a wide range of topics, including incremental zoning reform, the benefits and pitfalls of inclusive zoning, and how to finance small-scale housing.
-
Chuck Marohn 0:00
Hey, everybody. This is Chuck Marohn. Welcome back to the strung downs podcast. I don't even know how to introduce this one. My good friend Jeff Speck called me up and said, Hey, I read your book. I want to interview you about it. It was great. And I'm like, Well, I can't turn that down. So this is technically my podcast, but it's not going to be my podcast today. I'm going to give it over to Jeff. Jeff, welcome back to the strong arms podcast. You're like the host today, so go for it.
Jeff Speck 0:36
I didn't realize I was going to be the host, but I definitely want to talk to you about your book. The same thing happened when I read confessions of recovering engineer, which, as you know, I feel is one of the most important books written on that subject. Your earlier essay that became that book is the longest quote in walkable city, which is my best known book. You've always been very kind to interview me about my books, and today may end or may begin with an ask, which is when my next book comes out, I expect to be back?
Chuck Marohn 1:07
Yes, absolutely.
Jeff Speck 1:09
And we'll talk about that, and that's gonna be about a year from now, probably a little less than
Chuck Marohn 1:14
What is your next book?
Jeff Speck 1:16
I don't want to I don't want to detour. We can't yet, but we'll get to it. But I do want to focus on the fact that I read two books in pretty quick succession, and that was Nolan Gray's book, "Arbitrary Lines" and your book "Escaping the Housing Trap," which I thought were a really good pair, in a sense, but also the way I read these days is, gee. For the last five years or so, my wife has had a full time job. And the concession, which is many would many would say was not enough, is that I now, among other things, I now do all the dishes. So when I do the dishes, perfect, when I do the dishes, I listen to books, and I've managed I cannot look at the dishwasher without hearing the power broker in my head,
Chuck Marohn 2:05
the 40 hours or whatever,
Jeff Speck 2:07
63 hours power broker, yeah, but I've read a ton Thank goodness. You know, Twitter and and other blue sky and other social media really trashed my reading habits, and I'm probably like a lot of your colleagues and friends, and what saved them was audible and doing the dishes. I also, you know, take trips to New Hampshire and back on occasion, where we are finishing up building a cabin and other things. So I've had other opportunities to listen. But I listened to escaping the housing trap, and I was like, wow, I have to talk to Chuck about that. But then I realized, unfortunately, that I didn't take notes because I was just listening. That's the downside. That's the downside of audible. So during my younger son's Springboard diving practice this Saturday, I did flip through the book, which I also own, and I should say all of it to all of your and my readers, it's really important to buy the hard copy, as well as the obvious support support our publishers. But I took some notes, and it's kind of random. I think what I found really worth talking to you about. It isn't so much as I have questions as I have just some really interesting topics that you raised that I'd like to discuss with you. So let's do that.
Chuck Marohn 3:24
Let's do that. So we'll make this a discussion more than Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Speck 3:29
Let me ask you, have you, have you gotten a lot of great feedback over the book? Have you been organizing your public speaking around it? Are you still doing strong towns visits the way you used to? How has this book reoriented your your practice, or was it was a reaction to a reorientation of your practice?
Chuck Marohn 3:48
No, I think the first part is that this is the first book that I've written that became a best seller. So we it's not reflected in the cover yet, because we it might be in the newest ones if you bought it, yeah, it doesn't have national bestseller on it. I've got one on the wall that has national bestseller on the front. This book hit at the right time in the right way, with the right audience, where it's sold enough. And you know how this goes? You know, if you get being a national bestseller is a lot about, like, initial momentum. So when the book launched, it had a lot of pre sales, and that kind of put us up into this stratosphere. I did about nine months of book tour the month the book came out, for the next nine months. And you know, because you've done this too, when you're out on book tour and you're presenting the ideas. There's a lot this book is really thick, particularly the financial parts that I wrote, simplifying all that down into a way that you can explain to people is a huge challenge that you really should do before you write the book, after you write it, and you're trying to. Like, take all this stuff and present it. That took a number of iterations before I went out on the road, and when I did, I found right away that there were missing there were missing pieces.
The way this has affected us is we, last year, decided we need to do three, what we've called toolkits. And I think you can think of them as, like, implementation toolkits. So people would read the book, they would be like, Wow, my mind's blown. This is great. What do we do? And I'm like, well, that's like, what the last three chapters are. Like, what do you do? And like, yeah, I read that, but I'd like, what do I do? And what I started to realize is that the people needed even more bite sized steps. So we launched the first toolkit in January, February, about housing reform. So there's six, here's six reforms you can take to become a housing ready city. We've got the second toolkit coming out September ish, here we're doing the preliminary work for it right now. Here are the things you can do to make it easier for people to develop in your city. And then the third toolkit will be about finance. Here are the tools that you have as a local government that you can use to finance these affordable units at scale without losing money. You probably run into this too. Like, I wish I could rewrite the book today and make those three toolkits, like the like the bite size parts of those chapters, but you know, they're available for free on our the first ones available for free, and the rest of them will be too. So it's not like people have to pay to get that.
Jeff Speck 6:42
Yeah, so let me try and summarize, because a few things, of course, I was most interested in the last chapters and what can we do? Because most of the book's pretty damn bleak, right? So hearing positive opportunities, the first thing is changing the rules in a limited way every municipality and and key is that it's it's town by town, municipality by municipality. It's not state led. It's not federally led. I think we can't count on that anymore, certainly not in any universal way. The first step is to, in very strong towns fashion, incremental upzoning, each zone could automatically be allowed to receive one great gradient of density more so it's a single family neighborhood a lot of of course, a lot of community in a lot of communities. This is already happening, like with the laws in California and elsewhere, where, if you're single family, okay, you automatically now can be two family or have granny flats, right? Great, if you're two family, then what does that mean?
Clearly, the getting from wanting to do that to having it entitled in your zoning law is is more of a struggle, but there's only a lot of progressive communities I work in, like Somerville, Cambridge, etc, in Massachusetts, that are open to that. In fact, Cambridge went so far is to basically make six stories legal in every neighborhood. Yeah? Which is wild? Yeah, which is wild? Implementation, again, is going to be a little bit trickier. So the first step, and we don't need to, we don't need to chew it up much more than this. But the first step is to, as Nolan gray argues very effectively in arbitrary lines, the first step is to change the zoning in a in a limited way that might be people. Can
Chuck Marohn 8:34
I tell you where I first heard that the smart code so the early versions of the smart code I went this is
Jeff Speck 8:44
Which I worked on a little bit.
Chuck Marohn 8:45
I know you did. This is before I met you. This was like 2003 2004 Placemakers put on a conference in South Beach, Andres was speaking at it. I don't think you spoke at it, but Hazel was there and a bunch of other
Jeff Speck 9:02
'03 is when I left DPZ to go to the NEA, so.
Chuck Marohn 9:04
Okay, this is probably right about that time. I went down, because I'm like, I want to learn about this smart code thing. Like it seems like an answer to some of the problems I've got, and I'm listening to Andres go through and describe it, and he was talking about the the original smart code had a provision in it where every it was some, like, dumb number, every 25 years, you would jump a T zone. And he's like, this was not workable, so we got rid of it. But the idea is that, you know, over time, you would fill up and you would need to go to the next T zone. And I'm like, well, that that's genius. Like that underlying thought is
Jeff Speck 9:42
He was always, he's always been fascinated with the idea of molting and the way that, yeah, change. And I was actually quite interested in in escaping the housing trap. When you talk about the fundamental kind of mistake that JC Nichols made, right? JC Nichols is a hero to to many of us for creating, you know, kind of the best version of the American, you know, car centric, but, but ideal Garden City. So Country Club Plaza and the country club district surrounding it, and all the stuff that he, well, he helped to create. He created the ULI, right, the Urban Land Institute, right? There's a great book, JC, Nichols and the making of Country Club district. I believe that I've read, but it tells his whole story. You know, he's a bit of a hero to people who work with real estate developers, because he did a really great job of making the best American suburbs before they crashed in terms of quality. Yeah. But who you talk about how he's a villain, in a sense, for insisting on permanence and building to the terminal state immediately, right?
And I thought it was really funny in your book, because I don't know if this rang a bell with you, but he there's a quote you have in here where he said, How can we rest on our oars largely accept conditions as they are, be proud of our past achievements when billions of dollars of loss occur annually in the unnecessary building up and tearing down of large sections of our American towns and cities. Do you remember the famous Jefferson quote? No since famous for saying architecture is my delight, and putting up and pulling down one of my favorite amusements. It was a nice duality of Jefferson celebrating on his own private account, I would say, my Monticello and other places Jefferson celebrating what, what Jason Nichols despise, was despising.
But I do think that, you know, one of the great criticisms we have, we new urbanists have, of sprawl is A) that it's built to its terminal condition immediately, and B) it's actually built within a road network that will not allow it to grow because the sparse hierarchy, the dendritic road network with very few connections, and with, as we know, intersection density being one of the greatest correlators with with walkability and urbanity, that you can't put any more density in a sprawl plan, because it will choke and die on the traffic.
Chuck Marohn 12:24
Right, right? So can I? Can I make this personal for you? Yeah, because I feel like they're okay.
Jeff Speck 12:31
It's very personal for me.
Chuck Marohn 12:32
No, no, I want to ask you about Rosemary Beach, because you I got a tour from you when you won the the seaside prize. Part of doing that you were, you were kind enough to invite me. You gave a walking tour of rosemary Beach, which is a new urbanist development
Jeff Speck 12:52
You were one of our speakers at that.
Chuck Marohn 12:53
I was. I didn't, I didn't have to say that you, you gave a tour of rosemary beach, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you were the primary designer of rosemary beach. Is that right?
Jeff Speck 13:08
Rosemary Beach was designed in two halves, the first the bottom of the south half and the north half. I was project manager under Andres for the south half, and he gave very clear instruction about the way that that was to be organized. And then I got to, which is, you know, the fun part is drawing it the northern half. I did more independently of Andres, but with his oversight. And, in fact, it was just a continuation of the concepts that were pioneered in the southern half.
Chuck Marohn 13:35
So, so Rosemary Beach, to me, was one of the most stunning places in North America I've ever been. I mean, it really is beautifully designed, beautifully laid out. And as I'm getting this tour from you, I'm just continually amazed by just the genius that went into it. Up the road in Seaside, I got a similar tour from Andres as part of his Yeah, I was with a group of people. He Yep, Andres took a lot of pride in the molting of seaside and the talking about its evolution and its changing. Rosemary Beach is newer. Your tour didn't focus on changes. But I'm wondering, is the DNA of rosemary beach less capable of, in a sense, molting, changing, maturing, just because it's built to, I mean, it's built to a more mature state. It's built to kind of a more finished space than what you see in a place like Seaside, where, you know, there has been a lot of change over time. And I think that was kind of part of the original design.
Jeff Speck 14:42
Well, seaside rode the rode the wave of, you know, the first new urbanist communities coming into the market at market prices and then being grossly bid up in value due to how wonderful they were, right? So, in Rosemary beach. Landed when that appreciation had already occurred. Since, to its credit and discredit, Rosemary Beach was built to the state that seaside had already arrived at. Right? I don't think seaside is going to molt again, because it's so damn valuable in its current state. Similarly, Rosemary beach, I did the math. There are billions of dollars in real estate in those in several billion dollars of real estate in those 100 acres of rosemary Beach, because it hit the market at a time when people were already valuing that kind of development, and also because it was the right moment. I think the last lot sold around 2007 right? Okay, everyone in the southeast, from Atlanta to New Orleans who had extra money to spend was buying a lot in Rosemary beach. Yeah, yeah. It's not going to molt the way that seaside molted to become what is now kind of its its terminal state. But understand that as a coastal resort on a beautiful white sand beach, it's probably never meant to become, you know, high rises and a commercial, right?
Chuck Marohn 16:08
I just feel like the contrast between those two. I mean that when I think of a city I look out my my window at Brainerd, my hometown, this street hasn't changed in 100 years, and it should, I mean, it should mature, it should change, it should evolve. But it it hasn't, and that that stasis hasn't led to prosperity. In fact, quite the opposite. These are some of the poorest homes in the entire region. Now. They're largely unaffordable as well, because we don't have enough homes, and you know, compared to our wages, which are generally low statewide, here in my hometown, these places are not affordable. But that stasis has not benefited this urban neighborhood in any way.
Jeff Speck 16:58
But the stasis keeps the affordability built in, right?
Chuck Marohn 17:02
In a sense, by making the place poor, right? Yeah, not by making it dynamic. I mean, I think that's the, that's the, that's the trade off, right?
Jeff Speck 17:12
Well, it's interesting. You live in one of the few places that, well, maybe it's not a few, but you live in one of the places that is not yet depicted in your book, which is, you know, the story you paint in your book is of this national trend that almost makes you want to go out to all the pre war neighborhoods in America and buy real estate if you have money, because it's clear that the dynamics, I should say, the fundamentals on which the markets are operating, would imply that housing in all those markets that is not yet appreciated is going to become over time.
I wanted to get to kind of the next step of your recommendations, which was okay, first, we have to make it legal to build the next level of density and and in conjunction with that, I'm very excited about these, these- Architects hate — and I'm trained as an architect — architects hate but I really see the value in these programs to actually pre-permit house plans right. It's been filtering into the Congress for New Urbanism for maybe six or seven years now that the first people who had done it, I forget where, maybe in Fayetteville or some other interesting university towns, had basically created this condition where you could come to the city hall and be handed a plan that people are welcoming to land in the neighborhood, and then it's pre-permitted and ready to go. I think that's a great component again, of what cities can do to meet this crisis. But the next step is how the is, perhaps, how the cities just to help people get over that, that hump of the first financing so that can take the form of mortgage down payment subsidies, right? It can take the form- Can you describe? Because, I mean, I I underlined it, but I don't remember exactly. Can you describe the different small investments that cities can make and that foundations within cities can make to get people over the hump, be they, be they individuals or be they developers, small, you know, little scurrying, mouse developers, chipmunks, I guess we'd say to cause housing to be built in the way it needs to be built, which is city by city, town by town, small site by small site.
Chuck Marohn 19:33
So the trick is that right, like I'm not talking about using this to build 3000 square foot homes, and we're not talking about this to build six story apartment buildings. This is really how you finance the duplex conversion, or the accessory apartment or the backyard cottage. So to me, like the easiest one to get your mind wrapped around is the Tax Increment Financing stuff they did in Muskegon. In Muskegon, Michigan, you think of a post industrial town that has lost a lot of population and has old neighborhoods that are not completely filled in. So there's actually vacant lots in their historic neighborhoods. We have that same thing here, not as many as in Muskegon, but we've got them here.
Jeff Speck 20:20
And by the way, I know Muskegon. My brother conducts the orchestra there.
Chuck Marohn 20:23
Oh yeah, that's right! Such a beautiful place, really, such a dynamic place.
Jeff Speck 20:28
Didn't it win strong town of the year, or one of those?
Chuck Marohn 20:30
Yeah, Strongest Town in 2018 or something, yeah. So in Muskegon, what they did is they said, if you are going to build on one of these vacant lots in an existing neighborhood. So existing sewer, water, sidewalk, street, there's no no net new cost to the public. You're going to build on that lot, and you're going to build a starter home. So I think they have a 900 square foot limit, but it's somewhere in that, you know, it's a these are modest homes. We will take your first 15 years of tax payments. So you're right now you're paying taxes on vacant lot. So let's say that's 50 bucks a year. Now your taxes are going to go up to $2000 a year. So that $1,950 a year we will take, and we will dedicate that to your down payment. And the way that works-
Jeff Speck 21:24
So it's a lot-by-lot, it's a one-lot TIF, it's a mini TIF.
Chuck Marohn 21:27
It's a one-lot TIF. And so what they do is they the city goes out and borrows the money based on your projected tax payments. They borrow the money the city makes the down payment, so the city will give that money to the contractor. Upon closing that kind of thing, make make the down payment, and then the city makes their payments on that loan when they collect your taxes for the next 15 years. If you leave early, they they can claw the money back. You know, there's, there's provisions. If you default, the city has a lien on your I mean, the city has a lien on your property. If you default, the city's gonna get paid. So it's essentially like a no-risk way for the public to finance housing at scale and make it 20% more affordable.
Jeff Speck 22:12
So how do we square our support of georgism with our support of TIF? In the sense that, let me explain for
Chuck Marohn 22:21
Yeah, no, totally, yeah.
Jeff Speck 22:23
You know, we all like it, you know, because property tax on empty lots is typically much lower than property tax on built lots, because you're taxed on the value of what's on the lot, there are lots of disincentives to build, and a lot of speculation happens because it's so cheap to hold empty lot property. Because of that, we love georgism, with the basic premise that you tax sites based on their land value, not on their built value, which means there's nothing but reward for building things on the site, because your taxes don't go up. So I was curious, as I was reading your book, and you both admire georgism and you admire models like the mini TIF that you just described to me. How do we square our admiration of both models?
Chuck Marohn 23:11
I would, yeah, I would gladly throw Tax Increment Financing out the door. Let me. Let me say it this way, 99% of all tax increment financing projects I've ever seen are horrible projects. They just really are bad projects. Muskegon has found a way to use it for housing that I think is novel, but they've done it because it's not a tax for rich people. It's not a subsidy to get business jobs in. It's not all the dumb things that are usually done with Tiff. It is really, really, really targeted at a price point, at a, you know, getting people into entry level housing. If you told me-
Jeff Speck 23:49
You've just dissed like every project I've ever successfully- From Carmel to Elkhart, to you know other places
Chuck Marohn 24:00
Well but, you know, you you look at a place like Carmel and you know my, my underlying objection to it has always been the the terminal state thing, the stasis, you know. And so to me, if you said we could replace we would have to give up all TIF but we would replace it with a land value tax, a Georgist approach. To me, what a Georgist approach does is it embeds a certain dynamism in your development pattern that I think would negate the need for TIF broadly.
Jeff Speck 24:34
You think under a Georgist system, you wouldn't, the incentives wouldn't be needed to build?
Chuck Marohn 24:38
If you could build an 800 square foot house, and that was the only thing the lot would support. You would absolutely do that instead of let the lot sit for 80 years, yeah, which is what's happened in Muskegon. You know, you, you would do whatever you could, because it would just add value.
Jeff Speck 24:54
Well, let's not debate TIF today in general. But I would say that, uh. I really, I went back, not recently, but I went back to that old, strong towns. I think it was a strong towns podcast with you arguing with Aaron ran about Carmel, yeah, and I think he won. I'm sorry.
Chuck Marohn 25:14
That's okay. I'm a-
Jeff Speck 25:15
You usually win.
Chuck Marohn 25:18
I'm not supposed to win on my own podcast. That's impolite.
Jeff Speck 25:21
Oh, you were being a polite host. So I want to talk about a couple other things for me that the things I know about that you write about, yeah, I can add a little bit to the conversation. The two things that we new urbanists, at least in our writing in suburban nation, which, you know, I wrote with Andres and Liz in walkable city and then in walkable city rules, the two kind of impacts that new urbanists have most obviously had on policy around housing, ignoring the whole Hope Six influence, have been ADUs and inclusionary zoning, right? Accessory dwelling units, granny flats, and inclusionary zoning. It's interesting that the one that we had, that I had less confidence in, has emerged supreme, and the one that I had more confidence in is now somewhat discredited.
And so, you know, when we wrote suburban nation, I mean, this is, this is 1989 that I heard Andres talking for the first time about granny flats. And it was such an incredibly convincing argument about all the one in his very first towns versus sprawl lectures and all the wonderful things that granny flats do. And you can tell the stories of the, you know, the way that the that it distributes lower income people in a healthy way through the community. You can talk about the way the main dwelling supervises the tenant, so that, you know, other sort of of supervision aren't needed. You can talk about the woman in Kentlands who we knew, who built a house in a granny flat, moved into her granny flat and lives rent free, you know, and did for decades. She must be dead by now. It's an old story, right? Yeah.
But when writing about these things, I always had a kind of, wouldn't it be great if somehow these became popular? Simultaneously, and we'll take some credit, we worked with state legislators, we worked with, God knows, a lot of publicity outlets to try to make these things popular. And finally, that effort paid off most prominently in California, where they replaced the local all the little local ordinances which are rather restrictive, with an overall state ordinance which was much more liberal and said things like, you don't have to park it right, right, right? And you quote the statistic that they went from 257 ADUs permitted to 23,000 permitted in a few years due to the 2016 law. And so I just want to share a happy moment that I think one of the great accomplishments that could accomplish a lot more because the new urbanists argued for a lot of things that have not happened, like stopping sprawl, right, right, right. We've been up on stopping sprawl because it's impossible, but the the granny flat has become like 40% of the new housing permits in California. Yeah, yes, and that's that's spreading across the country, and it fits right in to the structure that you describe about how small changes can provide affordability.
Chuck Marohn 28:26
Can I add something? Because you You taught me a couple things, the first one, and I think Rosemary Beach is another good example of this. There are very few lots where you have single family homes in Rosemary beach where you do not have an accessory structure, yeah. And the one thing that I recognize is that this is something that wealthy people do on wealthy land, right? Like you don't have to cajole people to do this when the land is really wealthy and the people are really wealthy, because this is how you actually put your money to work and have it make sense.
Jeff Speck 29:02
And if the community is going to operate as a — you know, a large portion of- a scattered large portion of both Rosemary beach and seaside do, the majority — as a horizontal hotel where people use what was, at the time, a localized organization that now is simply Airbnb or something like it, VRBO, whatever, to make a ton of income by renting out their homes. They can now rent out two homes, or a big home and a small home. But Chuck, you should know, and maybe you heard this when we were giving the tour of rosemary beach. The trick that the developer, we didn't think of it, the trick the developer used at Rosemary Beach was you weren't allowed to speculate on your lot unless you built a granny flat.
Chuck Marohn 29:46
Oh, okay, I didn't. No, no, I didn't.
Jeff Speck 29:48
You could buy a lot for $70,000 let's say, and build the granny flat on it and the garage, and not build the house and then resell the lot. And, oh, okay, a ton of people. Did that, huh? And what that meant is that almost everybody put a granny flat on their lot. And you know what might have been 400 houses is now like 700 units. I don't know the number of single family lot homes at Rosemary by memory, but it almost doubled the density of the site, yeah. It makes it so much more active and lively. And you know, we just love density, and all the things that it does is fantastic. So that was a real win. So we're writing this book, and this is where I could make the plug, I suppose, for why I want to come on your show in less than a year is I'm with Emily Taylor, and I'm writing a book called the planners pledge. Oh, great. And the plan is this.
Chuck Marohn 30:40
Is this based off the thing you sent me a while back? Yeah, okay, that I didn't sign.
Jeff Speck 30:47
I don't I don't mind. I don't Chuck, I don't control your your voting, and I don't control your request time.
Chuck Marohn 30:53
I did say it was very good and worthy of your time. So I'm glad you're I'm glad you're continuing to expand on it.
Jeff Speck 30:58
Well, we could talk more about the planners pledge, and we will but the one, one element that was in the pledge, and this is essentially a list of things that planner that distinguish good planning from bad planning. Because what, what I've noticed through all the years of being involved as a planner and AICP and engaging in continuing education and meeting people who get out of planning school, and all that is that you're actually never taught to plan well versus badly. There's no official embrace within the leadership of the planning movement, or, frankly, within, you know, any sort of test that you need to take or statement you need to make like a Hippocratic oath when you become a planner, that actually says we acknowledge that automobile dependent Planning and Zoning based planning, and basically anything that segregates either based on the automobile or on zoning is actually destructive to wealth, destructive to health, destructive to the environment, bad for equity,
Chuck Marohn 32:03
To community, yeah.
Jeff Speck 32:04
And horrible for community. Good for you. You named The fifth thing that I was about to name.
Chuck Marohn 32:08
Oh, sweet.
Jeff Speck 32:09
Those are the five things, health, wealth, environment, equity and community. And we know that there's, there's not a six cylinder which is better if you do sprawl. We know that car based planning and all the manifestations it now takes is bad planning, and we know that the opposite is good planning, and yet we're never asked to affirm that and to identify the things that we can do as planners to plan well and not badly. So one of the one and only thing that was in the version that I asked you to sign, and that anyone can sign by going to plannerspledge.org That's plannerspledge.org and learn more about it. The one thing that we removed, or we're removing, is inclusionary zoning. And the reason we're removing it is that, and you give this very short shrift in your book, I would say you glance at it but you don't, you don't get into any detail. I don't blame you.
Chuck Marohn 33:01
Try not to make too many enemies.
Jeff Speck 33:03
But I don't, I don't remember the other things I've read. It may have been in Nolan Gray's book or other books, but it's become clear that inclusionary zoning has depressed production. Yeah, it's become clear we believe that inclusionary zoning has not ultimately contributed to affordability. Now, I still have issues with dismissing it, because, you know, we've observed over many years that integrating, I think we can agree Chuck that having different incomes, price points, unit types and people in a neighborhood is a unmitigated good.
Chuck Marohn 33:45
I would even say the opposite the you know, you the Euclidean zoning of segregating everybody by price point, yeah, is horrible for everything.
Jeff Speck 33:53
So destructive to society. It creates cocoon people who, you know, vote just about their own cocoons, yeah. And so on the one hand, we feel like we need some sort of mechanism. Oh, and in the context of that unmitigated good, you have a production system that, unless directed by state action, otherwise will cocoon, will segregate by price point, it will segregate by neighborhood. And I tell the famous story of — not famous, but I'm trying to make it famous — in Kentlands, which was the first year-round major new urbanist development that Andres and Liz designed, DPZ designed in the 1980s in Kentlands. You know, they proposed a village block. I mean, this was a typical block, but I'm just looking at one block in the old farm district. And in that block you had mansions, you know, that are now million dollar mansions. You had row houses that are $800,000 row houses, and you had cottages that were kind of in between. And then you had granny flat apartments, I lived in one, above the garage that rented for six $600 a month.
Chuck Marohn 35:00
Sure.
Jeff Speck 35:01
When they showed this to the developer, the developer showed it to his development advisors, and they said, You cannot sell a mansion near a cottage, cottage near a row house. You cannot sell a row house near an apartment. You're out of your mind to do this. But then when they built it, and it looked like a village, like a little old piece of Georgetown. Of course, everything sold for more than anything else on the market because it was so lovely, right, right, right. The fact is, a smart development community would integrate different incomes together, also for the sheer convenience of having your doctor and your school teacher, you know, in the same block as you. I mean, what could be better, right? The fact that it doesn't happen naturally, and the fact that we need, if we want to see it, we need some top-down, at least locally, some sort of top-down influence. What do we do about that in the context of experiencing it suppressing production and raising prices?
Chuck Marohn 36:05
It's really, really hard. Because, I mean, I spend a lot of the book talking about the way that the financing of homes affects what comes out the other side. If you want to build a single family home, there is a really clear market to selling it. There's a really clear market to financing it. There's a really clear market for that, that purchaser to get into it, maybe even with zero down, maybe even with some type of incentive that allows them to make money on the transaction, as crazy as that sounds. If you want to build something that is more complicated, where you have the cottage tucked in with the mansion tucked in with this tucked in with the the, you know, the house with the shop underneath. And we've developed enough, and this is where John Anderson gets mad at me when I say it's hard. John's like, No, it's not hard. There's this sub and program and this sub program. And I'm like, Yeah, John. Like, I can call my banker, and he doesn't know about any of those. I can walk in and do a single family home, and they're like, yeah, we've got, like, everything set up to do that, like, Robo sign it, like, I can get you into that, like, really super quickly.
So we've made it from, you know, the default, which, which by, I mean, pre Great Depression, development, you as a developer, were financing things locally. And everybody had, in a sense, an incentive to squeeze every bit of value, every bit of space, every bit of like usage you could out of a block to now the value is on how financeable is this in a macro sense, like does this align with other products that can be co mingled, commoditized, securitized, bundled up and split up together, and the more unique your product is, the harder it is to do that. There have been people who for a long time. I mean, I remember when we were in Salt Lake City together at CNU, that would have been 12 years ago. You know, the talk then I got drug into a meeting on a real estate investment trust that would fund new urbanism. And this was a way to, in a sense, tap into that, that big money pool in order to do these small little things. I don't think that ever went anywhere, because I don't know is that actually works.
I think to answer your question, you would have to say, how can you make New Urbanism a standardized product that can be, in a sense, indistinguishable in montgomery county, from celebration, from Chico California, from, you know, outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Carleton landing. How do you how do you make all these standardized so you can bundle them together and tap into that large flow of cash? You can do it, but I don't think you'd like the results. And to me, this is where I've always like, struggled and pushed back the inclusionary zoning stuff is a way to try. It's like a blunt instrument to add complexity in to something that wants to be simple using simple funding. And that's why, I think, you know, at the end of the day, not only does it, does it not work financially, but it ultimately doesn't produce enough units to actually drive down the prices. And you wind up from a design standpoint. I mean, I remember in the 90s, my wife was a reporter, and she was doing a lot of stuff on on affordable housing in the 90s, here in Minnesota, and she went out to montgomery county for four days to just talk to them about their inclusionary zoning and get a tour and take photos. And they did a big write up.
Jeff Speck 39:57
They had the most effective program, yeah.
Chuck Marohn 39:59
And. And, you know, I think if we look at montgomery county, is it better development than what we see in other parts of the country? I think you could make that case. Has it broadly created affordability and, you know, good neighborhoods? And I mean, you'd, you'd have to say we're a long ways to where we want to be.
Jeff Speck 40:20
Can I mention a mitigating conversation? Maybe? Yeah, I hadn't thought about it in this context. But you know, in Massachusetts we have 40 B. We have a law called 40 B. So I know that you're that we're all more interested in bottom up cities and towns doing the making the effort, but 40 B is a rule that I think has increased production. What 40 B says is that if you meet certain affordability guidelines, in other words, have a certain minimum amount of units that are lower income, that you are able to sidestep most local permitting requirements. So the extremely arduous permitting process that, for example, caused our project in Newton, Massachusetts to take seven years and be downsized and delayed to the point where it actually never happened, a story I tell in the new edition of walkable city, by the way. But you know, that permit
Chuck Marohn 41:19
Newton is a great town, by the way.
Jeff Speck 41:21
Yeah, it's a great town, but it's a town that that wants to do the right thing, but then doesn't realize they're doing the wrong thing when they fight density right, because they're afraid of what it will do to character. Right? Mostly, they're afraid of what it's going to do to their streets, like, like a lot of people who don't want density and are accused of not wanting it because they don't want diversity, actually are just about are just afraid of traffic, particularly in New England. I think it's, it's they're running from traffic and from park park cars, but the point being, 40 B allows you to sidestep the process of going through that. And a lot of projects in Massachusetts are approved as 40 B that would not be approved or take years to be approved. So it would seem to me that that's a version of inclusionary zoning, in a sense, that is working to increase the supply, so lower prices.
Chuck Marohn 42:24
I have tension over, what should we do statewide, preemptively? What should we do local? And my arguments always been, hey, as a community, you benefit from A, B, C and D like, get out of the way. Make this stuff legal. Don't have, you know, huge permitting processes, but city after city after city, and let's just take parking as the example. I see every city being stuck on parking with no way to kind of get out of it. Because as soon as you bring up the idea that you will not have parking requirements, or even, like, lower them, in some places, people show up and they go crazy, and the dialog is generally not healthy. I have softened a little bit on the idea of state preemption as a way to get cities unstuck. In other words, let's get them unstuck like you can't regulate this. You can't deny this.
Years ago, we did in Minnesota this thing on homeless shelters where we said, you can't not permit them like you have to allow them as if they were a home, like you can't. You can't subject them to like special things, and that's generally been healthy in getting places unstuck, because it's one of those things that cities struggle to deal with the cultural conversation around it. I feel like where I run into problems is when we codify things that, for expediency sake, make a lot of sense today, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, what are the downstream effects of that. And I'm not familiar with what you've done in Massachusetts, as much as, like, I've seen a lot of stuff they've done in California where I'm like, Okay, that would have been really smart to do, like, before you built that transit line, or before you put that off ramp in, or before you did this. And now it's just kind of silly. And what are you doing? I think you have more comfort with the state level preemption than I do.
Jeff Speck 44:26
Well, we were just talking about how it did miracles for granny flats, right? Yeah. I do think that there are definite places where taking away local control is necessary if we're going to see change. Yeah, some local control. It's interesting. In your book, you started very early on in your introduction, as we often do, quoting Jane Jacobs saying places can only be for everyone when they're created by everyone. I don't have the exact quote, but the public process these days, you know, the other big thing for us to discuss, I think I have a few little things to end on, but the other big thing we could discuss maybe, is, you know, when the public process enhances the power of opposition, how do we embrace it? And you then you go on later in the book, you have a quote that, in Massachusetts, in fact, they found that 63% of all comments in public meetings were in opposition to the proposed housing, while only 14.6% were in support. And then you cite this article, this Atlantic article by community by Jerusalem dem sauce, that's called community input is bad, actually, yeah. And it's the classic I don't Chuck I don't think you're in the field the way that I am as a planner, making plans in communities, trying to get them permitted.
Chuck Marohn 45:45
Not anymore.
Jeff Speck 45:45
The the the community input question is, well, first of all, it's, it's inevitable. So we've reached a point where we've moved on from, you know what we were all trying to do in the 90s, trying to popularize the Charette. We've moved on to an era in which we were trying to convince communities to plan publicly, visibly and to integrate the largest possible population, to a point where we're actually struggling with municipalities that insist on that and the danger of that occurring when the people who show up at the meeting truly are not representative. And I think that's the deeper meaning of Jane Jacobs quote that yeah, planned by everybody. But who is everybody? Everybody is not just the retirees with extra time on their hands, right? It's not just the wealthy people who want to protect their Shangri La. It's people who are working two jobs and don't have time to show up. It's, it's future residents who don't even live there. May not even be American yet, right? I mean, there's, it's hard to know who everybody, I mean, it's, it's easy to guess who everybody is and it's not the just the people who show up at the meeting. And so we have all these tools that we use to gage public input, but it's, it's ultimately, I think, getting back to your point, I think that ultimately, some level of top down permitting of certain things that are not truly life threatening is perhaps a good idea in order to get us out of this housing stranglehold.
Chuck Marohn 47:24
I lean into. And this is my, I think conservatism coming through. I lean into the idea that the way we address the crisis, we have of public input. The idea that public input is broken, doesn't work, is to work incrementally. I look at the work that Mike Leiden has done, and to me, it's some of the most inspiring work around but really, at the end of the day, what Mike leidens work is are small demonstration projects in lieu of massive studies. And to me, the feedback that you get with a small demonstration project is not someone's opinion. It's what someone actually does with the project. Like, do people walk here? Do people interact with it? Do people use it? That's affirmation that the humble planner should have going in. Like, here's what I think professionally should happen. Let me demonstrate this, and then let's see if I'm right, and if I'm not right, let's go back and retool, and if I am right, let's proceed with confidence. When we get to housing, I feel like the way that you have to express humility is by allowing that next increment. What is the downside? And I say this knowing you agree with me, but I'm saying it kind of rhetorically to a neighborhood, what is the downside of allowing small, incremental changes in your neighborhood? If everyone can put in a granny flat, what kind of havoc will be wreaked if this goes awry, right? What horrible thing will come about you might have a tightness of parking is that? Is that what we fear?
Jeff Speck 49:01
Yeah, that is what everyone fears.
Chuck Marohn 49:03
Well then let's this is where my vision of local government sits. I feel like human tension is natural, needed, and how we work through things and improve places. I don't think it's by state intervention or having a big program, or what have you, this is my kind of bottom up conservatism. I feel like when we pretend we can rob ourselves of that tension. In other words, you as a block don't have to work out how to park like you screw it, like the city will take care of that, or someone else will do that, or we'll come in and build you a ramp, or build you a parking lot. Or, you know, what have you, what we do is, I think we rob people of agency to actually solve their problems. Parking is not a hard problem to solve on a block level, you and your neighbors can actually figure that one out. And you know, the horrible inconvenience of you having to walk half a block is really not that bad compared to the fact. Like your kids can't afford to live in the neighborhood, so maybe by us as a as a city, maybe by us, you know, prioritizing the parking over everything else. What we've done is we've not only robbed you of your agency, but we've distorted the natural feedback loops that would have you work these things out for yourself. To me, the answer is, take smaller steps and give people agency to react.
Jeff Speck 50:26
I just don't feel like, you know the social structure exists in many suburban communities for people to act collectively in that way, right?
Chuck Marohn 50:34
I agree, but there's a chicken in the egg thing, right? Like, does it not exist because it was planned out of existence? And we as planners are happy to, in a sense, take that burden on on behalf of property owners, and say, Hey, you got to bring in your garbage can by the end of the day, or we're going to come out and find you. Are you, you know, like all this ridiculousness that we do, or is it because we're incapable of doing it and so the city's taken that over? I think it's the former more than the latter.
Jeff Speck 50:48
Yeah, I don't disagree. From my New England liberal perspective, I'm going to, I'll pick up Mike Leiden and tactical urbanism. And, you know, Mike was our co author with me and Andres for another book, The Smart Growth manual, that you're right, viewers, listeners, might want to check out absolutely, I've only seen one kind of negative Tactical Urbanism experience not far from you. They told me in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Grand Forks, sure, yeah, Grand Forks North Dakota, that they wanted to build bulb outs at the corners, you know, to shorten the crosswalk distances right down to the community. And so they first, they did it tactically, and they just painted it and put the flag posts up. And in a sense, it's like here in Boston, like we don't use our turn signal because we don't know what want people to know what we're thinking. And what happened then was it was like this big, you know, it was a big tell, and the beet farmers who, like have all the power in that town, claimed that errant youths were jumping on their beet trucks from the bulbs as they drove by, which I'm sure is
Chuck Marohn 52:14
Anarchy, absolute anarchy.
Jeff Speck 52:16
Completely apocryphal story, but they managed to stop the bulb outs from being built because they had shown them what they were thinking. However, one thing you said resonated with me, which is that I'm always telling communities, don't do a study, do a test, do a test. Yeah, smallest traffic study. And we all know traffic studies are bullshit. The smallest traffic study cost 40 grand, you know, and and for for overtime pay, you can park a police cruiser on the corner and shut down a lane for a day and see if the road still works right. Although I say Don't, don't do it for a day. Do it for a week, because people have to adjust their behavior. But I'm always trying to get communities to test things rather than studying them, because you actually don't know.
Chuck Marohn 52:58
Hire an intern to stand there and watch, or put a camera out there and watch if teenagers jump on beet trucks. I mean, that's a that's a pretty easy one to figure out.
Jeff Speck 53:09
I wanted to mention one other thing from your book, because you put a quote in here that I've always used, but I kind of lost. And I think everyone, if they don't all read the book, they need to read this quote. It's the best quote of Vince Graham that making the rounds for years, but some people still don't know it, and it's so important. Vince Graham, who developed ion, which is a wonderful and other places, but neighborhood that I worked on as well in South Carolina, he says, When you sell community and connectedness, every new home enhances that asset. When you sell privacy and exclusivity, every new home is a degradation of that asset. Such an important statement. And I think so much gets to the core of what we're trying to accomplish with the new urbanism. And really, you know, an inspiring message for us to bring forward.
Chuck Marohn 53:56
I feel like the future too, Jeff, despite the New York Times writing, you know, that we should sprawl to solve the housing crisis
Jeff Speck 54:04
And I enjoyed your rebuttal.
Chuck Marohn 54:06
Thank you.
Jeff Speck 54:07
One of many good ones.
Chuck Marohn 54:09
There have been a few, yeah.
Jeff Speck 54:11
Beth Osborne's I think was the best, and I don't have it on the top of my head, but the only way to solve the housing problem is to build the wrong houses in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chuck Marohn 54:21
Well, I, you know, I do think that the challenge that I was going to say our generation, but I think, you know, our generation and then the next generation is going to have is not going to be how do we go to the next Greenfield and build a better place, but how do we take these places that we already inhabit and mature them to the next level of of their maturation, making them better places. And that's it's just a different set of tools. It's a different set of of approaches, and I think it's got to be grounded in the insights of that quote from Vince Graham, the only way, again, I'll look out my window.
The only way you get the people living in this neighborhood to agree to double the number of people living in this neighborhood is if you have a vision of how that will actually make their lives better at the end of the day. And if living in this neighborhood still means driving out to the big box grocery store and driving out to Walmart and big trucks driving through the neighborhood, doing deliveries to Dunkin Donuts. It's not a, you know, adding more people in that framework is not an appealing proposition. If it means a better downtown, a walkable neighborhood, more restaurants, more things going on, you know, just a better quality of life houses that you can afford to have your kids live in. My parents are looking to move from the farm into town. They can't move to my neighborhood because there's no homes here. And so, you know, if that's part of the sale, I think it's a completely different proposition.
Jeff Speck 55:55
Does your neighborhood allow that next level of of densification? Currently, no. You said, you said, on the one hand, your neighborhoods in stasis, it feels poor and people don't want to be here. On the other hand, you said that people can't be here because additionally home, additional home. Do you think that your neighborhood in Brainerd would have a bit of a renaissance if that next level of density would allow children to live near their parents and elders to live near their children and that sort of thing?
Chuck Marohn 56:23
I feel like the the short answer to that is yes, but I'll add a caveat. I don't think it can end with that. Like it would- To me, the renaissance of this neighborhood would take place when we fix housing, when we make our streets safer, when we make it easier to walk to the downtown four blocks away without crossing. You know, the highway strode through the middle of town. So I feel like it is one of those complex environments where you have to, in a sense, incrementally improve a bunch of things over time, just a silver bullet of like housing, like fix your zoning code, you won't get Mid East peace and cure cancer and fix my neighborhood, you know, with the right zoning code,
Jeff Speck 57:07
Got it. Yeah, I think we've talked for a while. I did manage to ask all the questions I had in your book.
Chuck Marohn 57:14
Sweet. Well, thank you for this. This has been a really fun talk.
Jeff Speck 57:17
Yeah, I'm excited to come back when the planners pledge is the book, and we're going to talk about it the your audience may be curious to know that I asked Chuck to sign the planners pledge, along with a lot of other famous people like Donald shoot, rest his soul, who have signed it, and the chuck doesn't sign pledges. And I understand, I don't take it personally, but I would encourage you all, whether you're planners or not, to look at the planners pledge at plannerspledge.org. I would also take this opportunity because I don't think you let me do it. Chuck or you, I mean, I didn't ask to say that the new edition of walkable city has 100 new pages based on the last decade that I think people I know, I know your entire audience has read it already, but I hope so your copy. Give it to a friend who hasn't read it, and then get yourself a new copy with the new 100 pages that I painstakingly wrote just for you.
Chuck Marohn 58:16
I'll do you. I'll do you one better, I think, get walkable city and read it, but then by walkable city rules, and give that to your city engineer immediately. Look to your plant works directly. There you go. Give that one because that one is the is the like, How To Guide to walkable city.
Jeff Speck 58:33
Yeah, it's much more technical and detailed and has, in a sense, it's, it's somewhat analogous to your having to do the kit apart subsequent to the book.
Chuck Marohn 58:45
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Jeff Speck 58:46
Walkable city was very much, you know, kind of some of the how to do it, but it was more like the why. And then if you're in the trenches doing the work, this is more the book for you.
Chuck Marohn 58:56
Can we? Can we close with this? I know you're going to be in Providence. We're gearing up for our national gathering. CNU is going to be there. I want you to talk a little bit about for years you've you've been the guy who operated on his own. Now you are operating as a part of having colleagues, having a partner, having other people. What? How has that changed? What you do, and if people run into you in Providence, what should they be? What should they be asking you for that maybe you weren't able to deliver on a year ago, and it was just you, and now it's you and a team of cool people.
Jeff Speck 59:37
So a little background on spec MC, which is my firm. Now, actually, Chuck, I mean, for many years, and I think, I think you witnessed this for many years as a sole practitioner, I was able to do big jobs because I teamed up with a lot of other firms.
Chuck Marohn 59:54
Sure, that's fair.
Jeff Speck 59:55
Spec MC still teams up with a lot of firms, and we have projects going now with a. With Nelson Nygaard, with with Alta, with a ton, with Stantec, who we partner with, where we're redesigning the street networks of both Chattanooga and Louisville. As we speak with Stantec as partners, we team up with Perkins and Will, I mean, we have lots, we still do a lot of partnering with other firms, but we are building a larger team over time, no great hurry, but the goal is not necessarily to bring more things in house, but just to be able to do more projects, right?
And I'm reminded of I'm reminded of a conversation I had with Liz when I was working at DPZ many years ago, when I said to her, Hey, if we were to hire this person and that person and build this division, you know, we could do a lot more work. And she said, you know, Jeff, we did two projects that have had more impact than the other 200 back then there were only like 200 projects. Now there's like double that, I'm sure, with Galina and Marina and Sunan and them all doing the work. And her point was that a few really important projects was a better way to make an impact than doing a lot of projects. I used to agree, and I still kind of agree when it comes to modeling suburban growth patterns. And you know, like when I was at DPZ, we still do new towns, we still do suburban infill and urban infill, and we have a number of projects on the boards right now. You know, with dozens or hundreds of houses in them, we love that work. And I think it is true that in that work, the the revolutionary projects are the really important ones.
However, however, because in my time since I left DPZ and when I worked with so many mayors, over four years with the mayor's Institute on city design, an NEA program, that's probably going to disappear with the NEA, unfortunately, now, under this administration, we'll see what happens. I hope it doesn't disappear. I'm not predicting. I haven't been involved. I don't know anything about it, but with my work with mayors, I came to really, really focus on streets and the fact that the typical American community, in order to be walkable, you know, neat, the walk needs to be useful, safe, comfortable and interesting. And most of the older neighborhoods are useful, comfortable and interesting, but not safe, because the typical American street, as you Chuck know so well, is designed to be dangerous. And so this one aspect of our practice, which is street network redesign, and street redesign has become at least half our work, more than half our work, and it's a matter of sheer numbers. There's easily three or 4000 American communities that need their streets fixed.
Chuck Marohn 1:02:47
Absolutely.
Jeff Speck 1:02:48
And just with paint, right? I mean, you can rebuild if you want, but the new top coat and restriping down to the proper width of lanes, the proper number of lanes, replacing one way networks, back to the restoring the two way travel they used to have, adding bike facilities, adding street parking to protect the curb, all the things we do when we right size, the number of lanes to the actual traffic they're holding, as opposed to the oversized centers that our cities have, in many cases. That's a dramatic way within one political cycle before the cycle ends, to make cities more walkable, more livable. And so one of the biggest motivations for building a larger firm has been to do that to scale. Yeah, go ahead.
Chuck Marohn 1:03:34
My excitement is that there's only one Jeff spec, but now there's like Jeff spec acolytes, or 80% of Jeff specs out there doing more and more and more of this, because there are 1000s of places that need this done.
Jeff Speck 1:03:49
There are other firms that are doing this work really well, Alta tool, Stantec, Nelson Nygaard, absolutely. They do it almost as well as we do. But often, often we partner with them. One thing I will say, and I hesitate to say it in this venue, but, you know, the the I am kind of looking for designers, yes. Oh, so people mid career who really know how to early mid career, who can already do what we do at CNU, might want to introduce themselves to us. And also please come to our planners pledge booth, which will be there like it was the last CNU, and talk to us about that.
Chuck Marohn 1:04:32
It's another, another reason to go to Providence. Jeff, thanks for reaching out. We will get back together in a year and talk about your next book. But if there's something that spurs you saying, hey, I want to talk about this, you can reach out again and we'll do this again. Like we don't have to- we're friends. We don't have to wait for important occasion.
Jeff Speck 1:04:54
Yeah, it's, it's one of my favorite things to come on your your show, Chuck. And you know that? I have no, uh, limit in my admiration for the work that you're doing and that you've really built a movement which is changing America. And I appreciate that.
Chuck Marohn 1:05:09
Thanks friend. Well, there's, uh, there's 1000s of people listening to this, and there will be even more than that out doing great work. You know, descended from a lot of the stuff that you I told you, suburban nation changed my life, and I feel like this is all downstream from that. So very cool. Thanks everybody for listening. Keep doing what you can to build a strong town. Take care.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
Join Jeff and Chuck in Providence next month. Get your National Gathering tickets now!
See more from Jeff:
The Planner’s Pledge (site)
“Walkable City” by Jeff Speck, updated edition
“Walkable City Rules” by Jeff Speck
See more from Strong Towns:
“Escaping the Housing Trap” by Chuck Marohn and Daniel Herriges
Chuck Marohn (Substack)
Charles Marohn (known as “Chuck” to friends and colleagues) is the founder and president of Strong Towns and the bestselling author of “Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis.” With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous. He spreads the Strong Towns message through in-person presentations, the Strong Towns Podcast, and his books and articles. In recognition of his efforts and impact, Planetizen named him one of the 15 Most Influential Urbanists of all time in 2017 and 2023.