Could Equity Analyses Pave the Way to a More Affordable Santa Fe?
KELLY O’DONNELL, PH.D. | CHIEF RESEARCH AND POLICY OFFICER, HOMEWISE
Santa Fe’s shortage of affordable housing is well-documented, as are its social and economic consequences. Study after study find that the workers so critical to the city’s economic vigor and quality of life, including teachers, fire fighters, cooks, servers, and government employees, simply can’t afford to live in the City Different. Santa Fe’s housing shortage threatens the community’s very fabric and future because it forces long-time residents, including many whose families have lived in Santa Fe for generations, to seek housing and raise their families in more affordable communities like Rio Rancho and Espanola.
The reason for the housing shortage is surprisingly simple: Home building has not kept pace with population growth and excess demand has driven prices to unaffordable heights. The obvious solution to an imbalance of supply and demand is also a simple one: rebalance the scales by building more houses, particularly houses that working people can afford to live in.
Unfortunately, local land use regulations, both in Santa Fe and throughout the US, make addressing the housing shortage anything but simple and far more difficult than it needs to be. Zoning, once intended to protect public health by separating incompatible land uses (e.g. housing and industry), today segregates races and classes and has become one of the most significant impediments to expanding the supply of affordable housing, both in Santa Fe and nationwide.
For decades, single family residential zoning and restrictions like minimum lot sizes have fostered racial segregation by precluding higher density, often more affordable housing from coexisting alongside single family detached homes. Rezoning proposals that would increase housing density and/or site affordable housing are often met, both here and elsewhere, by vehement, organized opposition from advocates who regard exclusionary land use rules as critical to preserving their quality of life.
Even in communities like Santa Fe, where the public recognizes the need for more affordable housing, small but vocal opposition groups frequently prevail in development disputes, even when the development in question is beneficial to the community at large. Research in a number of U.S. cities shows that these tactics are particularly effective at derailing development in neighborhoods with large percentages of non-Hispanic White residents and that the groups most engaged with, and thus most visible to, local planning and zoning bodies are dominated by affluent, White homeowners.
Opponents of affordable housing have been able to weaponize local planning and zoning processes, because, unlike the moderate-income working families most likely to benefit from affordable additions to the housing stock, the upper-income, often retired homeowners who oppose development have free time to attend and testify at planning commission meetings. This differential access to decision-makers, born of long-standing structural inequalities, makes it possible for the few to prevail against the many and for the interests of small groups of neighbors concerned about “property values” and parking to trump the needs of entire communities.
Despite their misuse, land use restrictions and the processes for altering those restrictions are democratic tools that are intended to protect everyone, including vulnerable communities that are disproportionately burdened by industrial waste and other noxious land uses. Sadly, the same disparate access to democracy that enables a few shrill activists to drown out the voice of the majority in debates over where to site affordable housing also makes it easier to site polluting or otherwise undesirable facilities in low-income and BIPOC neighborhoods.
Zoning processes as currently administered in many jurisdictions including Santa Fe give disproportionate voice to relatively small groups of NIMBY activists at the expense of the larger community. One way to make local land use processes more equitable and inclusive is to require racial equity assessments as part of the approval process for any major land use change, as suggested by Columbia University’s Lance Freeman. These assessments examine a project’s benefits and costs through an equity lens – considering factors such as the races of the populations most likely to be displaced by a project as well as the characteristics of a project’s potential beneficiaries. Under such a paradigm, racial equity would become a factor, like water use and traffic, that local planning bodies are required to consider as part of the decision-making process.
Requiring additional analysis runs the risk of prolonging an already onerous process. Therefore, rather than simply tacking equity analysis on to existing requirements, using equity analysis to elicit feedback from a broader spectrum of community members and better understand community-wide impacts should be part of comprehensive land use reform that streamlines administration, equalizes access, and reduces the implicit preference provided affluent white homeowners by the current system.
For decades the federal government has required Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) for proposed federal projects that are expected to “significantly affect the quality of the human environment.” An EIS describes the environment in the affected area to establish a baseline against which assess a project’s impacts, identifies both negative and positive environmental impacts, and weighs alternative approaches. Similarly, equity analyses identify potential race or class-based disparities and provide developers and/or policymakers opportunities to proactively remedy or offset those disparities. Equity assessments could also consider the costs of measures such as affordable housing production and preservation, density bonuses, condo conversion restrictions, community benefit agreements, and tenant protections, needed to mitigate disparate impacts, providing a truer representation of a project’s costs to the public sector and to the broader community.
A number of communities are already moving in this direction. New York City requires racial equity reports that address how a proposed project would further fair housing and promote equitable access to opportunity for some land use applications. The City of Seattle’s 2035 Equity Analysis compared different growth trajectories on the basis of their potential to displace or affect access to opportunity for marginalized populations and considered strategies to lessen negative impacts and maximize opportunity in vulnerable communities.
Requiring racial equity analyses for major land use decisions would not solve the problem of differential access democratic processes, but it would amplify voices that local planning bodies need to hear: those of working families and the majority of residents who want affordable housing for themselves and their neighbors.
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