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Perceptions, land costs create affordable housing obstacles in Lowcountry
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
With the median price of a Lowcountry home at $215,000 and the average annual Lowcountry salary at $32,000, the region has a strong need for affordable housing, panelists and other attendees emphasized at the recent “Housing for All: Developing Housing for the Workforce” conference.
The Urban Land Institute’s South Carolina chapter and the Lowcountry Housing Trust sponsored the event at The Navy Yard at Noisette in North Charleston, which drew more than 100 affordable housing proponents.
Since 2000, the region’s employment growth has been three times higher than the national average. However, 8,700 of those new Lowcountry jobs have been in the hospitality and retail sectors, which comprise the region’s lower-paying jobs.
Generally, regional incomes have not kept up with rising housing costs, said Mary Graham, senior vice president of public policy at the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce.
“As indicated in a recent study by the National Association of Home Builders, home prices in our market are rising much faster than local incomes,” said David Ginn, president and CEO of the Charleston Regional Development Alliance. “This is one reason the alliance is focused on attracting higher-wage jobs to the region.”
Among the biggest hurdles affordable or “work force” housing advocates face is the public’s negative perception of affordable housing, which generally is viewed as unattractive housing for the poor.
Attach the word “affordable” to a proposed housing development and cries of NIMBY, or Not in My Back Yard, usually arise from area residents, said Debby Waid, vice president of programs at the Humanities Foundation, which provides affordable housing in the Lowcountry. Waid was one of 12 panelists at the conference.
To help change that perception, local residents who have doubts about a proposed affordable housing development should be shown a model of the development so they can see how it fits in with the community, said Josh Martin, director of Charleston’s Planning,
Preservation and Neighborhoods department.
Another challenge affordable housing advocates face is getting developers to build low- and moderate-income housing despite high land costs. Reducing or even waiving impact fees for developers and providing incentives for building high-density and mixed-use communities are incentives that can be used to encourage developers to build affordable housing, the panelists agreed.
For example, the Lowcountry Housing Trust, in conjunction with Charleston Water System, offers a program that saves developers $500 per housing unit on water impact fees and another $500 per unit on wastewater impact fees. Developers do not have to pay either fee until the units are ready to be connected to Charleston Water’s water and wastewater systems.
Zoning restrictions limiting housing variety and density (the number of houses per acre) are another affordable housing obstacle.
“Developments look like they do because that’s what the ordinances allow,” said Walt Martin, vice president of Associated Developers Inc., a private developer with offices in Charleston and Newport News, Va.
Wherever possible, municipalities should offer density incentives to developers. Building more housing units per acre helps make affordable housing more economical for the developer and helps reduce suburban sprawl, said Bob Holt, president of Charleston Development Corp., a private developer in Charleston.
Locating housing close to where people work so they spend less on gasoline and reduce automobile travel also contributes to the overall affordability of housing, Martin said.
Whereas affordable housing is traditionally funded directly through government subsidies, a different funding method ought to be developed so the housing can be more successively maintained, said John Knott, president and CEO of the Noisette Co., which is redeveloping the former Navy base in North Charleston to include a variety of affordable housing options for renters and buyers.
“Housing that is subsidized is by definition not sustainable,” said Knott, chair of the Urban Land Institute’s South Carolina chapter.
Knott favors an alliance of regional and national mortgage lenders, private sector builders, public agencies and nonprofit housing providers to fund affordable housing construction and individual mortgages.
Still, some affordable housing advocates believe government subsidies remain necessary.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer at the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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