New Data on Housing Prices

For sale: $165,000 near Bever Park (Source: Zillow)

Housing prices across the United States have hit what seems to be an all-time high, according to data compiled by Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Nationally, the ratio of the median sale price to median household income hit 5.6 in 2022, up from 4.4 in 2019. The previous peak, during the 2007 housing bubble, was in the mid-4s. In 2019, San Jose, California, led the country with a ratio of 10.9; it has since risen to 12.0, but Honolulu, Hawaii has surpassed it with 12.1.

The ratio in Cedar Rapids remains about 3, with Iowa City holding at about 4. Ames, Des Moines, and Omaha-Council Bluffs also have ratios about 4 in Iowa. 

The Harvard article includes an interactive graphic showing metro home prices across America since 1980. It is well worth the time to play with it for awhile. It reveals the complexity of the national housing problem.

1. The price of housing is both a recent problem, and one of long-standing. The number of metros with price-to-income ratios over 5.0 went from five (2000) to 15 (2019) to 48 in the most recent data. Some places show persistently high prices, while others have experienced a sudden surge from the 3-4 range. High prices are no longer a characteristic of a few exceptionally hot areas--now they include places like Blacksburg, Virginia; College Station, Texas; Las Cruces, New Mexico; Madison, Wisconsin; and Portland, Maine. The dialogue around housing policy is not new, though, maybe just more urgent. It didn't start with the pandemic, and the easing of supply chain issues seems unlikely to resolve this.
   
2. The price of housing is both a national problem, and also one confined to a few regions. The map in Figure 1 clearly shows a swath of the country from upstate New York across the Great Plains where housing prices have not surged. Metros like Chicago, Columbus, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis-St. Paul have poked their heads above 4.0, but a great deal of American territory has not experienced what much of Texas, the Mountain West, and the coasts have. This is not to dismiss places with a 4:1 ratio, though. I imagine 4:1 is a problem for a lot of people, too.
   

The 2007 bubble burst, with a lot of pain attendant to it, but it did bring prices down in a lot of areas. It's possible that will happen again. It's also possible that demand outrunning supply is a systemic problem, and that it will only get worse. The Harvard study suggests that housing market inflation is slowing down, but that interest rates remain high, and "widespread inventory shortages" aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

There are solutions to short supply, mainly involving deregulation of things like lot sizes that allows more housing to be built in high-demand places. Most municipalities can't afford to sprawl further--though some may not realize it--so that requires overcoming local resistance to density. Governments at all levels can help with affordability, although increasing buying power without increasing supply can aggravate inflation (Phillips 2020, ch. 1).  Iowa keeps waiting for an influx of people from high-cost areas, but it hasn't happened yet. If it did, it might just spread out the problem rather than solving it. Still, we could think about why the country is divided between "hot" and "not hot" areas, and what can be done to raise the temperature in the latter places.

SOURCE: Alexander Herrmann and Peyton Whitney, "Home Price-to-Income Ratio Reaches Record High," Joint Center for Housing Studies (Harvard University), 22 January 2024 

SEE ALSO: 

Chris Herbert, "Five Barriers to Greater Use of Manufactured Housing for Entry-Level Homeownership," Joint Center for Housing Studies (Harvard University), 23 January 2024 

Diana Ionescu, "What Drives the High Cost of Housing?" Planetizen, 23 January 2024

Shane Phillips, The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (And Keeping It There) (Island, 2020) 

Jenny Schuetz, "To Meet Today's Critical Housing Challenges, HUD Needs a Broader, Bolder Vision," Brookings, 22 January 2024

PREVIOUSLY ON THE MOUNTAIN:

"Housing Policy," 1 July 2021

"What Can Be Done About Homelessness?" 8 January 2024

MLK and the winter of discontent

Martin Luther King Jr (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

I'm feeling quite out of sorts these days. It's an unpleasant mix of anxiety, discouragement, restlessness and rage, individually unremarkable (for me, anyway) but collectively rather potent and hard to get out from under.

Part of it's the weather. The long dark days of mid-January have this week featured two major snowfalls, followed by deeply subzero temperatures. I have been moving snow and moving snow, and then when it stopped falling, I've continued to move snow because of massive drifting. (This is not really a very good excuse, I realize, since everyone else in town has been dealing with the same weather.) Our driveway is off an alley, which the city does not regularly maintain, so for three days after the last flake fell it was still full of snow. We successfully took a car out Sunday, but got it stuck trying to get it back up the alley, which required moving a lot more snow as well as the assistance of our across-the-street neighbor Bob. There are more details in this story of woe, which I will spare you, because this blog is about place-making and community-building, which I will eventually get to.

Snow is everywhere (Photo by Jane Claspy Nesmith)

Another part of it is politics. Amid the horrors of wars in Ukraine and Gaza, we have been dealing here with the verbal frenzy that is the Iowa caucus, as Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Donald Trump tried to jones their final numbers. (For a particularly good takedown of caucus madness, see Lenz 2024.) Trump, the often-indicted, insult spewing, anti-community manchild who has become a conservative folk hero, was sure to be the winner at the caucuses, and is the probable Republican presidential nominee. He refers to his opponents as "vermin" and "enemies," and accuses immigrants of "poisoning the blood" of the country, to raucously cheering crowds. He got 53.1 percent of the general election vote in Iowa in 2020, and will probably beat that this year. Meanwhile, our Governor, Kim Reynolds, who won her last election with 59.5 percent of the vote, has been announcing initiatives like upending regional education agencies and refusing federal food aid for poor children because "childhood obesity has become an epidemic" (see Rampell 2024). She is endorsing DeSantis, the Florida governor known mainly for scapegoating refugees and using them as political props. Why do I live here again?

The caucuses themselves were scheduled, for some reason, on Martin Luther King Day itself. As a result, the usual Monday night service at St. Paul's United Methodist Church--I wrote about last year's observance here--was cancelled. I would have gone.

Grace Episcopal Church (Source: church website)

King celebrants did not disappear, though. A day of service was held Saturday, kicking off a spring-long series of events to be announced. Eventually a service was added to the schedule, Sunday afternoon at historic Grace Episcopal Church. At that observance, Sarah Swayze was honored with the Dr. Percy and Lileah Harris 'Who is My Neighbor?' Award.

Sarah Swayze (Source: Empowering Youths of Iowa)

Ms. Swayze, who lives in the Wellington Heights neighborhood mere blocks from my house, founded Empowering Youths of Iowa, a nonprofit that provides mentors for high school students (King 2024).

I missed the service as I struggled with the snow. I did participate Monday in Coe's annual transcribathon for the Library of Congress, endeavoring to decipher two letters written in the 1870s by future president James Garfield.

James Garfield wrote this. Who could read it?

The annual King holiday is an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to building the "beloved community" of which he often spoke and wrote. We meet together, in the middle of winter and in the middle of the increasing madness of our body politic, and remember his vision, and why we do what we do. While Trump sweeps all before him at the precinct caucuses, we remember the anti-Trump; instead of spewing insults and spreading hate, King promoted a vision of a beloved community where people of all sorts worked across their differences because they recognized a common human destiny. When we see others speaking our language, King's language, working for the same goals, often way harder than your humble blogger does, our conviction is renewed. For the moment, we know we're not crazy, no matter how marginal we seem to the daily hurly-burly.

We sing this song every Martin Luther King Day, which might be my favorite hymn of all time (6:06):

At least it's better than "Try It in a Small Town."

We need to remember, too, that King also faced discouragement, and the same existential woe that I and possibly you are experiencing. At Christmas 1967, years after the hope of the Montgomery bus boycott and the triumphant "I Have a Dream" speech, King faced impatience and discontent within the civil rights movement, as well as great personal danger as events were soon to prove. "Peace on Earth," he began, quoting the angels' song in Luke 2:

This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without.... Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don't have good will toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power. (M.L. King [1967] 1991: 253)

The dream of 1963 was far from reality.

In 1963, on a sweltering August afternoon, we stood in Washington, D.C., and talked to the nation about many things. Toward the end of that afternoon, I tried to talk to the nation about a dream that I had had, and I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation.... (257)

And yet, hope is our only choice.

Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you know, you can't give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of all. And so today I still have a dream.

I have a dream that one day men will rise up and come to see that they are made to live together as brothers... I still have a dream today that in all of our state houses and city halls men will be elected to go there who will do justly and love mercy and walk humbly with their God.... I still have a dream that with this faith we will be able to adjourn the councils of despair and bring new light into the dark chambers of pessimism. With this faith we will be able to speed up the day when there will be peace on earth and good will toward men. It will be a glorious day, the morning stars will sing together, and the sons of God will shout for joy. (257-258)

The whole sermon (29:30):

 

Today, 16 January 2024, is not that glorious day, and the shouts of joy I hear are those of the caucus victors, full of vengeance and grievance and misplaced anger. And yet, Dr. King reminds us to keep working for justice and real community, because, really, what choice do we have?

 

Even though I drove out of my garage this morning, across the newly-plowed alley, directly into a snowbank.

SOURCES: 

Grace King, "Nonprofit Founder to Get 'Neighbor' Award," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 14 January 2014, 2A

Martin Luther King Jr., "A Christmas Sermon on Peace," in James M. Washington (ed), A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. (HarperCollins, 1991), 253-258.

SOME GOOD NEWS: 

Nicholas Kristof, "This Was a Terrible Year, and Maybe Also the Best One for Humanity," New York Times, 30 December 2023

Catherine Rampell, "Congress is About to Do Something Amazing: Agree to Invest in Kids," Washington Post, 15 January 2024

"A Transformed Memphis: Inspiration from the Civic Commons in 2023," Reimagining the Civic Commons, 16 January 2024

Jane Jacobs goes to Greene Square

 

Entering Greene Square from 3rd Av by the rr tracks

Greene Square occupies one block in the core of Cedar Rapids, between 3rd and 4th Avenues SE, and between 5th Street and the railroad track. Our city's oldest park (1897), it received a gigantic makeover in 2015. Numerous trees were removed, and new landscaping and benches were added. Cindy Hadish's Homegrown Iowan blog has excellent coverage of the planning stages as well as photographs of Greene Square in the before times. I chimed in with this October 2014 post. I wondered then if I was being overwrought, and I certainly was, but my regrets about the removal of play equipment from the original proposal remains.

The park that emerged in 2015 is rather simple and open, as you can see in the pictures above and elsewhere in this post. It's a handy place for special events like the downtown farmers' markets, the Christmas tree lighting, and occasional presidential candidates.

Tom Steyer speaks in Greene Square, August 2019

It got some play that one summer (2017?) Pokemon Go was popular. The Cedar River Trail awkwardly straddles the railroad track alongside the wall of the parking garage. And on fine summer days you can see professionals eating lunch, though in the absence of much shade they probably miss the trees that got removed.

Mostly, though, it's underused. My 2014 fears that it would become an attraction for visitors at the expense of residents turned out to be silly; visitors don't use it much either. Mostly Greene Square is utilized by clusters of homeless people that make use of the benches and the shade from the parking garage.

Clutch of belongings on a January morning

II

I don't know that Greene Square is a problem, so much as underutilized potential. I believe that better days are ahead, although there might be things we could do to facilitate them.

Some mighty long trains run on the track

To understand what's happening and not happening in Greene Square, we turn to the "mother of us all," Jane Jacobs (1916-2006). Chapter five of her landmark The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library, [1961] 2011) is about city parks. Granted, her attention is to large cities like New York rather than small cities like Cedar Rapids, and she's considering parks on a much larger scale than our one-square-block Greene Square. Still, I think she can provide, or provoke, some insights.

Noting that people do not use city open space just because it is there and because city planners or designers wish they would (117), she compares four parks in downtown Philadelphia that date from the  colonial era but met "wildly different" fates (120). 

Why are there so often no people where the parks are and no parks where the people are? Unpopular parks are troubling not only because of the waste and missed opportunities they imply, but also because of their frequent negative effects. They have the same problems as streets without eyes, and their dangers spill over into the area surrounding, so that streets along such parks become known as danger places too and are avoided. (123)

Does that sound familiar, Cedar Rapids? If it does not, then I'm talking to myself, but if it does, read on!

What is the key difference between well-used, successful parks and parks that are empty and/or scary? It's their surroundings, and how they interact with them. Any park...

...is the creature of its surroundings and of the way its surroundings generate mutual support from diverse uses, or fail to generate such support.... A generalized neighborhood park that is not headquarters for the leisured indigent can become populated naturally and casually only by situated very close indeed to where active and different currents of life and function come to a focus. If downtown, it must get shoppers, visitors and strollers as well as downtown workers. If not downtown, it must still be where life swirls--where there is work, cultural, residential and commercial activity--as much as possible of everything different that cities can offer. The main problem of neighborhood park planning boils down to nurturing diversified neighborhoods capable of using and supporting parks. (128, 131)

Greene Square is surrounded by institutional buildings. I love the institutions and the buildings that face three of the four sides of the park, but they are used for only a small part of the day and week. They do not of themselves provide enough activity to infuse the park with life. 

View of the 5th Street and 4th Avenue boundaries

The most hopeful of the four is the Cedar Rapids Public Library, across 4th Avenue, which is open until 8 p.m. four days a week, and until 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Across 5th Street are historic First Presbyterian Church (Sunday services and free meals, some weekday events) and Waypoint Services (including child care which has some potential).

View of the trackside and 3rd Avenue boundaries

Across 3rd Avenue is the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, of which I am a proud member, but which is open only 30 hours a week, mostly in the early afternoon. Next to the museum is a vacant parking lot formerly used by Guaranty National Bank. Across the tracks and trail from the park is a parking garage, built in the early 1960s on the site of the old train station; it is hard to imagine a deader contribution than this. Greene Square is surrounded by great institutions, but which cannot and do not provide the energy to support the park--certainly not in the numbers to overcome its current "skid row" feel.

III

We may not have to wait long for that energy, though. Look again at the picture of the park, with First Presbyterian Church at the left and the Cedar Rapids Public Library to the right. In between them, across the intersection of 4th Avenue and 5th Street, is the newly-built Annex on the Square, with 224 apartments and (possibly) first-floor retail. In the surrounding blocks, more apartments have been or are being built, and some downtown office buildings are being converted to residences as well. The downtown population of Cedar Rapids has gradually increased since the 2008 flood, without much dramatic impact on the area, but the surge in construction promises to do more. We may be approaching a 24-hour downtown, with daily needs within walking distance, and a variety of foot traffic throughout the day. This will change how and by whom Greene Square is used.

The more successfully a city mingles everyday diversity of uses and users in its everyday streets, the more successfully, casually (and economically) its people thereby enliven and support well-located parks that can thus give back grace and delight to their neighborhoods instead of vacuity. (145)

This is a positive development, and it seems inevitable that what's around the park will improve Greene Square, but I'll bet we could augment that energy with some attention to what's in the park. Jacobs refers to intricacy, which

...is related to the variety of reasons for which people come to neighborhood parks. Even the same person comes for different reasons at different times; sometimes to sit tiredly, sometimes to play or to watch a game, sometimes to read or work, sometimes to show off... sometimes to keep a child occupied, sometimes simply to see what [it] offers, and almost always to be entertained by the sight of other people. (135)

That's easier to imagine in a vast expanse like New York's Central Park, but Greene Square is begging for some reason to go there. Playground equipment could serve those child care kiddos, as well as anyone with small children living nearby. A few more trees could get us all through summers that are getting longer and hotter, and would add some texture to what is now pretty much open space.  Checkers? Charging stations? A food cart? Buskers? We all have imaginations... let's use them!

 

ADDED 2/16/2024: 1910 view across Greene Square Park from r/cedarrapids

What can be done about homelessness?

Resting in the lee of the 4th Avenue Parking Garage

Homelessness in America has burgeoned in recent years (DeParle 2023a), with the increasing visibility of unhoused people in public spaces creating concern across the political spectrum. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated 653,104 people were homeless in January 2023, up 12 percent from the previous year. Prevalence varied by state, with the highest percentages tending to be in wealthier states (Fitzpatrick 2024).

Of course, the visible homeless are not close to the whole story; for every fellow you see "rough sleeping" in a city park, there are--nine? ten? 12?--others sleeping in their vehicles, staying with a succession of amenable friends, or in some other unstable arrangement. Nonetheless, it's their very visibility, and the fear of social disorder their presence creates, that is forcing cities to address the broader problem.

Homelessness is a wicked problem, with multiple tangled causes that are complicated to address. For starters, the whole housing market is a mess, as documented by Jenny Schuetz (Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America's Broken Housing Systems [Brookings Institution, 2022]), Shane Phillips (The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach and Keeping It There [Island, 2020]), and others. There isn't enough housing of any type or at any price point, except maybe the top end; housing is being built in low-demand areas rather where it would provide the most public benefit; and prices were rising even before the coronavirus pandemic upended supply chains. Both localities and existing residents have disincentives to address these (cf. Schuetz 2022 chs 6-7), and federal housing programs support fewer people than they did 20 years ago (DeParle 2023b). Some good news this week, though, where a Pew study finds some positive impact of Minneapolis's zoning reforms (Liang, Staveski and Horowitz 2024).

Nearly everyone is affected by this situation to some degree, but it stands to reason that the poorest and most vulnerable would suffer the most, and are either extremely cost-burdened or out of housing altogether. "The biggest driver of these numbers is the lack of affordable housing," says Ann Oliva of the National Alliance to End Homelessness (DeParle 2023a).

At the same time, substance addiction, immigration, and mental health are all at crisis levels. We seem to have turned the corner on opioid overprescription, but there remain all the people whose lives were ruined and struggle to receive treatment. Surges in immigration from Central and South America before and after the pandemic have been met with policy ranging from helplessness to hostility, and they too have been flung about the country and into the housing mess. ("This is partly a manufactured problem," Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania told The New York Times (DeParle 2023a)). It is widely acknowledged that, despite recent efforts, American mental health care does not approach covering all those who need it, particularly at the lowest income levels (cf. Wachino 2023).

Unaffordable housing, untreated substance addiction, untreated mental illness, and a broken immigration system all point to more people without housing. People with unstable lives are more prone to unemployment and health issues, which can contribute to being chronically homeless. Rising numbers have overwhelmed local services, with most people noticing when they appear in places like (in Cedar Rapids) Greene Square and the Cedar Rapids Public Library. Concern is sufficiently widespread that the issue found its way into the Downtown Vision and Action Plan approved last month. As part of the strategy to make downtown "safe and welcoming," initiative 2.2.2 proposed effectively ending homelessness with establishment of a Local Oversight Board and staff person to monitor performance on a community-wide basis, ensuring efficient and effective use of resources and continued collaboration with social service providers.

Ending homelessness is a laudable goal, but policy experience is sobering. Even cities credited with substantial success in reducing homelessness, like Houston and Minneapolis, got moderate rewards for strenuous efforts. Houston adopted a Housing First policy in 2011, and has seen a 63 percent reduction in homelessness since then, with 90 percent of the clients they housed remaining in permanent housing (McLean 2023). Along with placement in "safe, stable housing," clients are offered counseling services like substance abuse reduction and employment. Minneapolis, using a housing-first approach called Built for Zero, focused on housing the longest-term homeless and saw an 80 percent reduction since 2017 (Ionescu 2023, Holder 2023). Atlanta and Denver also saw significant decreases with a housing-first approach. But all this takes resources, and even in Houston available housing and willing landlords can be difficult to find. 

And substantial numbers of people remain unhoused. "People sometimes think we're Shangri-La and we have no homelessness," Houston task force leader Mark Eichenbaum told Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times. "No, we still have homelessness" (Kristof 2023). There surely is further concern among policy makers about effective local policy attracting greater numbers of transient people. 

Ending local homelessness can also mean using punitive policies to push the unhoused out of town. Some towns have wrecked encampments, as Cedar Rapids did in December 2022, or made public benches impossible to lie on ("hostile architecture"). A Missouri law--written by the Texas-based Cicero Institute, so expect it in Iowa soon--forbids sleeping on public land, with stringent penalties for municipalities that allow it, while slashing state funding for housing. Former President Donald J. Trump wants to force the homeless into urban camps (DeParle 2023b, Swanson 2023). These policies try to ensure that no one deemed unworthy receives a dime of public benefits, the same motivation for states like Iowa that are rejecting federally-funded summer meals for poor children.

Homelessness is a problem, one no one should have to live with. But we have a choice, whether to treat the unhoused as fellow human beings or as "vermin"--to use one of Trump's favorite words--or as political pawns. How we respond to homeless people says a lot about how we view our own place in the common life. 

In the nearer term, what should be done about the burgeoning "skid row" in and around Greene Square? It may already being done, which is a story for another day. I refer the impatient to chapter 5 (on parks) in Jane Jacobs's brilliant and timeless The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library, [1961] 2012). If you want more, check chapter 14 on border vacuums.

FORTHCOMING: Charles Marohn Jr and Daniel Herriges, Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis (Wiley, 2024)

OLDER POSTS:

"What We Can Do About Housing," 18 March 2022

"Housing Policy," 1 July 2021

10th anniversary post: Places and non-places

Ikea, Schaumburg IL: Place of cloning, or just too much parking?

Ten years ago, New Year's Day 2014 began the first full year of the Holy Mountain blog. I published seven posts in the first month of that year, more than any January since, including a picture of the pile near Indian Creek Nature Center where I deposited our Christmas tree (which I did again today). Almost anything I saw was, it seemed, worthy of a post. I don't know how long I could have kept that up.

I posted responses to addresses by Governor Terry Branstad and President Barack Obama. I wasn't impressed with either one, but ten years later they fill me with nostalgia for a lost time. I was full of urbanism, and they weren't, but at least they weren't all about lashing out at enemies, and using poor children and immigrants to score political points. Trump, the bull in our national china shop, has broken so much it will take years to repair. I miss superficiality.

 

(The "poisoning our blood" speech, from C-SPAN (1:23). If I can't explain the continuing appeal of this galoot, I should probably retire.)