Two articles in the Trib’s real estate section recently point out mild unintended consequences of recent planning interventions:

Of the 98 low-income homes built since 2002 under a controversial affordable-housing ordinance, most “are younger, first-time home buyers who are yet to start a family,” a recently released analysis shows. Nearly 60 percent live alone. Although the city hasn’t tracked buyers’ race, officials believe a substantial number are white. (reported by Christine Tatum, originally in the Denver Post)

This problem plagues many well intentioned affordable housing programs; especially when creating affordable for-sale housing, many of the most qualified buyers are going to be white-collar folks who would have bought homes anyways, albeit on less favorable terms.

(The reported statistics certainly should give affordable housing advocates some pause; in some cases, policies like inclusionary zoning may not be an effective way to spend political capital on their largely low-income base’s behalf — and, in some cases, may even exacerbate gentrification if off-site inclusionary units sited in currently affordable neighborhoods end up with yuppie tenants. On the other hand, these programs potentially expand the political constituency for affordable housing programs to capture more of the powerful middle class.)

[A Des Plaines real estate agent] handled some transactions recently where couples downsizing from houses bought brand-new suburban condos only to discover that they felt cramped. Yes, they liked not having to mow the lawn, but to not have a lawn was, well, too much too soon. So, they sold the condo and moved to a home in Sun City in Huntley. (reported by Wayne Faulkner)

The article makes ample note of the suburban condo boom’s many upsides: more vibrant downtown retail, better utilization of existing transportation infrastructure, and an enhanced sense of community for seniors and for the whole town. Yet I’m sure that someone’s missing a market opportunity here: dense infill housing somewhere between single-family and high-rise. Rowhouses, courtyard houses, stacked rowhouses, and low-rise flats have historically appealed to young families (if they were built at all) due to the number of steps involved, but if Sun City can do ’em, so can downtowns. Cheaper residential elevators might also make these building types more practical for empty nesters.

(Elsewhere in the paper on the same day, another real estate industry source indicated that attached housing this year will account for more than half of all new home sales in the Chicago region. I know that the same is now true of most West Coast metro areas, where denser sprawl has long been the norm, but this is potent ammunition against those “lawn = American Dream” propagandists.)

[items picked up from the Campaign for Sensible Growth mailing this week.]

Oh, and I have 100+ photos to sort through from recent travels. They will get posted eventually.