Nolan Gray, city planner, widely published author and the keynote speaker at a recent Regional Housing Alliance of La Plata County’s Second Annual Southwest Housing Summit, said he is from the future – present-day California – and Colorado can learn from The Golden State’s rigors.
In California, he said, people became addicted to the idea their homes are investments and their ever-rising property values must be protected at any cost – even if it means opposing other housing projects. But as California’s housing crisis effects compounded, even some homeowners with homes costing several million dollars realized their obstructionism wasn’t worth it.
Gray is a professional city planner and the senior director of legislation and research for California YIMBY, a nonprofit working to fix inequitable housing laws and regulations and also pushes for faster home building.
He attended the housing summit, which featured housing advisers and experts from the Durango area and beyond, to discuss the NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) phenomenon of homeowners rejecting housing developments in their neighborhoods to protect their own home investments – and how to outflank it.
A woman asked Gray how to address the fact that significant growth in the housing supply clashes with societal expectations that home values should rise indefinitely and the NIMBYism that results.
“The portion of those home values that are rooted in constraint and limitation wouldn’t be there anymore,” the woman said. “Have you thought about how to message to community members that pursuing really sustainable affordability for everybody is actually in direct contrast with your home doubling in value?”
Gray relayed a vision of the “future.” He said most healthy housing markets contain steady home values. Homes are great investments to store wealth, build equity and eventually sell.
Unhealthy – even “toxic” – markets appear when communities become addicted to their homes rising up to 10 times their starting property values, as Gray said he observed in California. He said once a community goes down that line of thinking, it’s hard to change course.
“It’s very scary,” he said.
People have adopted the idea they should purchase the most expensive home possible, taking on too much debt in the process, and then oppose anything that threatens their “incredible investments,” he said.
He said many communities are on the precipice of NIMBY thinking. But in California, some people are realizing things have gotten out of hand.
On one hand, someone whose San Jose home now costs $5 million after he or she bought it in the 1970s for “two magic beans and some belly button lint” won the lottery, he said.
“On the other hand, they’re like, ‘My kids are gone, all of my friends and colleagues have moved away; there are people sleeping in tents under the overpass.’”
He said California – which represents the future housing markets of many communities across the United States – is an example of how housing crises can get so bad they snap people out of their addiction to home value appreciation.
It’s easier to stop a community from getting addicted to skyrocketing home values than to pull a community out of that mindset, he said. Don’t set the expectation of extreme upward leaps in home values.
Gray said towns and cities have the ability to bypass NIMBYs by allowing accessory dwelling units. California cities were able to sidestep a “rogues gallery” of NIMBYs by reforming zoning laws to allow ADUs.
When the reform was first proposed, people predicted crowds of opposers with torches and pitchforks, ready to vote out the officials who dared to suggest ADUs, he said. But ADUs are possibly the most popular policy California’s instated in the last decade.
“You can legalize almost any form of housing as long as you call it an ADU,” he said.
The city of Durango eased its restrictions on ADUs in August 2022, allowing them in all residential neighborhood zones with the exceptions of SkyRidge, Rock Ridge and a few other planned developments.
Minimum lot sizes for attached ADUs were eliminated, on-street parking was made to count toward total parking requirements, ADUs were permitted within some townhomes and new ADUs attained some eligibility for zoning variances, according to the city.
In Florida, which Gray said is both geographically and politically opposite California, a policy was passed to allow multifamily housing on all commercial lots in the state (such as unused office space), with requirements such as targeting 120% area median income and height and density restrictions.
He said the policy is a recent example of zero-cost reform and, anecdotally, about 100,000 entitlements are being processed.
“We always talk about housing like it’s pollution,” he said. “We do cap-and-trade, like ‘Where are we going to put the housing?’ We’re going to ‘tolerate’ the housing. But housing done right and policies that are done right can be enriching for our communities.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
