Category: Development

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NIMBY: Not What You Think

By Cynthia Merla Spielman and Anisa Schell

This was published in the San Antonio Express News on March 6, 2018.

Recently a non-profit developer gave a presentation on similar developments in different parts of town. One presentation was given to a group of residents  in an economically depressed part of San Antonio, and another in a more upscale area. One neighborhood welcomed the 100% affordable housing development; the other neighborhood was staunchly against the development and the rhetoric became an ugly comment on the poor.

Often neighbors have valid reasons for opposing affordable housing developments that have nothing to do with the potential residents, even if they couch their concerns in discriminatory language.

Both neighborhoods wanted the same thing: economic diversity that nurtures resilient neighborhoods, neighborhoods that are able to care for its most vulnerable residents. The more affluent neighborhood embraced the change that would work for both established and new residents. The economically depressed neighborhood opposed the development because they felt overwhelmed by their own poverty. Instead of working with the second community to find solutions, politicians and developers were quick to label residents NIMBYs and silence their objections.

NIMBY, an acronym for “Not In My Back Yard,” is a pejorative term. It conveys disrespect and is dismissive of resident concerns. The term NIMBY has been used to label dissent to any project. It is meant to rob neighborhoods of their voice. Rather than listening to the concerns that residents bring forth, the label of NIMBY is applied by those wishing to push the project forward, stereotyping and ignoring the complexity of community.

Any large development impacts neighborhoods and before the City incents these developments or grants them zoning changes, the impact on community and neighborhoods should be assessed for such things as traffic, roads, the effects on local schools, environment (run off), housing values, health issues, and quality of life issues for both current and potential new residents.

Often, developers approach neighborhoods when they are nearing the end of their planning phases. Drawings have been submitted, city approval has been gained, funding is in place. From the developer’s perspective, everything is ready to go. They bring these near-complete plans to the nearby residents and tell them what they are going to build. Residents are taken by surprise and find that there is no room for input into this process. When residents raise objections, the developer becomes frustrated. Tempers flare and concerns are dismissed. Residents cry foul and developers confirm their suspicion that neighborhoods are just against development.

Large developments that offer just a few units of affordable housing benefit developers more than future residents or neighbors. The residents of the surrounding area are left alone to solve the issues that often come with increased traffic, run-off, crowded schools, and a perception of falling housing values to people who have barely hung on to middle class.

These projects are seldom located in wealthy neighborhoods and the wisdom of crowding the “poor” into large developments without support often make the problems of poverty worse. Developers are granted tax abatements that rob school districts, while at the same time burdening the neighborhood schools.

Rather than fighting the residents when the project is ready to break ground, why not garner resident support from the project’s inception? Before funding is applied for or submissions are made, developers should reach out to neighborhood associations and community leaders. To be successful, there has to be more meaningful input from residents and that input should have the ability to create change.

Developers and politicians should take a proactive approach with neighborhoods. No one knows the neighborhoods better than the residents who live in them. Developers and city leaders may be surprised to find that communities can readily identify places where more housing is possible in their neighborhood, and what challenges may be faced when inappropriate development occurs in the wrong place.

Changing the framework of the discussion from one of blame and name-calling (NIMBY) to a positive discussion of community and solutions will help make the building of affordable housing in our neighborhoods possible.

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The County Commissioners and Affordable Housing

The County Commissioners recently released its Tax Abatement Guidelines effective January 31, 2018 – December 31, 2020 which incentivizes market rate multi-family rental housing in the Center City. The Commission also released its Bexar County Skills Development Fund for Economic Development which incentivizes companies or businesses with twenty (20) or more employees to train new employees and pay the targeted Occupation Positions no less than $17.44 and no employee at project site less than $11.32 excluding benefits. Only 25% of the new employees are required to be Bexar County residents.

Precinct Four County Commissioner Tommy Calvert wrote an open letter, “Bexar County’s New Incentive Policy Benefits Top 10% Again” decrying the the fact that the proposal allows “only the top 10% of the larges businesses to train and hire 75% of people from out of town after you give them $250,000 for workforce training.” He states his objection to the abatement policy: “…When I asked the court to work with me to provide a market incentive to balance the decade long policy where Bexar County only gave tax abatements for multi-family developments that called for the highest rents and highest mortgages and put in place policies that benefit the vast majority of working people, the staff and court has provide (sic) inaction and excuses.”

On February 8, 2018, Commissioner Calvert held a Neighborhood Reinvestment Fund Committee Meeting at the DoSeum in which he discussed with community and business leaders the proposals and asked for solutions. Hans shot up across the large and crowded room. What happened next was a lively, diverse, and informative discussion of solutions.

In San Antonio, a city with high economic/geographic segregation, where zip code determines fate, affordable housing is tied to opportunity – jobs and education and health.   Our tax dollars should be used to encourage workforce and affordable housing and helping people stay in their homes, not to incentivize market rate housing that most of the hard working citizens of San Antonio can ill afford.

The kind of incentivizing of development and market-rate housing that the Commissioners propose has led to displacement in our downtown neighborhoods. As home prices shoot up, my neighbor Danny stands before me and says he is struggling to stay in the home he grew up in, a home he has cared for and a neighborhood that is the only one he has known. “People tell me that my house is an investment,” he says, “But it is not an investment: It is my home! Where would I go?” We need funds for owner-occupied home rehab and neighborhood reinvestment and tax relief.  Another neighbor, at my kitchen table, demands that we stop improving the neighborhood because she can’t afford it. We shouldn’t have to stop improving our neighborhoods in order to help people stay in their communities, but we should mitigate the unintended consequences of incentivized market rate development. If in n Beacon Hill and other downtown neighborhoods, the affordable housing is the still housing we live in now, it may not be for long.

Median-income households can afford less than half of the homes on the market, making the local housing market inherently unaffordable. The statistics on renters are worse yet: Renters compose 47% of the the housed population.  As of 2010, more than half of renter households in Bexar County would not have been able to afford the two-bedroom fair market rent that requires an income of at least $33,680 or $16.19 per hour over a 40-hour work week.  The average Bexar County worker earned $12.18. Since the Comprehensive Housing Needs Assessment and Strategic Housing Plan of San Antonio (which produced these figures) was produced in 2013, the housing situation has only worsened. Rents have steadily risen.

Teachers, firefighters, City staff, architects, healthcare workers, those at the 80% of AMI, whether they be renters or homeowners, are finding themselves priced out of the San Antonio downtown area. If renters stay, they struggle to pay unaffordable rent which can prevent them from achieving the dream of home ownership. Homeowners may soon join their ranks.

What we need is training programs for Bexar County residents, higher wages, the development of skilled industries (not tourism), and a way for neighborhood  students to have access to to a decent education. What we need is housing that is affordable and  neighborhoods that are resilient.

The SA Tomorrow Comprehensive Plan requires that developments that receive public funding or use public financing tools, provide affordable housing units – an important objective that this Commissioners Court has failed to require.

According to NALCAB’s recent study, “An Analysis of Housing Vulnerability in San Antonio” produced in January of this year, public policy and incentives that are proposed here have helped to make rental housing unaffordable.  The highest multifamily effective rents were in areas with high concentrations of new production, often incentivized production.

In other words, the City incentivized an unaffordable rental housing market, using our tax dollars to worsen a housing crises. Now the County, learning nothing from the City’s errors, seems to be proposing to do the very same thing. It does not make any sense.

There is nothing wrong with market rate housing which will proliferate on its own as the market grows; but our tax dollars should be used to incentivize affordable and workforce housing and training that benefits the citizens of Bexar County, not just the market rate development community or corporations.

I understand the desire to raise the tax base by incentivizing market rate housing, but we can do that by raising the living standards of our citizens through education, opportunity, and housing.

On February 13th, after two hours of presentations (notably by Dr. Christine Drennon of Trinity University and SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez) and citizen input, Commissioner Calvert was able to successfully persuade the Commissioners Court to hire a housing consultant and create a citizen –staffed advisory committee. County Commissioner Tommy Calvert should be commended for working for affordable housing and seeking public engagement as the process.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Case of Tobin Hill North

On August 17, 2017 a large group of Tobin Hill neighbors, many wearing Tobin Hill’s orange t-shirts, came to City Council to advocate for a historic district designation for their block of Mistletoe which would be called the Tobin Hill North Historic District, the culmination of a year-long effort. The effort was in response to a developer’s plans to crowd eight two-story single-family homes on one lot in the middle of the block of  bungalows and cottages, plans the neighborhood deemed incompatible.

Neighbors came together and 51% of them agreed to start the designation process. After a meeting in which the Tobin Hill Community Association endorsed the plans,  four public meetings conducted by Office of Historic Preservation (OHP) and countless meetings in living rooms and dining room tables, Historic Design and Review Commission (HDRC) gave its unanimous approval.

But it is at this point the process exposed a weakness in OHP’s procedures: 51% of the residents agreed to attend meetings for information, but no votes are taken after these meetings. It is as if the vote to listen to information is a vote to become an historic district and the confusion becomes acrimonious.

By the time the case made it to City Council on August 17th, the numbers for and against the designation had slipped back and forth.  In the end, no side had the required 51% majority. Out of 88 properties, 11 abstained (13%), 33 (37%) voted for the designation, and 44 (50%) voted against it.  Several people who were not in the district but within the 200’ radius that is sent notices also voted.

But it was not that simple.

The opposition consisted of some sincere neighbors who advocated for property rights and did not want the designation, but many of the opposition were investors who owned property temporarily, but did not live in the neighborhood or even District 1, begging the question for future debate: Should the votes of temporary property owners, non-residents, be weighed the same as people who live in the district (or own property on a permanent basis) and will live with the consequences in a way that is more than just pecuniary?

Out of 44 properties counted in opposition, 22 of them were possessed by non- residents, some of whom owned multiple properties: Half of those 22 properties are owned by just four investors. In other words, investors made up half of the opposition; just four investors made up a full quarter of the opposition.

It became a no-win situation for the residents.

The Councilman met in February 2017 with the investors along with the District 1 Zoning Commission representative in a room in a local restaurant. One of the condo developers later stated at City Council that he had met with Councilman even before he purchased the property.

The neighbors, although they tried, were unable to get an audience with the Councilman. He did not return their calls. His staff, coordinating everyone’s schedule, produced a meeting with the neighbors and the Councilman. He did not show. A public meeting was set up to discuss the Neighborhood Conservation District (NCD), a year-long process for which the Councilman advocated (even after telling another neighborhood that only historic designation would protect them) but by that time frustration and tension engulfed the meeting.

At the the Zoning Commission hearing on May 16th, OHP asked for a third continuance for reasons that are unclear. One of the neighbors was told that someone had called and wanted more information. No presentation was given for the Zoning Commission by OHP. The Commission (with barely a quorum)  voted against the designation, after listening to speakers for and against, critiquing OHP’s process.

Democracy is strongest at a local level.  Our neighborhoods, our communities, our City is a place that we can nurture it, even as it is tested on a national and world stage. Democracy is not easy. It requires transparency and inclusion and a sense of fair play.

Our City government let us down.

City Council members make whatever decisions they choose, and citizens can debate them at the ballot box, but the process of inclusion and transparency was blatantly ignored to the  advantage of developer interests.

At the City Council meeting on August 17th, neighbors came with a real expectation that they would not only speak, but that they would be listened to, that they would be heard. Before the meeting, a compromise to redraw the Historic District had been accepted by the advocates  and it left out the most adamant opposition, a “flipper,” out of the district, a request he had made at the Zoning Commission meeting.  At the end of over two hours of neighbors’ testimony, District 1 Councilman read a statement that demonstrated that their words, their work, and their presence had no bearing whatsoever on any decision, that it had been predetermined. The rest of the City Council simply voted along with little or no comment or questions and certainly no explanations. It seemed clear by their silence that they had made up their minds (with the exception of District 9 Councilman John Courage) beforehand to support their fellow council member instead of the people to whom they are responsible. The compromise was summarily dismissed. Neighbors were thanked for their  “participation” in a display of condescension. This was the not a democratic process and it exemplifies the worst of City government.

When we question why people do not vote, look to the lesson of Tobin Hill North.  If ordinary citizens are not even acknowledged by their elected representatives, why indeed, does it matter for whom they vote? Citizen input and participation become empty words that breeds the worst kind of cynicism in its citizens. It is this kind of cynicism that kills democracy. “Inclusion” becomes an empty show that benefits those with money and power.  I am not suggesting that this Councilman was wrong to meet with the opposition which consisted mostly of the development community; I am forcefully suggesting that he was wrong in not also making himself equally available to the neighbors of Tobin Hill North and listening to their perspective as well. This is not about one Councilmember: They are all, with the exception of Councilman Courage, complicit.

We have a right to expect more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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