New research sets the parameters by which residents will accept affordable housing in their communities. If new neighborhoods do not hurt property values, contribute to overcrowding or make traffic any worse, people are more likely to support affordable housing in their own backyards, the third annual National Housing Opportunity Pulse survey found.
"The survey sheds new light on the conditions that encourage people to support affordable housing," said Pat Vredevoogd, the first vice president of the National Association of Realtors, which sponsors the study.
The NAR's hope is that the research will serve as a guide to local officials and give them "the political will to do what people want," said Vredevoogd, who is a working broker-agent in Grand Rapids, Mich.
"These are the conditions needed for people to support affordable housing, and they are things we know how to fix," she said.
The study specifically used the term "affordable housing" as opposed to "low and moderate-income housing" because the latter is a red flag to many people, according to Steven Hornburg, a principal in an Arlington, Va., research firm called Emerging Community Markets who designed the study with surveyor Gene Ulm of Public Opinion Strategies of Alexandria, Va.
"It's like the difference between asking people if they favor a root canal or they back good dental hygiene," he said.
The switch in terminology represents an effort to shift the debate "to a more neutral position," according to Hornburg. "If you ask a question with a negative connotation, you know what you are going to get because the term 'low and moderate income' has a widely help perception."
Ulm, who surveyed 1,600 people in mid-May about their attitudes concerning affordable housing, said respondents were highly concerned about the gamut of affordable housing problems -- not just those faced by low-income workers but also their children and their children's teachers.
People "like to be able to get hold of teachers; they don't want them to be 50 miles away," the surveyor said. "They want to know that the buy who puts out fires lives only a few miles away." And for the third consecutive year, eight out of ten said the lack of affordable housing is a big problem. Even when stacked against such other concerns as job layoffs and unemployment, terrorism, crime and environmental pollution, the issue is seen as the bigger problem. Indeed, only the lack of affordable health care options ranks higher.
In the surveying business, such a huge consensus of opinion is called a "damned right" issue. Yet, the problem isn't getting as much attention as it deserves at the local level. NAR hopes to change that.
As the first point of contact with people trying to buy a home, the group's one million-plus members "see first hand what the lack of affordable housing does to communities," said Vredevoogd, who is line to be NAR's president in 2007.
"We hope that local leaders learn from our survey and work with us to work smarter to the lack of affordable housing will be a problem of the past."
The latest study found that people will support affordable housing in their neighborhoods if it conforms to their standards -- or, as the NAR officer said, "if it is done right." For one thing, aesthetics are a big deal. They prefer single-family houses by a wide margin. But one two out of five said they'd accept apartments as long as they were no higher than four stories. Only one out of five would support anything any higher, even condominiums.
The study also found that more than 70 percent of the respondents would support building more affordable housing if it made for more efficient use of their tax dollars for public services, did not hurt local property values, did not contribute to overcrowding in schools, or did not further exacerbate clogged streets and highways.
"These aren't little numbers," said Ulm. "These are consensus opinions."
