Gainesville in National news - A college town takes on exclusionary zoning

A College Town Takes On Exclusionary Zoning

Single-family zoning could soon be a thing of the past in one of the nation’s biggest classic college towns, with lawmakers set to vote next week on a proposal that would effectively eliminate it. If the measure passes, Gainesville, Florida — home of the University of Florida — would join cities such as Minneapolis and Tacoma, Washington, as well as states such as California and Oregon, that have seized on zoning reform as a solution to the housing affordability crisis.

The change looks likely to pass, with four out of seven Gainesville city commissioners expressing support so far. That’s a promising sign for a growing national zoning-reform movement that has found success in higher-cost Democratic cities and states but has yet to find footholds in smaller cities and red states.

Single-family zoning grew out of exclusion, preventing the construction of affordable rental housing in wealthy neighborhoods. Supporters of the Gainesville proposal frame it both as an affordable housing strategy and as part of a remedy for economic and racial segregation. In Gainesville, like in many other American cities, zoning schemes shaped by Jim Crow contributed to a residential pattern with largely white single-family neighborhoods and few denser communities where many of the city’s Black residents live.

“It’s an equity issue, it’s an affordability issue, and ultimately it’s a supply-and-demand issue,” said Poe. “Our problems are just getting worse, and until we eliminate those structural barriers, we’re not going to see an improvement.” According to Gainesville Is for People, the housing crisis has pushed development deeper into the outskirts of Gainesville, past Interstate 75 to the west and toward Newnans Lake to the east, lengthening commutes, contributing to congestion, and threatening local conservation land.


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Interesting issue locally trying to tackle the affordable housing crisis. According to the shimberg center at UF, there is a huge need for housing in Gainesville for people living in the 0-50% Area Median Income, excluding students. About 8500 families in that income bracket are housing burdened. Housing is usually considered to be affordable if it costs no more than 30% of household income, so people paying more than that are considered burdened.

Gainesville has tried to tackle this issue, often badly, and the explosion of costly high rises in the center of town near campus has not helped things. UF has been a thorn in the side of affordable housing too as they have tried to turn the 13th street and university ave. corner of campus into a pedestrian friendly "experience" for students and they've attracted big companies to come in and build costly apartments so students can have that ideal walking around student experience.

But a lot of suburbanites, even those on the east side of town, are pissed at this. No one knows for sure if it's going to work. But a lot of people are watching to see what happens.

 

Well they aren't talking about big apartment complexes anymore - that's not the vision, the vision is more duplexes-quadplexes mixed in with single family houses. But similar to a lot of what this mayor and the commission have done recently, they tend to go ready-fire-aim, and it seems like this is happening with this zoning issue as well.

As a suburbanite, I have my concerns too. I wish they were making a more informed decision, and ensuring that the rule change actually ends up making affordable housing, and not just more high rises.

 

Yeah the general consensus is that just changing the zoning alone won’t do crap to help and even the mayor said that too. The problem is there really doesn't seem to be a greater plan right now.

 

great read thanks

 

city also doesn’t have a plan to manage the extra traffic that comes from higher density. Poe at a city meeting tried to argue that that building more apartments in suburban neighborhood would reduce traffic because people would walk more lol. Idiot.

 

long term. Eventually. Maybe. How big would Gainesville have to get before they saw any of those benefits? Especially without a spelled out plan to get there.