To: Bloomington City Council
Re: Summit District PUD Rezone
Dear Bloomington City Council,
This letter is to support the proposed rezoning of roughly 140 acres off of Weimer Rd. The signed members of the YIMBYana and Stronger Btown, local chapters of YIMBY Action and Strong Towns, respectively, support the Sudbury Planned Unit Development and future projects that support walkable, bike-friendly communities, a strong transit system, diverse housing options, sustainable building practices, and an array of options for people of all ages, abilities, and incomes which this proposal offers.
City code calls for PUD proposals to be approved based on “public benefit.” We write to emphasize that additional housing in Bloomington is a fundamental public benefit to our community. This is true for any growing community and especially in light of the national housing crisis.
The City of Bloomington is not immune to the housing crisis in our country. In fact, Bloomington is the least affordable housing market in Indiana. Local residents feel the pain daily in the form of high rents and expensive homes. Low inventory coupled with high interest rates will maintain high prices for the foreseeable future. The housing shortage is felt throughout the lived experience for our residents personally and in the broader community. When there are not enough housing options, economic growth is stunted and employers look to surrounding communities that better serve residents’ housing needs.
This council can reasonably question if Bloomington is serving our residents’ housing needs. According to the findings from the 2020 Bloomington Housing Study, over 60% of renters and 30% of homeowners are cost-burdened, meaning their housing expenditures exceed 30% of their household income. The problem isn’t just a cost problem, it’s also an availability problem. According to that same study, Bloomington’s rental vacancy rate lands somewhere around 2%, falling far short of the 5-6% needed for a healthy and productive housing market.
The status quo isn’t working and therefore, we must change it. The reality is that Bloomington needs to support the dense neighborhood growth outside of the city core.
Bloomington City Council members have an important opportunity to create a more sustainable future for city residents. We urge you to approve the Sudbury development for the following reasons:
- Bloomington needs to increase housing production to meet demand and support expanded housing affordability.
There are many factors that lead to high housing costs and there is a considerable body of evidence demonstrating a strong correlation between restrictive land-use regulation and lower rates of housing production. This in turn, correlates with higher housing production. For example, Kok, Monkkonen, and Quigley (2014) found that in San Francisco’s Bay Area, the stringency of regulation and lack of permit approvals led to less housing supply and thus increasing prices.
In his 2019 paper, Evan Mast establishes a migration chain within 700 market-rate multifamily developments. Mast’s paper, The effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market, found that there is a chain of people moving into new housing, someone else moving into their old home, and so forth. This creates a cycle where slack is created in the lower-end housing market. He found the effect taking place within five years.
Some criticize this view, claiming, the laws of supply and demand do not dictate the housing market. In other words, “don’t simplify a complicated problem.” This view, however, is incongruent with the available evidence. While the limits of land-use do inherently constrain supply, land can be developed more densely to create additional supply while using the same amount of land. Doing this, in turn, lowers prices (see review by DiPasquale, 1999; Mayer & Somerville, 2000).
Another critique of the supply and demand claim is that even with high housing production, some jurisdictions still have rising prices–so simply increasing production must not be a solution to the housing crisis. While on its face, this argument could seem valid, it is extremely important to consider what those prices would have looked like WITHOUT increased production. (This argument is similar to not believing in global warming because it happens to be cold outside.) The reality is, increasing housing supply makes housing more affordable. This is not just theoretical. For example, Austin, TX is experiencing real rent decreases from an increasing supply.
- Density creates the opportunity for sustainability.
We trust that all members of the Bloomington City Council understand the need to combat climate change and ecosystem deterioration at all levels of their existences and that this council seeks to align with the previous leadership demonstrated in Bloomington’s Climate Action Plan. Of course, one individual community has little power to divert a national trend, but that should not stop us from making Bloomington as sustainable and environmentally conscious as possible. There are those who view density as an obstacle, not a vehicle to progress.
We take the opposite view: rather than density being a roadblock, density is an essential foundation for truly sustainable communities. Adding a duplex, a triplex and a fourplex to a block instead of single-family homes can cut a block’s carbon impact by 20%. The climate benefits are even higher when we can reduce dependency on automobiles and instead add the transportation savings of letting people live closer to each other, to jobs, and to shopping. We need to focus on more transit-oriented development that efficiently connects dense neighborhoods to Bloomington Transit bus routes and our growing local pedestrian-bicycle networks.
Putting more houses in denser arrangements frees up more available space for natural parks, green spaces, and renewable infrastructure (solar farms, wind farms, biofuel processing centers, etc.). Research exists that density requires less heating and cooling (Resch, Bohne, Kvamsdal, & Lohne, 2016), has lower per capita water quality damages (Jacob & Lopez 2009), and lowers rates of critical habitat and open space destruction (Ewing, Kostyack, Chen, Stein, & Ernst, 2005).
- Anti-growth sentiment makes it harder for people to live in Bloomington.
Restricting housing growth negatively impacts Bloomington’s economic ecosystem, solidifies racial segregation, and furthers inequality.
Accessible housing is at the core of racial inequity in this country and research suggests that limiting housing production can entrench existing racial divides by preventing the movement of people and setting existing demographic balances in place. More stringent restrictions on density associate with greater racial segregation in U.S. metro areas (Rothwell & Massey 2009), and result in individual jurisdictions having smaller minority populations (Pendall, 2000, Quigley, Raphael, and Rosenthal, 2004). Racial segregation isn’t just a moral issue, it actively exacerbates racial divisions and worsens feelings of racial tension and animosity. It can also actively harm health outcomes, economic mobility, and social wellbeing (Nuru-Jeter and LaVeist 2011).
Limiting housing production also worsens economic inequality. Without adequate housing, productive workers will be priced out from joining the economy, and thus will be unable to add their unique economic value to our community. This is borne out in the research as well. Supply restrictions result in lower overall productivity and other deadweight losses. Workers living in dense, economically diverse areas are more productive and thrive (Glaeser, 2011; Kolko 2010). Insufficient housing production not only impacts these metrics, but it also drives a negative calculation for lower-income workers. For lower-income workers who want to move to a supply-restricted community, the gains received, say a higher wage, will be outweighed by the cost-of-living expenses, especially associated with housing. However, for higher-wage workers, this calculus works in the opposite direction, as they will be more likely to tolerate the additional costs of housing. This means, more higher-income workers, and thus more inequality between the richest and the poorest Bloomingtonians (Ganong and Shoag 2017).
New residents also benefit Bloomington in numerous other ways. They are customers of our local small businesses, coaches for youth sports teams, members of our local organizations, and part of the vibrant fabric of our community.
If the Bloomington City Council has an interest in mending racial divides, lessening the burden on lower-income families, and promoting economic and social vibrancy, they cannot continue to delay support for housing production.
In short, the members of our community, both current residents and those who wish to join us, are grappling with enormous challenges in both finding and affording housing. This is not just a statistic, but a reality that our neighbors, friends, and families are facing every day.
Thus, in order to support our community’s continued growth and solve our persistent housing crisis, your council MUST act. Do not kick the can down the road. Act. The City of Bloomington Comprehensive Plan tells us that “Bloomington welcomes all.” Approving this development is needed to realize that vision by making our city accessible not just for the wealthy, not just for the well-connected, not just for existing residents, but for anyone who wishes to come here and contribute to our vibrant, amazing, and unique community.
While approving the rezoning of the Sudbury Planned Unit Development is just the first step, it is an important one. We urge the Bloomington City Council to vote YES.
Best regards,
Kyle Davis
Sam Tobin-Hochstadt
Collin Nielsen
YY Ahn
Thomas Landis
Pauly Tarricone
Deborah Myerson
Members of YIMBYana and Stronger Btown