The single biggest challenge to true growth management, and therefore the strongest driving force behind suburban sprawl, is in fact the average American household’s pursuit of the “American dream” – which ultimately becomes a very personalized definition of “affordable housing.”

The real barrier?

While the “American dream” is often loosely defined as one’s own tidy single-family home on a sizable piece of property behind the proverbial white-picket fence, in fact this dream is a moving target, influenced not only by the marketing machines of corporate homebuilders, federal tax policy, and even cable television, but also by still lingering suburbanite fears of “urban living.”

While growing up in my family of five in eastern Bellevue in the 1960’s I lived in what was then deemed a model of middle-class housing. Yet that same 1600-square-foot, three-bedroom, 2-bathroom house on a large lot is today considered substandard by most even two- or three-person families seeking new housing.

With new homebuilders and the massive media storm that has grown around them bombarding American society with imagery and messaging meant to convince us all that we should live in 3,000-plus-square-foot “faux chateaux” in the distant-most exurbs, the tidy, comfortable, and, yes, more modest suburban homes of yesteryear pale in comparison.

As a result, when today’s small family laments that they cannot “afford” a house unless they move out to the exurban fringe on yesterday’s farms and forestland it’s often because they cannot afford the current media-driven image of what they should afford. In fact, 15- to 30-year-old suburban homes in first- and even second-ring suburbs are far more affordable than houses in the brand-new subdivisions but are often overlooked.

I wish I could say that this desire to live as far away as possible from the region’s urban centers is solely due to the pursuit of as large a home as possible. Yet I fear there are other factors in play also. Is there a degree of continuing segregation occurring? Do middle-class families harbor fears about living in the older cities and suburbs? Could these fears include class-based or even ethnicity-based discomfort? Again, do these issues also influence “affordability?” When the middle-class family of four on the Sammamish plateau complain about how expensive it is to live there, do we respond with a collective acquiescence and shaking of heads, or do we counter that hundreds of other beautiful neighborhoods in Lake Hills, Shoreline, Des Moines or Renton would be reasonable alternatives?

Now I don’t want to ignore the issue of affordability in the tightest housing markets, such as Seattle and Bellevue-Redmond. With a finite amount of near-by single-family housing, these locales do in fact present the most expensive options for home buying. And, obviously, many households are therefore excluded from pursuing the “American dream” in those locations. Their choice, then, is between either some sort of multifamily housing (ownership or rental) or more distant housing options, requiring possible long commutes.

Here is where that pesky “American dream” gets in the way again. Canada is our closest neighbor – physically, politically and even ethnically – yet the popular acceptance of multifamily housing opportunities, ranging from townhouses to highrise condos, is many-fold greater in that society than here in the US. There is a virtual stigma in this country associated with anything “less” than single-family home ownership. The dream simply has not been achieved if you’re not in a single-family home!

With these many forces compelling the average household to pursue not only a single-family home, but as large and as distantly located a one as possible, it’s no wonder that the word “affordability” is on everyone’s lips – from swank cocktail parties to soup kitchen lines in the central city.

There is little debate about whether to offer subsidies to some level of affordable housing for the most struggling members of our society, yet where the wicket gets stickier is when the “affordable housing” question is taken up by every member of society! Are we collectively duty bound to ensure that the distant-most “faux chateaux” also be “affordable?” Should we continue to capacitate suburban sprawl at all cost because affordably achieving the “American dream” continues to mean a single-family house on its own private lot in increasingly distant, increasingly homogeneous exurbia?

These are important questions for serious consideration and debate. Is it perhaps time for denser, in-fill, in-city housing options to start to take a greater place within the collective notion of our “American dream?”

Tags: Affordability, affordable housing

This entry was posted by Patrick Doherty on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Planning, Seattle lifestyle, Zoning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.