The vast majority of new housing planned for Manatee County, Florida, is far away from employment centers. Developers have bought up huge tracts of land in rural areas and hope to cover them with $300,000 to $600,000, 3000 to 4000 square foot detached houses that have no shopping or gathering places within walking distance. Most of the other planned (but currently stalled) developments around here are mid-rise and high-rise condominiums — again in the $300,000 and up price range. In an area where the average wage is less than $11 per hour, and gas looks like it’s going to cost $3 per gallon or more (possibly much more) for the rest of our lives, these kinds of developments may not sell well enough to be worth building. Builders and planners need to stop thinking about a housing market “recovery” in the sense of making everything like it was a few years ago, and start thinking about what kind of residential and commercial building will fill our future needs.

Clusters and infill

“Infill” development is builder-ese for putting up houses, apartments, and commercial buildings in areas that are already developed by building on already-vacant lots or by tearing down existing structures to build new ones. Infill developments are attractive because they don’t require brand-new roads, sewers, water mains or other utilities. They’re already in place. They may need a little beefing-up to handle more people, but improving what you already have is almost always less expensive than building from scratch.

Infill developments tend to put new residences close to existing employment centers, thereby cutting commuting time and expense for the people who end up living in them. The typical downside is that Bradenton, like many Florida cities, has allowed its central area to degenerate and become home to many illegal aliens and druggies — exactly the kind of people those who can afford new housing don’t want as neighbors. There is no good solution for this problem other than to gate or otherwise secure new close-to-downtown residential developments. I envision a series of connected buildings with retail stores and offices facing the street, and gated access to parking and common areas that serve 1200 to 1500 square foot residences above and behind the retail stores, as a possible solution to both real and perceived “inner-city dangers.”

The retail face would at least partially hide the cut-off nature of the new development and make it a more appealing neighbor, and the idea of stores, restaurants, bars, and offices close by would certainly be a powerful attraction for upscale residents — hopefully to the point where they would be willing to give up country solitude (and expensive commutes) in exchange for convenience.

Even with all that convenience, it still might be hard to persuade people to pay more than $125,000 to $150,000 for these dwellings or to rent them for much more than $1100 per month. Remember, we’re in an area where the average wage is below $11 per hour, and these purchase prices and rents are about all anyone can rationally afford with two $11 per hour jobs in a household. With modern, factory-based construction methods, these are achievable price levels, especially if land prices stay down. Whether we have enough clever builders willing to see this, and whether local zoning and planning officials allow innovative building styles and “mixed use” developments, are the two imponderables.

Cluster development has some of the same problems. Once again, it’s an alternative to a whole lot of single-family houses, each one set on a lot of at least 1/4 acre. An intelligent cluster would be a self-contained town, not a “housing development.” It would include an elementary school, playgrounds, stores, and a transit hub.

A transit hub?

Yes, a transit hub. The more gas costs, the less desirable long commutes will become. Ditto the idea of a car-ride to go buy a loaf of bread or a pack of cigarettes. By building comparatively dense clusters of either single-family houses or townhomes, all within walking distance of basic urban-style amenities and a place to catch a bus or light rail conveyance to nearby job centers, you replicate many of the desirable characteristics of infill housing without the real or perceived problem of criminals living nearby.

But, as with intelligent infill development, clusters are going to take some major attitude adjustments. We’re already seeing some of this going on. Lakewood Ranch has the clustering thing happening at least to a limited degree, now, although LWR housing is priced to exclude almost all the people who work in its Main Street stores, and as yet has no noticeable public transportation. Other developers will, hopefully, realize that they can outsell LWR by building smaller, more affordable homes that offer similar conveniences — possibly with the added benefit of limited-stop public transportation to area job and education centers.

Re-Scaling the Dream Home

Not many years ago, the standard Florida tract house had two bedrooms and one bathroom. If you later needed another bedroom or another bathroom or half-bath, you added them. If you needed a workshop, you built a big shed out back. Garages? Not needed. Carports were the norm. Enclosed lanais were also common add-ons, used as extra bedrooms, home offices, studios or whatever. Basically, you bought a cheap house, and if you needed more house later on, you built it — on the cheap.

Trailers were also popular low-cost housing in Florida. They got a bad rap for hurricane durability, especially in the wake of Hurricane Charley when TV networks showed scary shots of entire mobile home parks reduced to pile of sticks and twisted shreds of aluminum siding.

I’d like to point out that my wife and I drove from Orlando to Sarasota after Charlie via inland side roads, and the the vast majority of trailers we saw were intact. No TV cameras focused on those trailers. Only the destroyed ones made the news. And the death toll among trailer residents in that hurricane was nearly zero. You know, if you live in trailer in Florida, that you should spend the worst hours of a hurricane in your local shelter. And if you have half a brain, you try to buy a trailer in a park that has a sturdy shelter in its center — which typically gets used as a recreation room the rest of the time.

A large single-wide trailer is all the space a family of four really needs in a climate where you can spend most of the year outdoors. A double-wide can provide all that and more, including bathrooms an ancient Greek sybarite would envy.

I don’t see many (really, any) new trailer parks or modest single-family home developments in Manatee County. Instead, I see lots of $350,000 and $400,000 houses — now marked down to $250,000 or $300,000, but still way out of most people’s reach.

Here’s an amusing Florida budget tip: you are going to pay twice as much property tax on a house valued at $300,000 than on one valued at $150,000. I know this math is hard to grasp, but even so… and if you live in a $80,000 (including land) trailer, you will probably not complain about your property taxes, even if you are a seasonal, non-homesteaded resident. (You may, however, complain about your homeowners insurance cost — but even so, it’s generally not horrible if your entire dwelling can be replaced for $100,000 or less.)

Find a Need and Fill It!

All the builders in Florida would like to put up houses that cost them $200,000 to make, including land, and sell them for $400,000. Who wouldn’t? The problem is, the supply of people who can afford $400,000 houses is extremely limited. And as the condomizers have learned, the supply of people willing to pay that much or more for what is, when you come right down to it, an apartment, is even smaller.

The need here is for modest, affordable homes — and modest, affordable business locations, too. Florida is attractive to some people because of weather, but the rest of its attractiveness was low living costs. These were the two reasons people moved here. Now one of them is gone. And easy access to the waterfront and its charms is disappearing, too, as the Condo Wall extends a little more every year along nearly every waterway in the state.

Take away waterfront access, and does Florida really offer middle-class workers and retirees anything they can’t get in Alabama, Georgia or Arizona? And get for a lot less money in those states?

The correct answer to this quiz is, “No!”

So what should developers concentrate on building here? More overpriced, oversized houses and condos? Or should they be looking at what has historically sold best in Florida — not necessarily during a few boom years, but decade after decade — and build modest, affordable places?

Some builders will answer one way, some will answer another. But I suspect, in the long run, that the ones who concentrate on simple, affordable middle-class housing will still be in business, and most of the ones who wait for a “housing recovery” will go broke.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Bradenton/local, Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.