What Temple Grandin Could Teach Us about Housing Problems

Temple Grandin is the story of an animal scientist with autism who revolutionized the cattle industry because she saw things about cattle that more experienced cattlemen missed.  Are policy analysts similarly missing the real nature of the housing problem? Are they, in President Kennedy’s words, holding fast to the “clichés of our forebears” and subjecting “all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations”?

A November 2011 Planning article suggests that policy analysts have yet to perceive some radical shifts in the type of housing people, especially those in their 20s, prefer. According to the authors, 78 million members of Generation Y are delaying marriage and child-bearing, prefer cities over suburbs, and want “a richer array of choices in employment, transportation (namely, strong transit and biking infrastructure), arts and entertainment, and a ‘café culture’ similar to what’s found in many European cities.”

Okay, if this is what the people prefer, why the holdup? “Zoning ordinances make it virtually impossible to build new inexpensive housing," the article says. "The chief culprit is codes that require one or two parking stalls per dwelling unit.” These codes reflect the myth that “the U.S. is composed mostly of traditional nuclear families with two parents and two- and-a-half children each. Despite the unmistakable demographic trend towards more one- and two-person households, many decision makers seem to be rooted in a faded picture of the country.”

 

"Rooming House Redux," Mark Hinshaw, FAICP and Brianna Holan ACIP, Planning, November 2011 (available in the Legislative Library)