QZ housing and climate change

The dearth of affordable homes is also making it harder to guard against air pollution and climate change.. “A lot of families are being driven further and further away from their areas

Cities are short on housing

That’s bad news for the climate

Over the last decade or so, white-collar workers have flocked to cities,

driving up rents and triggering shortages of affordable housing Now,

advocates and policymakers are in a pitched battle over what to do

That conflict came to a head in Sacramento last week, as California

legislators killed a bill that would have allowed developers to build

high-rise apartment buildings near train stations and bus lines,

regardless of local zoning laws Supporters hailed the measure for

cutting red tape Critics said it would do too little to bolster affordable

housing The bill is dead—for now—but both sides will continue to spar

over the future of housing policy

This is an important fight, because housing policy is about more than

just bloated rents The dearth of affordable homes is also making it

harder to guard against air pollution and climate change Sky-high

prices are forcing families to live farther from work in neighborhoods

that are heavily polluted or prone to flooding, making it all the more

urgent that policymakers find a solution

- whilte-collar worker (n): người làm việc trí óc

- trigger sth (v) = cause sth

- cut red tape: giảm thiểu quan liêu (bureaucracy)

- the dearth of sth: sự khan hiếm cái gì

- guard against sth: chống lại cái gì

- sky-high prices (n): giá trên trời

- be prone to sth: dễ bị cái gì

“The nicer areas tend to be developed for more affluent communities,

which are comprised of mostly white, rich individuals Exclusionary

policies have pushed lower-income communities—which are largely

communities of color—into areas that have issues with air quality, soil

pollution, water pollution,” said Ethan Guy, senior manager at Street

Level Advisors, a consulting firm focused on equitable urban

development “Those areas are also the most prone to feeling the effects

of climate change.”

In large cities, for example, working-class neighborhoods are often

vulnerable to rising seas, both because they sit in low-lying areas and

because they lack the infrastructure needed to keep floodwaters at bay

That was evident in New York City during Hurricane Sandy and in

Houston during Hurricane Harvey Sea-level rise made flooding

markedly worse during both storms

Flooding isn’t the only problem Affordable housing also tends to be far

from work A family might save money on rent by moving away from

the city, but mom and dad will spend more time driving to work and

more money paying for gas, generating more pollution along the way

Working-class families living in cities spend around 60% of their

income on housing and transportation, partly a consequence of living

far from work

- affluent community (n): cộng đồng người giàu

- working-class neighborhood (n): khu vực sinh sống của tầng lớp lao động

- low-lying area (n): vùng đất thấp

- keep sth at bay: to prevent someone or something unpleasant from harming you

“A lot of families are being driven further and further away from their

areas of employment,” said Chris Durazo, co-director of housing, land

and development at Causa Justa, a San Francisco Bay Area housing

advocacy group “People are moving close to the Central Valley and

commuting well over two or three hours to work It’s because there are

a lot more jobs in the San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento areas.”

In city centers, the only affordable homes are often those near

highways, factories or power plants, meaning parents and kids put up

with more pollution and, as result, more asthma, bronchitis and other

maladies Mom and dad might save on their mortgage, but they pay for

it in visits to the emergency room, missed days of school or missed days

of work

While city dwellers everywhere agree the housing shortage is a crisis,

no one can agree on the solution “I think a market-driven solution is

probably the best approach,” said writer Nikolai Fedak, arguing that

developers could meet the need for more housing if they were

unencumbered by onerous zoning policies

Fedak is the founder of NY YIMBY, an online publication reporting

on new real estate development in New York The title is an

abbreviation of “Yes In My Backyard,” a play on NIMBY, an

abbreviation of “Not In My Backyard,” an epithet frequently tossed at

homeowners fighting new development “Some people don’t like

- commute (v): di chuyển / đi lại

- put up with sth: chịu đựng / gánh chịu

(informal > phù hợp hơn cho văn nói)

- malady (n) = disease, ailment (bệnh)

- mortgage (n): tiền vay mượn ngân hàng (để mua nhà)

- city dweller (n): dân thành thị

- a real estate development (n): một dự án bất động sản

everyone, they just think about themselves,” Fedak said

“We talk about things like climate change, but the liberals in New

York—while they’re talking about how awful global warming is going

to be—they don’t recognize that that’s going to produce refugees both

domestically and abroad, and, historically, cities have been the outlets

where refugees flee to,” he said “We need to plan ahead to house these

populations who are going to be increasingly disaffected and

increasingly dispersed

“In my opinion, the way to get to true housing affordability is not

necessarily by building affordable housing It’s by building enough

market-rate housing so that the market itself can cater to the demands

of the population,” he said Fedak also argued against mixed-income

housing, saying, “If you plop a bunch of working-class people into a

neighborhood that is extremely expensive, where do those people buy

their groceries? They do not have the amenities they would in a

working-class neighborhood.”

Notably, this view presumes that the goal of mixed-income housing is

to allow school teachers and truck divers to live in wealthy

neighborhoods More often, the goal is to prevent investment bankers

from gentrifying working-class neighborhoods A new luxury high-rise

in a blue-collar neighborhood can drive up property values, forcing

longtime residents to move farther away

- cater to (the demands of) sb: phục vụ cho nhu cầu của ai

- gentrify (v): to change a place from being a poor area to a richer one, by people of a higher social class moving to live there

- drive up property values: làm tăng giá BĐS

- longtime resident (n): dân cư đã định cư ở 1 nơi nào đó được 1 thời gian dài

For this reason, Durazo has argued against liberalizing zoning laws

“Changing zoning laws so that real estate developers can come up with

a market approach does not address issues of health, affordability and

segregation,” she said “The fabric of communities is really going to be

reshaped if this kind of one-size-fits-all zoning comes into play.”

Durazo supports more rent controls and, in some cases, mandates for

affordable housing Research has shown that rent controls actually

drive up the cost of housing over the long term by discouraging new

development Affordable housing mandates, however, have been

shown to be effective in suppressing rents

A study of the San Francisco housing market found that, to guard

against gentrification, new developments should consist of 30%

affordable housing Doing so would not only keep the cost of housing

in check, it would also put a dent in carbon pollution Experts say that

building low-income housing near train stations and bus stops does

more to cut carbon pollution than building middle-income housing in

the same place That’s because, if displaced, working-class families

move farther away from their job to find a home they can afford, and

they end up driving more miles to work as a result

Sometimes, it’s not a new luxury condo that is driving gentrification

When cities clean up pollution in working-class neighborhoods, that

drives up property values, forcing longtime residents out—a

- over the long term: về lâu dài

- to suppress rents: kiềm hãm giá thuê nhà (không cho chúng tăng cao)

- put / make a dent in sth: làm giảm cái gì

phenomenon known as “green gentrification.” Many of those residents

will end up moving to more polluted areas To guard against green

gentrification, cities must provide an adequate volume of affordable

housing

Climate change, ultimately, is a function of inequality Few people

would choose to live near a coal-fired power plant, an oil refinery, a

natural gas drilling site or a crowded freeway People live in polluted

areas because they have no other option In a sense, pollution depends

on there being a class of people with so little money and power, they

must put up with pollution To keep climate change in check, advocates

and policymakers must deal with economic inequality The affordable

housing crisis is just one expression of that problem, albeit an important

one

“We don’t say that you can only build affordable housing on cheap

land, because the cheap land is inherently going to be in polluted

areas,” said Guy “If we’re going to build affordable housing, let’s

create mixed-income communities.”

Source:

https://qz.com/1260397/cities-are-short-on-housing-thats-bad-news-for-the-climate/?utm_source=qzfb

- keep sth in check = keep sth under control: kiểm soát cái gì