Like many urban centers throughout the United States, Ithaca’s Collegetown neighborhood is plagued with rising rent prices and a deteriorating housing supply. As a result, real estate developers cannot provide quality housing at reasonable rents to students. Housing reform needs to be made in order to ensure that students can find comfortable living space at a reasonable price.
The only way to meet such demands is to remove limitations on real estate development.
Government regulations are currently restricting private sector developers. They are preventing them from taking advantage of the full potential of the land they develop, thus constraining them to offer a limited housing stock. With demand of housing exceeding supply, the market produces higher prices than would provide optimal efficiency.
Such regulations can be seen as a failure of land-use policy across the United States, and one of the major reasons quality affordable housing cannot exist in America’s greatest cities. Ithaca is no exception. In order to make Ithaca more livable for students, we must rethink some of the most restrictive land-use regulations imposed by the local government over the Collegetown area.
First, there is an off-street parking requirement in Ithaca mandating the construction of one parking space per three persons renting. In a building housing 300 students, for example, there must be 100 parking spaces.
In response, Ithaca developers have three course of action, if they chose to build in Collegetown. They can build parking underground, build parking at ground level with housing above, or build a parking lot which takes up valuable city land. Even before one brick is laid in the construction process, the parking requirement alone constitutes up to and over a million dollars in capital and opportunity costs. That is money that could be used to improve the quality of housing built. It is money that also drives up the cost of rent for students.
Considering that most students do not have cars on campus and that parking should not be the government’s problem to begin with, a policy without such regulation would prove more livable.
Likewise, the city government imposes a regulation that limits building land coverage to 40%. In the suburbs, this regulation would work fine, but we’re talking about apartments for students in an urban neighborhood. The other 60% of the land is valuable and should be used to increase the supply of housing. Without this regulation, developers would have more freedom in providing the kind of housing students want according to their needs, leading to maximum efficiency.
Finally, most of Collegetown has a building height restriction of four stories, with a few places allowed six stories. A regulation in building height again limits the developer’s creativity in providing more housing at a better quality for lower rents. This would occur without decreasing the developer’s profit, as it allows for lower marginal building costs per unit. It is also much more environmentally friendly and economically sustainable—two characteristics the city of Ithaca should strive to promote.
Thus, deregulating land use within the city would encourage creativity in the private sector. It falls upon our elected officials to understand the students’ voice and realize that the housing restrictions are crippling the student experience and greater Ithaca economy. Encouraging innovation in real estate development is the only way to bring about real housing reform in Ithaca and throughout the United States.
Michael Loffredo is a sophomore in the College of Architecture and Art Planning. He can be reached at mjl343@cornell.edu.