The communities where rising housing prices are a real and growing problem are quite diverse and plenty, and are not high-growth central cities like Seattle. In California, one third of inclusionary programs are located in small towns or rural areas. Wiener and Bandy* studied these smaller-town inclusionary programs and found that many were motivated by the influx of commuters or second homebuyers entering previously isolated housing markets. They described what happened when developers began building high-end homes for commuters in Ripon, California. As Ripon very quickly became one of the San Joaquin Valley’s most expensive communities, local residents became increasingly concerned about housing costs. Ripon’s leaders set a goal that 10 percent of all new housing would be affordable. As Wiener and Bandy* describe:
The willingness of small jurisdictions, especially small cities, to overcome local politics and take bold and decisive action to adopt inclusionary housing programs is often a derivative of scale. People know their neighbors. They directly feel the shortage of affordable housing. They know where the few remaining parcels of developable land are located. They know that the character of their communities is changing. And, they have access to their elected officials who work in the same work places, shop in the same stores, and send their kids to the same schools.
While inclusionary policies are clearly relevant in a very wide range of communities, the appropriate requirements can be very different from one market to another. In communities where higher density development is not practical, higher affordable housing requirements may not always be feasible but lower requirements may nonetheless be effective. San Clemente, California requires only 4 percent of new units to be affordable, but produced more than 600 affordable homes between 1999 and 2006.* Wiener and Bandy* also found that many smaller jurisdictions relied heavily on in-lieu fees and some set fees at very modest levels.
Smaller communities with inclusionary housing programs must address unique considerations, such as limited staff capacity and costs of administration. Outsourcing and multi-jurisdiction collaborations can make smaller programs easier to implement, but there are some localities where the benefits of an inclusionary housing policy will not adequately offset its costs.
