Before the city of Charleston moves down the complicated path of trying to build 3,500 new affordable housing units by a self-imposed, almost impossible deadline of 2032, taxpayers should ask at least two questions: Is this really what we want? And what would the massive undertaking look like?
So far, the city has released a general overview that it wants at least 44 new projects for affordable housing ranging from a couple of units to mammoth buildings that could have 150, 165, 185, 202, 390 and even 475 units.
Unfortunately, no one is really talking much about the scale of these projects — and how they could fundamentally change Charleston from single-family homes to a lot of units in tall buildings. Do we really want that?
Remember: Just three years ago, residents raised Cain about two dozen proposed chunks of buildings at Union Pier. They would have brought 1,600 housing units, 600 hotel rooms and 500,000 square feet of retail and office space. That proposal was such a dud that the S.C. Ports Authority got out of the Union Pier development business.
Building 3,500 units over the next seven years has a number of challenges — beyond the glut of potentially unattractive blocks of buildings like those along Morrison Drive. Challenges include:
- The cost: If you conservatively assume each new unit would cost $300,000 to build, that means a total investment of more than $1 billion would be needed. Where’s all of that money going to come from? The city doesn’t have that kind of money, can’t tax that much and can’t borrow that much. It would have to rely on outside investment in a big way. And that means deals.
- The lure: To get that much investment, the city would have to give away land, relaxed parking rules, regulatory relief, permitting concessions and customized deals that may not see the light of day until it is too late. Furthermore, to make investment in affordable housing units really attractive, investment capital will demand market-rate units, too. In turn, that changes the numbers. Just to get 3,500 affordable housing units, developers would really have to build at least 7,000 units, and likely many more, to be able to make a little money. Imagine that — that’s almost five times of the chunks of buildings proposed originally at Union Pier. Wouldn’t it make you sick to live in a place that becomes a new kind of concrete jungle? We need to talk about all of this in public.
- The infrastructure: Even if the city were able to lure investors to build significantly more affordable housing units with special deals, there would still have to be a lot of infrastructure work paid by the city in areas that are targeted — protection from flooding, better roads, better parking and more. That will take lots of time, too. It’s just not believable or realistic that 3,500 units can be ready by 2032.
To set a course for the city, let’s live in reality, not fantasyland. Generating more affordable housing is tough work. So before city leaders go down a long, painful road of trying to build 3,500 units, they first need to engage residents and talk about what daily life and traffic would look and be like with new multi-story monstrosities. Those answers might influence how our leaders move forward.
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