NCSHA Washington Report | July 24, 2020

When America experiences turbulence, the subject of suburbs gets contested — and complicated.

The urban unrest of the 1960s led to decades of “white flight” from cities to suburbs that partly reflected white racism, while also possibly helping boost Black homeownership. The housing bust that fueled the Great Recession led to predictions of the “end of the suburbs,” even as their household and job growth outpaced that of cities during most of that period and afterwards.

Today, there’s intense debate about whether residential density, arguably the main differentiator between city and suburb, will emerge as an asset or liability in a country that will likely need to live with the coronavirus for a good while longer.

Rob Dietz, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, finds “a strong correlation between state-level population density and per capita virus-related deaths… [and] the fact that suburban, single-family neighborhoods appear to be more resilient during this coronavirus pandemic.” Dietz’s perspective is shared by commercial real estate services giant Cushman and Wakefield, which sees the pandemic “accelerating trends already underway,” including “a huge cohort of buyers heading to the suburbs.”

Joe Cortright of City Observatory argues, though, “the hard data show that suburbs and sprawling sunbelt cities are just as vulnerable to the coronavirus, and while poverty and housing overcrowding are risk factors, there’s nothing about urban density itself that intensifies the spread of the disease.” Cortright’s perspective aligns with a massive new study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which shows “denser counties, as compared to more sprawling ones, tended to have lower death rates — possibly because they enjoyed a higher level of development including better health care systems.”

Some of the disagreement may derive from semantics: Economists and journalists define ‘suburb’ variously, while most of the rest of us just think we know one when we see one (whether it’s inside or outside an official city boundary).

Political campaigns know an electoral battleground when they see one. This year’s presidential election will probably be settled in the suburbs of a handful of states. The politics of fair housing are emerging as a fault line that may run through them. It doesn’t have to be this way — and it shouldn’t.

An ally of civil rights hero Rev. C.T. Vivian, who’s passing last Friday was overshadowed by that of his colleague the iconic Rep. John Lewis on the same day, recalled:

“While we had begun to work together with some South Side groups on issues of welfare, the Vivian-led Coordinating Council allowed us to see the connections among us. By the summer of 1966, Southern white women were marching with the South Side’s Arthur Brazier, Leon Finney and Bob Lucas, not only for welfare fights but through Marquette Park and into Cicero for open housing. They stood with Obed Lopez and the Puerto Rican community, calling for an end to the slums, and with Arturo Velasquez in the first stages of the emergence of Mexican organization in Pilsen.”

Stockton Williams | Executive Director

In This Issue

• HUD Repeals Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule
• Senate Republicans, White House Grapple with Details for Coronavirus Relief Bill
• FY 2021 THUD Funding Bill Heads to the House Floor
• Senate Democrats to Introduce Economic Justice Act with New Affordable Housing Resources
• HUD Provides Supplemental Operating Funds for HUD-Assisted Housing
• USDA Posts Answers to New Multifamily Housing Program Questions
• FHFA Proposes to Maintain 2020 GSE Housing Goals in 2021
• Looking Ahead