To Win Over NIMBYs, Build Workforce Housing That Resonates

Strategies for turning "no" into "yes."

When NIMBY (not in my backyard) groups block new workforce housing developments, they believe they’re preserving their neighborhoods. But, without sufficient middle-income rental housing for those earning 60 to120 percent of area median income, home prices and rents will continue to rise, and the service workers that help communities thrive will be displaced.  

So how do workforce housing developers get beyond the opposition and find consensus?

MHN put that question to three experts who have braved the town hall battleground—an architect, a developer, and a pro-housing advocate. Since each project and community is different, there are no blanket answers for winning over dissenters. But our interviewees agree that research, patience and time are essential in all cases.

Ltd. Findlay in Coraopolis, Pa., is the third workforce housing community released under the Greystar Ltd. brand. Findlay Ltd. is the new brand’s first property with apartments created in Greystar’s modular housing factory. Image courtesy of Greystar Ltd.
Ltd. Findlay in Coraopolis, Pa., is the third workforce housing community released under the Ltd. by Greystar brand. Findlay Ltd. is the new brand’s first property with apartments created in Greystar’s modular housing factory. Image courtesy of Ltd. by Greystar.

Meet them ‘face to face’

“In almost every energized NIMBY resistance conversation, item number one is always traffic,” said Daniel Gehman, AIA, LEED AP, principal, Danielian Associates. Item number two is typically concerns about infrastructure, like schools and trash service.

To alleviate those concerns and refute inevitable exaggerations, Gehman said, developers need to be forearmed with information. To counteract fears about traffic, for example, he suggests doing a traffic study.

Empirical data is also extremely important, and there is a lot of data available, including a study by the Livable Cities Lab at UC Irvine, that shows crime will likely be reduced in a neighborhood that adds workforce housing.

NIMBYs will also want to know if adding density will lower their property values. “Empirically, not so much,” said Gehman. “That’s been shown by a couple of reputable white paper companies. Just come prepared to neutralize those things in a gracious and kind way. And, oh by the way, if you serve coffee and cookies while you do it, it’s even better.”

During one memorable community outreach meeting, Gehman’s client handled a common objection with a brilliant response. Concerned about who would be living in the proposed multifamily project, the NIMBY asked whether she would see an increased police presence on this site. The developer, without even blinking an eye, said to her, “Yes, absolutely. I guarantee it because police officers will live here.”

But developers need to be prepared that, even if they come back with a factual argument, NIMBYs are likely to say, “Well those are your facts.”

Personalize your residents

Often folks in the resistance will caricature their opposition saying things like “those people” or “transients.” Therefore, Gehman said, it’s also a good idea to paint a picture of who will be living in the proposed workforce housing. “Personalize your residents,” he remarked. “Describe the people who are going to live in that community.”

“If you’re adjacent to single family, you’ll want to see if you can set [the new project] back more,” Gehman said. “Or, in the case of some affordable, you put the parking at the property line and pull the buildings in, as opposed to the other way, so that taller buildings are not looking into people’s yards.”

While it’s harder to reason through objections in a hearing environment, developers should start with as much community outreach as soon as possible, especially if they perceive there’s going to be opposition, Gehman said. The single best defensive strategy for dealing with NIMBYs is to meet with them face to face.

“This adds time and expense to the developer’s plate, which is already burdened with so many other things,” Gehman stressed.

Of course, workforce housing developers must also be thoughtful about the proposed design and proximities.

And sometimes opponents just need to know they have been heard.

“Building these relationships is always worth the time that it takes—especially now in a post-internet world where community organizers can get highly organized online,” Gehman explained. “You can come out to the hearing and get 77 people showing up in bright yellow t-shirts that say, ‘save our zoning.’”

Most NIMBYs see “workforce housing” as a different label for the same product they were already not happy about, according to Les Bluestone, principal and co-founder, Blue Sea Development.

In New York City, affordable housing is generally welcome, but NIMBYs do question the City’s definition of affordability, which is based on an AMI calculation that’s not necessarily reflective of the individual community. Bluestone says that on Long Island, the rallying cry is: “’We don’t want it to look like Queens or Brooklyn. We left Queens and Brooklyn to come out here, and we don’t want that.”

For one of Blue Sea Development’s suburban projects that required an environmental impact study, there were hundreds of pages of letters that people submitted to the record protesting the development. However, the tide is changing in some communities where people are realizing their kids can’t afford to live near them.

Workforce housing developers can help NIMBYs get to “yes” faster by building with a variety of typologies and colors that resemble their single-family homes, Bluestone observed. This lets them know they aren’t getting some factory-made or institutional housing. As far as height and scale, those will vary.

“For some communities the densities can be an issue. If you’re developing a site on a 28-acre parcel, you can certainly divide it up into smaller parcels and maximize the number of units that way, and sometimes that is what people want to see because it looks like their community.”

Greystar Ltd. is a new housing brand that provides stylish workforce housing with renewals capped at 3 percent or tied to the 12-month change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is greater. Image courtesy of Greystar Ltd.
Greystar Ltd. is a new housing brand that provides stylish workforce housing with renewals capped at 3 percent or tied to the 12-month change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is greater. Image courtesy of Greystar Ltd.

Other communities might prefer more open space, more of a buffer—in some cases obscuring the project from view by creating density in a smaller area on the lot. “There is no one answer,” Bluestone explained. “You have to feel out the community to see their reaction to other developments.”

Working with the community is essential. If there are concerns about how the design will affect traffic, the developer can contribute to widening streets or additional traffic lights. Some developers make capital contributions to schools to help offset additional students coming into the area. Or they can design workforce housing with a limited number of bedrooms.

Bluestone also suggests looking at the minutes of the town hearing meetings to find out about recurring concerns.

“Everyone wants to design something that looks good. If the community tells me they want something that looks a certain way, that’s an easy fix. If someone is afraid of the population coming in because they think it’s going to lower their property values, now I have to go do my homework and show why that’s not the case. And that’s a little harder sometimes to produce.”

Support state land use reform

California YIMBY was founded in 2017 with the recognition that local jurisdictions were never going to allow multifamily housing to be built at the necessary scale. “That theory has proven to be very true,” said Matthew Lewis, director of communications, California YIMBY.

Currently, the organization is focusing on state legislation. That’s their best strategy for starting to remove the ability of local jurisdictions to prevent multifamily housing from being built. This includes zoning reform and other tools like floor area ratios, setbacks, height limits and shadow requirements that cities use to block multifamily housing.

State legislatures are increasingly becoming aware that they have a compelling interest in allowing housing growth. They’re also going to be facing ballooning infrastructure costs for highways, sewers and utilities that are approaching the end of their useful lives.

“It’s substantially more expensive to maintain infrastructure for sprawl than an urban environment,” Lewis explained.

The tax base is diluted dramatically because each home is only paying one tax. In most places, you have to have voter approval to raise taxes or you let the infrastructure deteriorate. When viewed in this way, multifamily becomes a more attractive option.

“The California Environmental Quality Act actually views humans as pollution,” Lewis said. “So, you have to do studies to prove that allowing more humans to live in a city is not worse than forcing them to live in sprawl. What we’ve learned in seven years is that, of course, California’s not remotely unique. We see NIMBY playing out in states across the country that has developed similar housing shortages and affordability crises as we have.”

According to Lewis, any given city council in most jurisdictions in the U.S. will probably start from “no.” Therefore, the emphasis is on the resources the developer can bring to the table. This approach is time consuming, expensive and difficult to scale for multiple projects. It has led to the emergence of a cottage industry of expeditors who figure out how to get the approvals. This approach is typically beyond the reach of developers working on a workforce product for middle-income residents.

“What a developer can do is, I’m afraid to say, is very little,” Lewis observed. “When a city wants to extract concessions, delay a process or just kill a project altogether, there’s just about nothing that can prevent them from doing that—with one exception state law.”

Consider a lighter touch

In a sea of what NIMBYs consider to be bad choices, some communities are beginning to warm up to the idea of light touch density. LTD moderately increases density. Instead of only a single-family detached home on a parcel, LTD allows for a duplex, a triplex, a four- to eight-plex, a series of townhouses or an accessory dwelling unit.

LTD housing does not rely on public funds. According to the American Enterprise Institute, by allowing more units on a single parcel of land, LTD is both naturally affordable and naturally inclusionary. It helps revitalize commercial areas and cities and requires no housing subsidies. To maintain the character of the neighborhood, newly added LTD housing can be compatible in scale with single family houses.

Workforce housing developers can help NIMBYs get to yes faster by building with a variety of typologies and colors that resemble single-family homes. Image courtesy of Blue Sea Development
Workforce housing developers can help NIMBYs get to yes faster by building with a variety of typologies and colors that resemble single-family homes. Image courtesy of Blue Sea Development

Offer a Pared Down Project

In May 2023, Greystar launched Ltd. by Greystar. The new brand is building and operating workforce housing at scale in collaboration with Greystar’s modular construction business Modern Living Solutions. Greystar Ltd. is providing essential housing at an attainable price point for middle-income workers like teachers, nurses and first responders.

Ltd. by Greystar will cap renewals at 3 percent or tied to the 12-month change in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is greater, so residents will always know what their renewal rate will be months in advance. Workforce friendly rents are made possible by a uniform design and quick modular construction that keeps costs—and rents—lower than typical multifamily building projects.

Greystar is currently releasing its third Ltd.-branded apartment community, Ltd. Findlay. Located in Coraopolis, PA, Ltd. Findlay is the new brand’s first property comprised entirely of apartments created in the MLS factory in Knox, PA, and then driven to the community site and assembled. Each apartment is comprised of two to four modules. In addition to lower rents, the Ltd. housing product is more sustainable due to reduced construction waste.

Danielian Associates’ Gehman is also involved in workforce housing projects that eliminate excess in order to trim the costs. Dubbed “collectively affordable” projects, these affordable apartment communities are designed to provide housing without government subsidy but still hit the market at below market rate.

“It’s really hard to do that in California, although groups are trying. We’re doing it more in Phoenix and in Las Vegas,” he says. “The secret to making it work is you have to be brutally disciplined in terms of what you deliver, because the dwelling units have to be simple, modest and repetitive.”

Gehman added, “We love the challenges and we love when people line up around the block to lease one of these units because they’re 20 percent below the luxury units.”

Read the June 2024 issue of MHN.