Episode Summary

  1. Most people recognize there is an affordability problem in their neighborhood. A zoning problem, combined with rising construction costs, and rising interest rates incentivize people to stay put. And continues to keep the supply and demand equation off balance.
  2. The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control (think: car culture manifesto) claims non-standard colors and materials on street scapes and intersections are a safety concern. However, Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Safety Study have quantitative data suggesting otherwise.

Most homeowners believe where they live now is affordable (30 page pdf)

Because, well, it is. Nine out of ten mortgages in America carry an interest rate of less than 5% (1 min read)

Asphalt art decreases vulnerable road user crashes by 50% (3 min read)

Episode Transcript

Hey everyone. I’m Kyle Gulau and on this show, patterns of development, we take less than 10 minutes each week to deconstruct what's going on in real estate, architecture, and urban planing.

And today. Let's pick up where we left off with perception. Most homeowners in the United States believe that where they are living is currently affordable.

That is according to a study of homeowners by Fannie Mae's Economic and Strategic Research Center. There are some caveats here.

7 out of every 10 people think that affordable housing is difficult to find in their area. That group added 2 people since 2017.

However, 9 out of ever 10 people (90%) believe that the current house they own is affordable. This group had no significant change since 2017.

So we have a general population that is concerned about affordable housing being difficult to find in there area but! If you already own a house you're extremely likely to say that your current housing situation is affordable. What's going on here.

That leads us to our second article of the week written by Felix Salmon in Axios Capital. Sourcing data from Black Knight, out of 53 million home loans in the United States, 48 million of those carry an interest rate of below 5%.

Money, historically, has never been this cheap. With increasing property values and now increasing interest rates, there is a significant incentive to stay put. Hence people recognizing there's an affordability problem but most homeowners feeling like they currently have an affordable solution.

To quote the article by Felix now, "When mortgage rates rise, that lowers the supply of homes hitting the market. Lower supply means higher prices, especially in areas where many buyers are bidding in cash."

This is Kyle again...these forces combined with increasing resistance to building dense neighborhoods magnify the supply and demand problem we've talked so frequently about in this show.

On a more positive note, a report from Bloomberg Philanthropies,  discovered that installing asphalt art on roads and intersections can cut crashes between motorists and other road users by 50%.

Quoting the article by Kea Wilson, " researchers analyzed crash rates and driver behavior before and after traffic-calming art projects were added to the 17 U.S. roads and intersections for which the best possible data and imagery was available. Those projects included colorful crosswalks and curb-extending murals that visually shorten a pedestrian’s crossing distance, among other innovative designs — and notably, most of them didn’t incorporate any other hard-infrastructure improvements at the time they were painted.

Not only did the projects slash crashes involving vulnerable road users in half, they also lessened injury-causing crashes by an average of 37 percent, and cut overall crashes by 17 percent, too. Drivers even yielded to pedestrians in colorful crosswalks 27 percent more often, even though many intersections featured high-visibility paint before."

This is Kyle again. Those are some helpful numbers to bring up if you're considering gathering support for a public art project.

Which leads us to our patterns of the week:

  1. Most people recognize there is an affordability problem in their neighborhood. A zoning problem, combined with rising construction costs, and rising interest rates incentivize people to stay put. And continues to keep the supply and demand equation off balance.
  2. The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control (think: car culture manifesto) claims non-standard colors and materials on street scapes and intersections are a safety concern. However, Bloomberg Philanthropies Asphalt Art Safety Study have quantitative data suggesting otherwise.

That's all for this week, talk to you soon.