Why is there no affordable housing in Sussex County ?
We often hear in public discussion about development in Sussex that various conditions are unchangeable, and we should accept them and make the best of it. Among these is the proposition that if there is demand for luxury housing (usually large, expensive single-family homes), we have no choice but to supply it.
State housing representatives and developers in Sussex County Council’s land-use reform working group noted that, unsurprisingly, developers will build the product that is easiest: what provides them the most return for the least amount of regulatory complexity. That promised return becomes the loudest demand signal in the market.
In response to demand for housing at the shore from retirees and beachgoers, this approach has led to an unbalanced focus on building luxury homes in the area, and a complementary lack of new housing affordable to our local workforce. This system is self-amplifying: success in selling luxury homes to new residents results in more being built. Focus on success for buyers and sellers in one market sector has brought failure for buyers in another.
If we only obey the loudest market signals, then development in Sussex will stay on its current course until the current retirement demographic bulge subsides. That is unsustainable in terms of resource use, and is failing to serve the needs of our community as a whole.
We need to discard the notion that we are forced to supply whatever housing the market demands most loudly. Demand for affordable housing for our workforce has been obscured by demand for luxury homes for new residents, and county government, as the development stakeholder representing the public interest, must rectify that: incentivize or regulate meaningful percentages of housing whose pricing meets realistic definitions of "affordable." There will still be plenty of opportunity to make money in the local housing market, and if current participants don't want to play within those constraints, then if we believe in market forces, we should expect others to take their place.
We all know that markets cannot be planned, but the alternative is not to let them operate without any controls. Our current way of choosing what to build is broken with regard to our collective interest, and that will worsen until we address the problem.
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