Knoxville Faces Housing Crisis: Can Historic Preservation be the Answer?

Knoxville’s Housing Woes: Can Preservation Offer a Solution?

Knoxville is facing a serious housing crisis, and it’s a story that many are familiar with. Every day, more folks are searching high and low for a place they can afford to call home, but options are becoming scarcer. At a recent Preservation Conference organized by Knox Heritage, keynote speaker Katlyn Cotton of PlaceEconomics shed light on the current state of housing. Her insights pointed towards a surprising hero in this crisis: historic preservation.

A Widening Gap in Housing Supply

According to Cotton, estimates of America’s housing shortage vary widely, with current figures ranging from 1.5 million to a staggering 6.5 million homes needed. But here’s the kicker—her firm found that we actually might need around 7.3 million more affordable or lower-income housing units. So how did we get here? Despite building about 1.5 million homes in 2023, most of these just aren’t affordable for the average person.

A huge part of the problem seems to be the trend of tearing down older homes to make way for shiny new constructions. Cotton’s research revealed that between 1987 and 2021, we built a little over 3.5 million affordable housing units. But in that same time frame, we demolished nearly 11.5 million pre-1970 housing units. If even half of those older homes had been preserved, some experts believe we would not be wrestling with a housing shortage today!

What’s So Special About Older Homes?

Cotton calls those older homes “naturally occurring affordable housing”. So, what makes them so wallet-friendly? For starters, they tend to be smaller. Back in the day, Americans were okay with cozy spaces, and houses built before the 1970s typically reflect this simpler time. These smaller homes often come with lower rent and lower purchase prices, making them more accessible to the public. But here’s the twist: while we see efforts to protect grand, architecturally significant properties, most of these more modest older homes are left vulnerable to demolition.

Facing the Rent Burden

On top of all this, a significant portion of people in Knoxville are facing what’s known as housing cost burden, where a whopping 48% of renters are spending over 50% of their income on housing. That number is pretty alarming! Insert the economic landscape today, where many new jobs just don’t pay enough to keep up with skyrocketing rent and home prices.

Additionally, most older homes also provide much-needed multi-family options, which are typically less expensive. Sadly, Cotton pointed out that a staggering 94% of buildings built before 1920 lack any form of protection, leaving them high and dry against renovation or removal.

How Can We Fix This?

Cotton highlighted three main factors affecting housing affordability: age, size, and condition. Simply put, older homes cost less and often require less upkeep than many newer builds. In fact, the median monthly cost of homes built before 1939 tends to be about $700 cheaper than those constructed in 2023! With more than 60% of households now consisting of just one or two people, these smaller homes also cater perfectly to current living arrangements.

But it isn’t all doom and gloom. Knoxville has programs aimed at helping residents keep these older houses in good shape, like the Owner-Occupied Housing Rehabilitation Program. Cotton urges local and state governments to ramp up support, offering tax credits for homeowners struggling to balance maintenance costs with rising property taxes.

Rethinking Policies

One creative solution is to make demolishing older homes more expensive, perhaps through increased fees or even requiring deconstruction methods, which allow for material reuse and create less waste than traditional demolition procedures. Cotton suggests cities focus on preserving these older homes instead of just throwing money at new constructions.

We certainly face a challenging climate when it comes to affordable housing, but Cotton’s inspiring talk sheds light on a path forward that emphasizes the value of older homes. For residents and policymakers alike, preservation could be the key to combating the growing affordability crisis.