by: Sam Torrence

On September 26th Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, announced a plan to offer subsidies to developers and building owners to convert vacant offices into residential units in the business district on the historic LaSalle Street. The plan, which is named LaSalle Street Reimagined, calls for the use of Tax Increase Financing (TIF) from the LaSalle/Central TIF District. While it was not announced how much would be made available for this program the district has approximately 197 million dollars as of the end of the 2021 fiscal year. LaSalle Street where over one-fourth of offices and storefronts are vacant is just one high-profile example of a trend that is concerning to landlords. However, this trend may be an opportunity to help alleviate one of the greatest environmental justice issues facing the United States: affordable housing.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, office vacancy rates have increased across many of the major metropolitan areas. In Chicago, vacancy rates increased to just over 15%, New York rates increased to over 13%, and in Los Angeles just under 14%. While many attributed the initial increase of vacancies to temporary pandemic-related work-from-home policies, many of these vacancies do not appear to be temporary. This has led to worry among some building owners about how to address the loss in revenue.

Affordable housing advocates have suggested a win-win for both landlords and renters. The proposed plan would have the owners of these large office buildings convert the unused office space into affordable housing units. The appeal for both sides is relatively obvious, landlords, who are losing income due to the shift of companies away from full-scale office culture, gain what should be a more reliable base of occupants for their buildings. While renters would receive the benefit of an increased supply of units. While not all these units would be designated for affordable housing an increase in supply should theoretically bring down renting costs across the board as supply begins to catch up with demand.

Affordable housing is typically defined either as a percentage of a household’s income: 30 percent of income. On the flip side, affordable housing programs like the one in Chicago typically service households that make a percentage of the area’s median income. Such as a unit must be affordable for a household that makes 60 percent of the area’s median income. In a program such as Chicago’s, there is a sliding scale of rent a unit can be priced at depending on the percent of the area’s median income the household makes.

While the housing affordability crisis does not at first glance appear to be an environmental issue; the underlying connection is simple and yet makes a significant difference in the grand scheme of addressing climate change. Put simply, due to rising rents in major markets such as Chicago many households have had to search outside of metro areas for more affordable housing. Instead of living within the communities in which they work, households now must commute to their jobs from suburbs and exurbs where rents and housing costs are lower. The result of this commute is an increase in carbon emissions from transit that would not otherwise occur. And while the transportation costs are worrying there is also the environmental impact caused by suburban sprawl, which is spurred on by this crisis.

However, housing affordability should not be analyzed simply as an economic and environmental issue regarding the number of office vacancies and carbon emissions. The conversation should center around those deeply impacted by both the economic disparity and environmental harms which result from this broken system. Most often the folks who have to deal with the ramifications of climate change are the same who are bearing the burden of unaffordable housing. Families are being pushed out of their communities by rising rent prices and sensible family-friendly units are being demolished in favor of luxury condos and apartments. And even when these developments do not oust communities there is little to no investment into these communities to address environmental issues while improving quality of life.

Too often policymakers and urban planners look at a community and want to redevelop the community with projects that would replace the existing infrastructure instead of investing in the community that already exists there. While requiring new developments to include affordable housing units and to meet certain environmental standards such as LEED certification is great, it does not address the environmental issues that affect units that are already affordably priced. Many of these homes are in need of weatherization which would help to keep the units affordable by both lowering energy usage costs and by wholesale replacing the unit with a less affordable new development.

Regardless of what the individual community requires, affordable housing needs to be a goal that is centered along with other environmental justice concerns. Environmental sustainability does not have to come at the cost of displacing and negatively impacting those who have already had to bear the burden of the climate crisis.