Public Housing separate to residential zoning

[TrentW]

Hi again,

Another idea I have just to add a touch of realism is distinguishing between public housing and residential zoning.

Obviously residential zoning means that you zone land for residential purposes which is then bought/sold/developed privately, so does not cost the city/user anything and as people move in it generates tax income for the city.

In previous games, housing project style buildings have been available through modding but still work like residential zoning.

It would be great if public housing was separate, perhaps under the civic menu and worked like city services in that public housing actually costs the user money because they are built with public funding, and have ongoing maintenance costs and don't generate any tax income for the city because generally to qualify for public housing you have to be on some kind of welfare benefit (that's the case in Australia anyway) and your rent is subsidized by the government with the tenant only paying a small percentage based on their income.

Obviously if this were the case in the game where public housing cost money and didn't generate any, plus it would negatively impact things such as land value and crime rates, there would be no benefit to placing it so you would have to also create positive effects such as incorporating homelessness into the game.

When you first start a city you would likely not have homelessness or a need for public housing. However, if over time land values increase at a greater rate than tings such as education and high wealth jobs or unemployment rises and people are priced out of rising housing values, people will become homeless. At the same time you start seeing foreclosures & abandoned buildings, you will also gain a homeless population and public housing could be a solution to homelessness.

The options for the player then are that you could spend money on public housing which reduces homelessness and prevents crime from spreading to areas you may not want it but it costs money and ghetto-izes an area with low land value and a concentration of higher crime; or the alternative is that homelessness will potentially bring crime and lower land values to areas you don't want it, in particular tourist areas.

This could create very realistic and interesting effects of not managing demand and demographics properly, that results in creating segregated ghettos (like parts of South Chicago) to preserve the quality of other parts of town, or seeing prized historic or tourist attraction neighbourhoods decline into seedy neighbourhoods (like Times Square in the 70s/80s), it would make gentrification a strategy to raise the value of trouble areas that have potential to be attractive, and not curtailing the problems could end up with entire once prosperous neighbourhoods becoming abandoned and the city losing it's tax base (see Detroit) if nothing is done.

I think it would add alot of depth and fun to the gameplay and make the city feel alive and your decisions really matter, moreso than plopping public housing mods that act like low income residential zoning.

 

[Rangerzero]

That's a nice idea that I would like to see in a city builder

 

[Barkydog]

I think this is a very good idea. In my view most cities will have some areas of public housing. Here in the UK using myself as an example I've lived on both most common designs of estates the inner city estate with high rise flats and Maisonettes as well as the outer urban suburb type estate that is mostly houses and bungalows complete with the occasional tower block and or low rise flats.

As the player is in the role of the city your budget would need to cover initial building costs and maintenance etc but also rent subsidy in the forms of housing benefits so no one ends up homeless just because they can't pay the rent.

Plus the challenge of zoning for additional public housing as your waiting lists increase as they should do as the economy changes over time.

Maybe with the option of manually selecting a residential building and designating it as a social housing and specifying the rent we want our tenants to pay etc.

No city is complete or realistic without some forms of social/public housing and since as players are in the role of city government it would add an extra layer of realism to provide & manage public housing for any city resident in need.

 

[lemonsquid]

Id much rather have streets with public housing as opposed to tents and homeless people littering my streets.

 

[Sir Leningrad]

Yes, it's a brilliant idea. The nice thing of playing a city builder is not only building a giant monument, but a vibrant place where people with needs and problems live wich have to be solved. We are their mayor and we should be providing solutions to them. 4 or 5 models of public housing would suffice.

If not, at least an ordinance that requires that a part of privately build residential buildings is destinied to affordable housing.

 

[TotalyMoo]

Great idea for a ploppable building, although it requires some sense of welfare and unemployed people lacking homes... So someone that moves to the city and can not afford a house? Sounds like it's out of our scope for release but very well a good addition post launch.

 

[medopu]

A good idea for a modding project *wink wink

 

[Sir Leningrad]

Not necessarily unemployed. It's growingly common to see people with one, two, or even three jobs who are struggling to pay the bills and need help with public cheap housing as jobs more jobs are becoming precarious.

Maybe providing public housing for X% of low income cityzens would make go up the city's happiness, or at least low class happiness, and increase their spending power as they need to pay less for their housing. Maybe sometimes they could shop in medium wealth shops instead?

 

[WilfriedWebber]

Great idea; however, one has to make a distinction between proper public/social housing and simple homeless shelters.

Here in Germany, homeless shelters are typically a kind of dormitory with a common corridor and lots of rooms adjacent to it. People can get a shower, or a 'hosing' sometimes, and a little meal, and they have to leave by 8 in the morning, or so: no staying during daytime.

Social housing, on the other hand, is state-subsidized housing where the subsidy lowers the base rent (calculated per square metre per month) by a specific amount (but rarely more than 20%). However, that base rent is set by the free market, which is why rising rent prices affect everyone, not just those who live in non-subsidized homes. And, there's more -- some well-designed, nicely-located social-housing projects from the 1980s can even attract middle-class people who pay a penalty in order to keep the flat.

 

[Pte Baldrick]

Have been wanting to see something like this in a game for a while.

I've noticed in most city building games, every genre of building is unrealistically either always-public or always-private.

 

[TrentW]

Great idea for a ploppable building, although it requires some sense of welfare and unemployed people lacking homes... So someone that moves to the city and can not afford a house? Sounds like it's out of our scope for release but very well a good addition post launch.

I'm thinking not so much moving to the city and not being able to afford a house, but more a consequence of decisions you make if your city takes an economic downturn. Land values rise too fast with high demand as population flocks into the city, then there aren't enough jobs or certain policies have negative impact on industry/commercial, unemployment rises, houses foreclose/abandon, all the sort of stuff that I assume would already be part of the cause & effect of managing your city... But the difference would just be that instead of all the cims leaving the city when the homes abandon, some may still pack up & leave while others become homeless instead and providing public housing can become a strategy to a) Get homeless off the street to stop blight from spreading to other districts; and b) Stop your population from leaving town by providing affordable/subsidized housing.

I think it just adds some layers of realism to the decisions you make if times get tough in your city, and play around with the potential effects of different strategies. See what effect is has on your city when you provide a generous level of welfare and public housing, compared to taking a hard line 'no handout' approach cutting public benefits and appeasing the NIMBYs who don't want public housing in their neighbourhood, then there's also the effects of how much you place and where you place it - what happens when you create three 8 block project complexes in the one district compared with scattering a couple of towers in every inner city district (including the high value ones).

 

[TrentW]

Great idea; however, one has to make a distinction between proper public/social housing and simple homeless shelters.

Here in Germany, homeless shelters are typically a kind of dormitory with a common corridor and lots of rooms adjacent to it. People can get a shower, or a 'hosing' sometimes, and a little meal, and they have to leave by 8 in the morning, or so: no staying during daytime.

Social housing, on the other hand, is state-subsidized housing where the subsidy lowers the base rent (calculated per square metre per month) by a specific amount (but rarely more than 20%). However, that base rent is set by the free market, which is why rising rent prices affect everyone, not just those who live in non-subsidized homes. And, there's more -- some well-designed, nicely-located social-housing projects from the 1980s can even attract middle-class people who pay a penalty in order to keep the flat.

Agreed, the suggestion is more directed at public housing than homeless shelters, because just as you said a homeless shelter doesn't actually reduce your homeless population. It gives them somewhere to sleep and shower. Public housing in the game would 'save' cims who are potentially homeless-bound if there is no affordable housing option. In other games, they just pack up & leave the city but I think adding the dimension of homelessness and providing enough public housing to minimise it would be fascinating!

Interesting about how state-subsidized housing works in Germany! In Australia I believe it's the opposite, rather than the government subsidizing a portion based on the property's market value, the price depends on the tenant's income. A certain percentage of the tenant's income is what they pay in rent, which works in the tenant's favour because what they pay will often only work out to be about 25% of an area's median rent. Waiting lists are long though and like with Germany, people will often hang onto a public housing flat as long as they can. I live in Melbourne where most inner-city suburbs have some of those big brown housing commission towers that sprung up in the '50s, and while they are not nice inside and often hotbeds of crime & drug activity, most are in fantastic locations (Richmond, South Yarra, St Kilda, Williamstown, South Melbourne, Prahran, Windsor, Fitzroy etc) and offer city and/or beach views.

 

[Sir Leningrad]

In Spain we have an Official Protected Housing decree, that works with a fix reduced rent wich is partially subsidized, or sold at a fixed price, much lower than the market price, but the state pays as much as the 80% cost of building it and gives lower rate credits to the builder. If the owner of the house wants to resell it, it has to be at a fixed price, not afected by market fluctuations.

Entire neighbourhoods may be built in this fashion and rented or sold in this way, although the majority are more or less well integrate in the city with good services and decent maintenance. Also, many were built to end the shack neighbourhoods that had grown outside the cities and were mostly inhabited by gypsies.

I don't expect something as complex, but financing part of some zoned buildings or giving cheap rent in plopable residential buildings would be nice.

 

[Darkath]

Great idea for a ploppable building, although it requires some sense of welfare and unemployed people lacking homes... So someone that moves to the city and can not afford a house? Sounds like it's out of our scope for release but very well a good addition post launch.

Or alternatively a slider of % of Welfare housing.

You could create whole districts of welfare housing, or having something like 20% in the whole city. Or different rates in different districts.

 

[Raph]

Sweden has a lot of public housing, usually through municipally owned companies, but it is not social housing aimed only at the poor. There are around 900 000 apartments in 300 different such companies. So if we have social housing maybe we could have public housing as something separate from that

 

[TotalyMoo]

Or alternatively a slider of % of Welfare housing.

You could create whole districts of welfare housing, or having something like 20% in the whole city. Or different rates in different districts.

Hmm, slider is a good idea too!

 

[Sir Leningrad]

The thing with the slider is: those houses have a private propietor if the state hasn't paid the construction. Does this mean the city hall will be able to force the owners to earn lower rents on their properties, or will it mean that it is subsidizing them?

 

[Darkath]

The thing with the slider is: those houses have a private propietor if the state hasn't paid the construction. Does this mean the city hall will be able to force the owners to earn lower rents on their properties, or will it mean that it is subsidizing them?

In my mind it would be a subsidy kind of.

Basically you the mayor would pay 20% of the rent of the local citizens or something like that, enabling them to afford higher quality housing and locations at your expense. It would be a good way to abstract an otherwise complex system IMO.

 

[WilfriedWebber]

Interesting about how state-subsidized housing works in Germany!

It's in fact a bit more complicated with buildings built before 2002-2003 (the current system was introduced in 2001). Rents in those buildings are additionally capped via a complex formula that was given up in the 2001 reform.

The low-rent binding can last up to 80 years, but typically ends after 30 to 40 years. I think, for the game, a different approach would be better, e.g., municipal subsidies to the tenants, as suggested by Darkath.

 

[Alex_brunius]

Shouldn't public housings primary advantage be to quickly expand the population of the city by providing cheap rents in big block apartments? ( cheaper since you don't require any profit or money back on the investment )

So you as mayor front up a big lump sum to plop the grey concrete apartment complex and since the rents are cheaper then anything private builders can provide it quickly fills with new people moving in.

The people living there would still pay tax like normal ( but since they would mostly be lower class/level the tax would be less then the average resident ).

The secondary effect of this would be that it provides alot of cheap labor to dirty/manufacturing industry ( which can be taxed higher/on normal levels ).

The primary ways to stop abusing it is high costs ( it would be ridiculously expensive to have a city built with 100% government/municipally funded apartments ), and that the low rents & low level citizens are not very desired and still need the same support costs that others do ( electricity/water/infrastrucutre and so on ).

These mechanics would work better within the frame of the game I think.