Our weekly program, Missouri State Journal, is a collaboration between KSMU Radio and Missouri State University. It's hosted and produced by MSU's Office of Strategic Communication, and it airs each Tuesday morning at 9:45 on KSMU.
Linda Regan talks with Springfield Zone 4 Councilman Bruce Adib-Yazdi who is also vice president of development for Vecino Group about the housing situation in Springfield.
Bruce, thank you for joining me today to discuss the topic of housing in Springfield.
Adib-Yazdi: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
I have heard that the issues surrounding housing needs in Springfield are very complicated, and from a number of conversations I have had recently, it's also a confusing issue to many people. Here's a common comment I've heard. Someone can drive in almost any direction from center city Springfield and come across large, new or fairly new apartment and housing complexes. And still we hear and read repeatedly that there's a serious housing shortage in Springfield. Sometime the phrase affordable housing is used but not always. Can you clarify Springfield's housing shortage?
Adib-Yazdi: It is a complicated issue. We're going to talk about three primary things today: Inventory, land zoning, those, that's one, demographics and societal change. But to your question, the housing shortage that we're talking about comes from the housing study that we commissioned as a city in 2023, which indicated that from a renting standpoint, the inventory we have is significantly short at the very low end of incomes as well as the high end of incomes on the renting side and short on the high end of incomes on the homeownership side.
Just to clarify, what you're explaining is that in many cases of new housing development, Springfield is actually gaining more housing, but it's not necessarily addressing where we have the shortages?
Adib-Yazdi: In some ways it is, but it's the market driving those things right now. We don't have what I would call a strategic housing initiative or a plan that says, here's what we want, where we want it. So right now, as we see things happening, as you mentioned, things getting constructed, it's really generated based on the market. They would not be being built in that fashion if the market wouldn't support them. But we are likely reducing that shortage in the rental gap in the over 100% AMI category but not necessarily in some of the other categories.
Okay. What is AMI?
Adib-Yazdi: The area median income.
You mentioned a housing study. Expand on that. What statistics and data does the city use to determine these housing needs, and how current is the data?
Adib-Yazdi: We commissioned the study in 2023, and it's still fairly accurate from that perspective. But we also look at a layered set of federal, state and other local data sources. No single data set tells us the whole story, so we try and triangulate some of that information. There's professionals in our city staff that take care of all that and look at those things. But it also includes looking at the formation of housing affordability, production, vacancy, market conditions and unmet needs.
So, Bruce, you touched on this balance of a variety of housing needs. I assume all cities strive for a balance of single family homes versus condos, apartments, townhouses. Where does Springfield need to make adjustments for the most desirable balance?
Adib-Yazdi: I don't know that all cities strive for that. We should be, and we currently are. I'll talk about that here in a little bit. But you know, the question is not do we have enough apartments versus houses? It's do we have the right kind of housing in the right locations in our city? And that takes a bit of investigation and studying. What we find is that planners generally focus on gently increasing density in different areas of the city, having choices for housing and different kinds of housing. You hear the word middle housing a lot, which is kind of that gap between apartment buildings and single-family homes, and then attainable or affordable housing.
Let's circle back, just because I know the issue of housing shortage is one that keeps popping up. I have heard you mention, Bruce, that City Council has identified housing needs as a priority issue. Share some insight into council's plans and goals, and has Council set a timeline to achieve all or some of the goals?
Adib-Yazdi: So, as you mentioned at the top of the story here, it is a complicated issue. It's almost like calculus. And when you start looking at the inventory we have in our city, and we can count that, start looking at the land availability, we can sort of count that. The other two factors are demographics, which we can start to look at right now. Over 70% of our single-family homes in Springfield are occupied by one and two person households. So, the demographics are working against us. Those folks in the baby boomer generation mostly have held on to their homes because they don't have another place to go. They don't have that inventory of a condo or a townhouse or a patio home. We don't have that. And so that's one of the things we're trying to get focused on is what do we need now to unlock that inventory for other people to come in. You mentioned city council does have a housing priority. It's one of four priorities: Public safety, transformation, economic vitality, our development processes and housing strategy. So, we are currently working on a housing strategy that would be an implementation and tracking plan. And the goal of that would be to have something in place during this particular council's bodies being elected. So, by next April we decided that we are together for two years. Here are the things we want to focus on, and here's what we want to try and accomplish in the next two years.
Okay. Thank you. I feel like we need to do a follow up in maybe six months. My guest today has been Bruce Adib-Yazdi, vice president of development for Vecino Group and Zone 4 City Council member.