A Demolition, Two Kinds of Gentrification, and the Dilemma

The other day on Saginaw Street I saw a demolition in progress.

Used to be a house

1394 Saginaw in Nov 2020 (streetview)

It had been a slightly shabby, clipped hip cottage from the very early 20th century. The Assessor's record says c.1910. The owner appears to have died about three years ago, and it was recently sold out of the estate. According to the demolition permit, the new owner plans a fourplex on the site. The house did not appear to have been condemned, so as a slightly shabby rental it might have been a kind lower cost housing. In the 2020 image you can see the plywood behind the front door. Maybe it had been a squat or something, also. The lot was already zoned for apartments, as RM2, and was not changed in the Our Salem process, it should be noted. So this demolition is not anything occasioned by Our Salem or by the State legalizing smallplexes in the new middle housing law. We already had upzoned Sleepy Hollow.

The lot and much of Sleepy Hollow is zoned RM2
(City of Salem Zoning map, from 2020)

So how are we to interpret this?

It will be a net gain of three new homes. But since it is new construction, the rents are nearly certain to be higher.

Consider a different house, a craftsman a little grander in the Court-Chemeketa Historic District.

Salem Reporter on restoration of the Buchner House

Back in 1992 it was firebombed and neighbors purchased it to renovate and then sell. It had been damaged and might have been demolished.

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This is also a kind of gentrification that pushes rents higher and pushes people out of a neighborhood.

• "Zoning and the Restoration Drama: Different Perspectives on the Buchner House"
  

The house looks terrific! And the owners continue to invest in it with maintenance and renovation. Here are a couple of instances form 2018. Earlier in the decade I believe the Historic Landmarks Commission recognized it with an award, even. It is easy to walk by and admire it. It is lovely. That is a value in the urban fabric, not to be dismissed.

Maintenance/Renovation in 2018

But the effect of the home improvements is indeed second kind of gentrification, one that we have ignored or erased by means of the discourse around "historic preservation." The "rent" on that house, the monthly cost of it, is higher, much higher.

According to the Salem Reporter piece, the neighborhood corporation "in August 1993...purchased the house for $62,000." Currently the Assessor ascribes a value of three-quarters of a million to it. That's not gentrification?

If that clipped hip cottage on Saginaw that is being demolished retained enough structural integrity to be maintained, as a fixer-upper new owners would need to invest in it. Whether owner-occupied or rented out, its monthly cost would also go up.

As demolition with new housing or as preservation with renovation, either way the cost of it as housing goes up, and fewer people could afford it.

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So here is the dilemma.

Restored older homes are lovely, nice to look at and admire for the walking public, and nice of course for the owners and immediate neighbors.

But our climate and housing goals call for more housing in walkable neighborhoods.

Walkscore rates the corner lot on Saginaw a 67, "somewhat walkable." Lower Commercial Street has seemed somewhat stalled, and it is a little surprising that the area at Owens and Commercial isn't more of a hub. Perhaps the new mixed use zoning in Our Salem will prompt more redevelopment. As the RM2 zoning recognizes, this is a good place for more housing. In time could rate very walkable, even a "walker's paradise," the highest rating. It is certainly a candidate to be designated a "climate friendly area" under the new State rules on climate, zoning, and land use.

We should register the sadness in demolition. It is an unambiguous loss. But in our current historical situation under a climate crisis and a housing crisis, a situation which calls for less driving and for more housing, there is essentially no way to achieve that without the loss of some old homes, which are located in older streetcar-era neighborhoods and have the most walkable bones.

Arguing about a 1:1 replacement

Nearly two years ago in comment offered to the Legislature, our great preservation advocacy organization Restore Oregon argued that tear-downs wasted the embodied carbon in an older building. They are right that this is a loss. 

However, the example they used was a 1:1 replacement, a tear-down of an old 1500 SF home, replaced by a new 3000 SF home.

They did not analyze the demolition of an old 1500 SF home, replaced by four new 750 SF homes. That 1:4 replacement is more nearly the relevant test case.

And of course they omitted what "renovating a 1500 SF older home" does to the cost of housing. Renovation is not a neutral gesture with no effects.

As long as neighborhoods are not clear-cut with sudden swaths of widespread demolition, a new kind of urban renewal, and the demolition instead occurs incrementally, this is a loss we should be prepared to accept and endure, even as we mourn.

Some houses will remain, and we will continue to celebrate them. But some will not and will be replaced by new apartments and homes. 

And which is worse? Garbage, tarps, and tents? Or new apartments we regard as cookie-cutter and ugly? If we want to make a dent in our housing crisis, we will have to increase supply and build more housing. The very poorest won't move into the new homes, of course, but with better supply some living in cars will be able to afford more stable housing, and there will be less competition on the lower end. Housing filters. And if we want to reduce driving in the city and to make neighborhoods more walkable, some of this new housing will end up replacing older single detached homes in older neighborhoods with walkable bones.

Emotionally it is distressing to see an intact older home demolished. But if our priors include commitments to working on our climate crisis and on our housing crisis, it follows that we will have to tolerate some demolition.