The three-bedroom solution to our ‘childless’ cities
by Kenneth Schrupp | September 13, 2024
Take a look around your city and think about a modal of American life for many people – college, rent, get married, start a family, work at a downtown employer, then retire and later move into senior housing. This American mainstay, however, is increasingly difficult in major cities – and may be one reason that the nation’s biggest cities have long become largely childless.
The difficulty in finding affordable, family sized housing is one reason urban Americans struggle to start families – or why they feel forced to flee to the suburbs. While there are cultural drivers of fertility, Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, recently examined fertility using robust U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey data in relation to housing – including density, housing size, household crowding, housing type and ownership.
Stone finds that an area’s density has a downward correlation with fertility, while home size by bedroom correlates with rapid fertility increases until three bedrooms, at which point fertility stabilizes. Multifamily housing fertility was only slightly lower than in single-family housing, though one-and-two bedroom single-family home fertility was on par with larger homes, while apartments of those sizes correlated with low fertility.
With regards to ownership, living at home with parents correlated with the lowest fertility, with ownership the highest and being a renter slightly lower than ownership. While Stone presents housing type as a fertility driver, it could also be that families seeking to grow choose bigger homes.
The bottom line: Expanding family-size housing, which Stone supports, would let more couples start families. Cities could boost the number of residents with children by encouraging the construction of more three-bedroom apartments.
Stone then uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to find the fertility effect of each year of living with or without parents in urban, rural or suburban areas. Living anywhere with parents had a very negative effect. Owning in the city had a moderate negative effect. Rural ownership and suburban renting had a moderate positive effect on fertility. Renting in the city had a large positive effect.
From this, Stone concludes: “The biggest housing factor shaping low fertility is just getting young people out of their parents’ houses.” Citing the correlation between higher density and lower fertility, Stone says, “YIMBY reforms may have some negative effects … if they are preoccupied with up-zoning already dense urban neighborhoods.” He also notes, “for housing units with three or more bedrooms, fertility is pretty much identical whether the unit is an apartment or a single-family home.”
Even if individuals who choose to rent in the city are simply the kind of people who are more driven and thus successful, this sorting lets cities provide better access to better jobs, networks and spouses, which results in being able to have a bigger family down the line. Thus, building enough housing to get adults out of their parents’ house is more important than rejecting density. Those singles have to live somewhere, and they might as well enjoy the network effects of the city while they are young.
That three-bedroom apartments are more expensive per square foot than two-bedroom apartments in many California localities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco — and even family-oriented Irvine in Orange County — suggests there’s a shortage of family-sized rental homes. That prices per square foot are generally lower for one-bedrooms than studios, and lower for two-bedrooms than one-bedrooms makes this price jump more indicative of a shortage.
Stone suggests the shortage is in part driven by parking requirements that might mandate three spots for a three bedroom unit, even though a family often has two cars. Cities should eliminate parking minimums and avoid parking maximums (which are designed to push individuals onto public transit, but could drive families away) to let families – and the market – decide what’s best for them.
Another code-related impediment is the requirement for double-loaded corridors or long hallways in the middle providing access to units on either side, like a hotel. This inflexible design mandates larger and costlier apartments have to be larger to provide the same number of bedrooms. Last year, California passed a bill to consider ending this requirement.
One additional tool would be to replace density bonuses for building “affordable” units with “family unit” density bonuses. Because inclusionary zoning typically only outlines how many price-controlled units must be built, developers make those units as small as possible. Often, none of the “affordable” units are family-sized.
Each “affordable” unit in a building also requires developers to raise rents on the remaining market-rate units to make up for lost revenue, meaning the three-bedroom units that do get built end up having higher rents than they would have without inclusionary zoning. A bonus for market-rate three-bedrooms instead of for units that are “affordable” for a select few would solve both of these problems.
Ending the three-bedroom shortage could also address the urban conditions that drive families to the suburbs. Moving to the suburbs comes with sacrifices. It’s harder to advance in one’s career, or change jobs or industries, meaning one is more likely to be tied to and taken for granted at a single firm. But cities’ uncontrolled crime, poor governance and awful public schools often give families no choice but to leave.
These departures deprive cities of some of their most productive and responsible citizens, meaning there’s fewer educated, involved citizens to support longer-term, higher-reward policies like improving public safety and schooling. One ends up with politics dominated by public employees and temporary residents who treat the city treasury as a piggy bank for which they’ll never have to foot the bill.
With more families, cities could prioritize issues that benefit both families and society long-term, such as good schools, budgets that don’t rob our children, and parks, streets and transit safe for everyone. The simple three-bedroom home could be the cure for it all – and it’s time for policymakers to let developers build the family-sized housing our cities desperately need.
Kenneth Schrupp is the California reporter for The Center Square. His commentary and analysis have been published by Newsweek and RealClearPolitics.
All images created by Midjourney
