In the center of our town, an abandoned auto dealership lies vacant. Developers want to build an apartment building in that space. It would cater to young people who want easy access to the train to Manhattan. And local homeowners want to stop it. They set up a “Preserve Our Village” Facebook page, put signs on their front lawns, and held meetings all over town. What’s the issue? They don’t want more kids in the schools. They are worried about their property values, too, but the biggest issue is diluting the quality of the schools with a big influx of newcomers.
The lack of affordable rental properties in this town and in other suburban areas could be leading to the greying of the suburbs. The New York Times reports on this problem.
Alexander Roberts, executive director of Community Housing Innovations, an advocacy group for affordable housing that released the report about the New York counties, attributed the declines in Westchester and on Long Island to the increasing cost of houses and the resistance by localities to building apartment buildings with modest rentals. The greatest population losses, he said, were in “the least diverse communities with the most expensive housing, which happen also to be those that have almost no affordable multifamily housing.”
Apt. 11d 
In the cities, Seattle in my case, we want young people, diversity and industry, I guess your town is happy with what it has, which seems kind of sad for the young.
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There are battles about multifamily housing here, in Seattle as well, but we are working from a base of having some already. But there are neighborhoods where elementary schools, at least, have no multifamily housing in their neighborhood. That creates the equivalence of what L is describing for her suburban town.
I got to see the tail end of battles over development of transitional housing near our neighborhood (and, yes, transitional, rather than multifamily) along with development of sports fields. Both clearly encountered nimby issues (our signs were Save our Park, I think).
Of course, the property values is implicitly tied up in the “quality of the schools” (which is more than the school’s quality, since it also includes the school’s population).
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PS: The “Greying” is an attempt at a economic (rather than moral) argument in favor of multifamily housing. I don’t know if it works out, but I can say that the sports fields have increased the vibrance of our neighborhood, even at the cost of the extra cars and the lights at night marring the views. The development is corralled (across a big street and in a walled off and re-developed navy base), so it doesn’t change the neighborhood all that much, but the arrival of kids with families to the soccer, ultimate, rugby games, and the pay-to-play indoor soccer and tennis centers (and, soon, the addition of a waldorf school) to the neighborhood has increased the use of the park.
The greys, who liked the empty park (even with the broken down buildings) might still have mixed feelings, but, though I was sympathetic (I hate the light pollution of my views :-)) to the anti-development folks before, I am pretty happy with the direction the park has taken. Young people are messy but also lend energy.
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With a park, there may be aesthetic concerns, but housing is a pure financial issue for most suburban officials and residents. For most towns, property taxes are the only significant source of revenue, and schools the major item of expense. If the government allows residential development at a higher density than the existing average for the town, there will inevitably be a reduction in the amount of assessed property value per schoolchild, so everyone’s tax rate must go up.
City governments typically derive significant revenue from sales taxes and property taxes on commercial property, so it makes sense for them to encourage young people, who typically buy lots of tangible personal property, and commercial development.
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