Rogers: Housing diversity in Scottsdale? It’s more than pro or con

While the city sports a few highly visible and award-winning multifamily complexes, these seem to be more the exception than the norm. Shouldn’t the city impose the same standards of architectural excellence on apartment builders as it does on the developers of other housing structures?”

Robert Rogers, Scottsdale resident

Those traveling throughout Scottsdale are astonished by what they see as an explosive proliferation of new apartment complexes. They’re everywhere. And they’re huge.

As a result, voters bombard City Council candidates with questions about the wisdom of fostering the spread of so many Plain-Jane, stick-and-frame multifamily rental units. Voters worry these projects are turning Scottsdale into Any Town, U.S.A.

What’s at stake, in-the-know folks say, is housing diversity.

Others cite out-of-context quotes, votes, and photos to show who favors apartments and renters and who is snootily against them.

What these skewed appeals mean to show, of course, is who is and who isn’t kowtowing to the supposedly visionless interests of real estate developers.

Without definition and qualification, “housing diversity” is a mere platitude.

Every right-thinking public official, candidate, and opinion leader favors it, just as they do motherhood and apple pie.

What voters deserve from candidates are explanations of how they would achieve appropriate levels of housing choices in the city.

• Are current housing options available in Scottsdale insufficiently diverse? Yes or no.

• What does appropriate housing diversity look like? What ratio of rental- to owned-housing is optimum?

• Absent a well-conceived and agreed-upon plan, how is one to know if the city has achieved or is progressing toward adequate diversity of housing choices?

• Further, what are the measured societal and economic advantages of boosting the share of the city’s population by renters, a demographic segment characterized in academic studies as being “financially fragile”?

• Also, if demands for public services by these new city citizens exceed their tax contributions, is it fair to impose the shortfall burden on current residents?

• Finally, what about architectural standards? While the city sports a few highly visible and award-winning multifamily complexes, these seem to be more the exception than the norm. Shouldn’t the city impose the same standards of architectural excellence on apartment builders as it does on the developers of other housing structures?

These are challenging questions requiring detailed and convincing responses, something much more than utterances of being pro or con housing diversity.

Editor’s Note: Robert Rogers is a Scottsdale resident.