MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5, at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. We're shaping the city with Roger Lewis. It's been three years since the climax of the national housing crisis, and by most measures, Greater Washington fared better than most big cities, like Las Vegas or Detroit.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIBut the boom-bust cycle of the last decade left a huge mark on the look and feel of our built environment. In some D.C. neighborhoods, tall, shiny condo projects lay empty. In many suburban communities, for-sale signs still line most streets. Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, the number of truly affordable houses and apartments is evaporating.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIIn short, the existing housing stock in this region seems wildly out of line with the demands of would-be buyers and renters. This hour, we're exploring how the building boom and subsequent downturn has affected the look and feel of our local communities. Joining us is Roger Lewis. He's an architect and the columnist writing the Shaping the City column for The Washington Post.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIHe's professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland College Park. Roger, good to see you again.

MR. ROGER LEWISThank you. Nice to be here again.

NNAMDIThe national housing crisis first began in 2006. Five years ago, it reached its low point. In 2008, three years ago, the great recession has brought a lot of the problems seen in the rest of the country, underwater homeowners and condo owners, for-sale signs everywhere. But we wanted to start with an observation about our region and its housing situation.

NNAMDIRight now, in a lot of neighborhoods, like the Navy Yards in D.C. or along Massachusetts Ave., we seem to have too many luxury apartments without people living in them. On the flip side, every community that we visit for Kojo in Your Community and every time we talk about housing, we hear that there's a chronic shortage of truly affordable housing. Are these two storylines related?

LEWISAbsolutely. You mention luxury housing, and, of course, a lot of the apartments you mention are luxury only in their price tags. They're not necessarily immense, large apartments that a family could live in. I mean, I think the -- it's a -- there are a lot of moving parts to the story. I think we should tell the audience right away there are a lot of moving parts to this.

LEWISThe fundamental problem is that there has been a divergence generally between what people's incomes are and what they could afford to pay for housing, on the one hand, and the cost, you know, the market value of the housing on the other. And if, you know, when you -- when I started designing housing in the early '70s, it was much easier. I mean, I recall vividly I did a lot of projects for development -- developers that were market-rate housing.

LEWISAnd there was never much of a question that there'd be plenty of people ready to buy or rent the housing that was being developed. And, of course, also in that period, we still had a lot of programs that financed -- provided subsidy financing of some sort for affordable housing. And it seemed to me that at that time there was a -- what people could afford and what it cost were in closer relationship to one another.

LEWISI think what we've really seen. And it isn't just -- it didn't just start with this recession. I mean, I think there's been a relatively steady divergence between affordability, and by that I don't just mean low-income housing, but affordability in housing and what people's incomes allowed them to pay, whether it's renting or buying.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is our number here if you'd like to join the conversation. How has your neighborhood changed since the housing crisis? Have you noticed certain types of buildings only going up? 800-433-8850. Send us a tweet, @kojoshow. You can email us at kojo@wamu.org. Or simply go to our website, kojoshow.org, and join the conversation there.

NNAMDIHas the boom-bust cycle over the last 10 years affected the built environment in Washington, especially its housing stock?

LEWISI think there's been a lot of new housing built that has -- in Washington. And I think when you say Washington, you're probably talking about the city. We might also later talk about...

NNAMDIThe whole area.

LEWIS...the whole area, the suburban part of the city. But I think the -- what we've seen in the last 10 years is a lot of multifamily construction, that is, apartments, apartment buildings, some row housing, but a lot of apartments which were generally condominium. They were meant to be sold, and that was because the -- that was -- there was a lot of market demand for that. Generally, until 2006, the notion was ownership is good.

LEWISI can afford -- if I buy this, I get interest tax deductions. I build up equity. Housing is going to go up in value, never down. That was the market. And by the market, I mean the effective demand of people who have the money to buy apartments. And what happened in -- after 2006 is the population able to afford to buy and service the loans to acquire a condominium or apartment began to weaken. And a lot of those apartments have now turned into rentals.

LEWISThis happened not only in the city, but it happened in places like Rockville. I know that in particular. I worked on a project there where a lot of the housing that was built around the new Rockville Town Center was intended to be condominiums. It's now gone, a lot of it, to rental. The same thing is happening along Massachusetts Ave., and you mentioned the Navy Yard, Southeast Federal Center.

NNAMDIYep.

LEWISSo why is this happening? It's happening because the -- right now, it is easier to get someone into an apartment if they're renting it than if they have to buy it. And, again, it's just pure economics.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is the number to call. What does the word affordable mean to you? Have you seen it in your neighborhood? We use that word affordable housing a lot, 800-433-8850. Let's go there for a second, Roger, affordable housing. We use the phrase a lot. Exactly what do we mean by that?

LEWISThere is -- well, of course, affordable is completely relative. And, you know, if I'm making a million bucks a year, I can perhaps afford a $5 million house. But I won't be able to afford a $10 million house. Afford -- generally, the term affordable housing refers to housing that middle-income, middle-class people who have incomes -- who are employed -- this is not -- we're talking here about housing for the indigent.

LEWISBut affordable housing generally is -- would mean housing that people who are gainfully employed, whether it's teachers or firemen or policemen or architects, whose incomes are respectable, but not huge, that they can afford it. And that hugely means that they wouldn't have to spend more than 30 percent or so of their income for housing.

LEWISWhat has happened is those people now, to find housing in D.C. , in Montgomery County and Northern Virginia, instead of looking at a 30 percent hit to provide themselves with dwelling, they might be looking at 40 or 50 percent. That -- it's -- again, it's really simple economics. It's that disparity I talked about earlier between what people are earning and have available to spend versus what the cost of housing is.

LEWISIt's exacerbated by the fact that that the cost of producing and operating housing has gone up, that is, the cost of land, the cost of utilities, the cost of construction. One thing that hasn't gone up is the financing costs. We're at the lowest interest rates that I can remember in my whole professional career. I mean, you can get loans now -- numbers that I thought were unimaginable 30 years ago.

NNAMDIWhat does affordable housing mean to you? Call us, 800-433-8850. We're talking with Roger Lewis. He writes the Shaping the City column for The Washington Post. He's professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland College Park. We're talking about how the housing situation in the Washington area has been changing over the last few years or so.

NNAMDIRoger, during the heady days of cheap mortgages -- and as you pointed out, we're pretty low now in our rates of interest -- we often heard about something called the ownership society. What is, in your view, the optimal balance between owners and renters?

LEWISWe have, of course, a long history in this country of elevating ownership to a pretty high status. The notion has always been that your realization of the American dream doesn't come true until you own your own home. Certainly, for most people, that means a single-family detached house with a backyard and a front yard and side yards and neighbors who you get along with and who are sort of the same as you.

LEWISHomeownership, I think, continues for many people to be the ultimate, and that if you're renting, if you're not owning your home, if you're living in a place that you're just renting, somehow, that -- your status is somewhat compromised. I think there's a perception on -- for many people that renting is ultimately just what you do on your way to ownership.

LEWISNow, what's happened is, ownership -- for much a larger population than ever before ownership has become difficult because, again, of the recession, because incomes have gone down and costs have gone up. So one of the things that is happening now, in addition to the fact that a lot of developers are converting apartments from condo to rental and building more rental housing, I think, there is an awareness that maybe we can also do a better job of designing rental housing, so that the stigma -- and I purposely use that word -- so the stigma of being a renter instead of an owner is lessened.

LEWISI think there's still, though, always going to be the notion that you're -- you really have to own your property in order to have made the American dream come true.

NNAMDIBut for any specific jurisdiction, whether city or suburb, is there an appropriate -- is there a right balance, if you will, between ownership and renting?

LEWISI never answered your question, did I, about balance? I don't know that there's any formulaic answer. I don't think there is a balance that is -- that I know of where one could say, okay, in this community, or in this jurisdiction, what we want is 60 percent or 80 percent ownership and X -- 30 percent or 20 percent rental. It certainly varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

LEWISI do think -- I mean, the notion generally is that people who own property will take better care of it because it's theirs. They're invested in it. Its value depends on their taking good -- taking pains to make sure it doesn't lose value. Whereas a tenant or a renter, an apartment that's owned by a landlord or some other entity is less likely to be concerned about maintaining the property and keep...

NNAMDIWhich seems to be the point that D.C. Councilmember, former Mayor Marion Barry, was making earlier this month when he proposed legislation to address the changing built environment in Ward 8, the ward he represents. He says he'd like to forbid the construction of new apartment buildings in Ward 8.

NNAMDIThat proposal prompted a lot of eye-rolling, probably because of where it came from, but the basic idea seemed, at least to some people, to be pretty interesting.

LEWISWell, I think what Marion Barry was saying, of course, is that -- or the implication of that suggestion is that Ward 8 already has a tremendous amount of rental housing in comparison to the amount of ownership, houses owned by their occupants. And he, of course, can draw a clear linkage between what he sees as the problems of Ward 8, economic and other problems, with that ratio or that relationship that you talked about, the balance or the imbalance between rental and ownership.

LEWISSo I think the -- my problem with that proposal is that while there are probably some very compelling reasons to increase the amount of ownership of dwellings as opposed to rental of dwellings, I mean, there -- I think that's actually a symptom of some other fundamental problems having to do with the conditions over in Ward 8.

LEWISThese are the employment, business and the schools. I mean, I could go on and on about all of the challenges that Ward 8 faces. So I think that -- I don't think that changing the balance in Ward 8 is going to solve Ward 8's problems. It will make some difference, but I don't think it's the real problem.

NNAMDIOn to the telephones. Here is George in Brookeville, Md. George, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

GEORGEThank you, Kojo. Great show. I've been in the housing industry since I was a little boy, basically clearing lots off of -- for landscapers to come in. And one of the things that I feel is it -- this -- it seems that everybody is making a profit at every step of the construction industry.

GEORGEAnd when this boom was occurring, a lot of fellow builders bragged about how much money they made, rather than really kind of focusing on how many people of working class they could get into affordable houses and building these huge -- also, these huge McMansions that, in the end, really took a lot of resources, created a great, you know, basement that you may have used maybe once or twice a year to hold a party, but, really, were nothing but dead space having to be heated and maintained.

GEORGEAnd it just seems that a lot of people or few people were made wealthy in this last industry, and it -- or in this last boom, and that most people really would just burn with a great amount of principal that they had to pay back, which I feel they can't, based on the income that they made. I just found it kind of a travesty that occurred over the last couple of years.

NNAMDIRoger Lewis.

LEWISWell, this will give me a chance to talk a little bit about the boom, the bubble, because what happened -- there's no question that a combination of forces conspired to create the McMansions. You had, number one, a tremendous amount of capital that was out there trying to get turnover invested. Loans, therefore, became easy to come by.

LEWISThe underwriting or the loan standards -- the lenders were lending money to people that they shouldn't have been lending money to, people that should never have been able to qualify for loans, that, in turn, motivated a lot of the builder -- the home builders to build ever larger dwellings for people who thought having more space must be good. I can afford it because here is this lender offering me all this money.

LEWISI don't -- I hardly need any down payment. They tell me I can afford to pay the monthly interest and principal. In other words, there was push from the supply side as well as the demand side, that is, the consumer side, that spurred the creation of these McMansions or -- and spurred the creation of housing that was oversized, too expensive.

LEWISUltimately, once you got past that ARM transition point, you know, these adjustable-rate mortgages, instead of the -- when I came out of school, we all went for a 30-year fixed rate mortgages. You knew what you had. I mean, it's very important to understand that a lot of what happened in the housing had to do with the financial world. And, of course, it then was worsened by the fact that these mortgages were being packaged up and sold as securities.

LEWISWe won't -- we're not going to get into derivative discussion, but it's -- it was a -- this was a created bubble that finally burst.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, George. We're going to take a short break. If you have already called, stay on the line. We will get to your call. If the lines are busy, go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. We're talking about the housing environment in the Washington, D.C., area, how it was affected by the boom and bust cycle and whether or not there is sufficient affordable housing, 800-433-8850.

NNAMDIOr go to our website, kojoshow.org. Join the conversation there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. We're talking about the built environment in the Washington area with Roger Lewis. He's the Shaping the City columnist for the Washington Post and professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland College Park. He is an architect. You can call us 800-433-8850. You can send us a tweet, @kojoshow. Send email to kojo@wamu.org. Or you can go tour website, kojoshow.org, and join the conversation there.

NNAMDIWe'll go directly to the phones. Here's Andrew in Vienna, Va. Hi, Andrew.

ANDREWHi. How you doing?

NNAMDIWell.

ANDREWSo thank you for having me. The bubble of gentrification has, however, not stopped. If you live in Vienna, you know that one bungalow after another is being knocked down, and even more uber-mansions are being built. They are a little bit less expensive than they used to be, you know, kind of $1.2 to $1.8 million now.

ANDREWBut for those of us who live in houses that are just slightly too big to rationalize knocking down and who don't have the kind of incomes that would be required to pay a $1.2 million mortgage, we're rapidly getting priced out of our own neighborhoods. And it isn't like the other houses in the neighborhood don't have an effect on our property taxes, 'cause they do.

ANDREWAnd it's -- it just is, you know, continuing on pretty much the way it was before. I haven't noticed any slow down in Vienna, really.

NNAMDIRoger, care to comment on Andrew?

LEWISWell, I think Andrew's verifying what we've been reading about, which is that the Washington -- unlike almost every other metropolitan area in the United States, Washington is the one area where we have not seen the kind of collapse, bubble collapse that we've seen in places like Las Vegas or elsewhere, in the Sunbelt in particular. And I think there are some neighborhoods -- there are places in Washington where prices have softened.

LEWISBut, generally -- and I don't where in Vienna you live. I was just there. Actually, I was out of Tysons Corner at a meeting this morning. I mean, that's a booming area. It's a growth area. It's a place that I would predict the values are never going to down very much in terms of either commercial space or the cost of housing. I think the gentrification issue is a good one to talk about. It's going on in my own neighborhood.

LEWISI think it will continue because, I think, there are still people out there who are in a position to buy a $1.5 million property, and they will if it's a great location and well-done. They'll buy it. So, I mean, I think my concern as an architect, an observer of all of this, is not the gentrification problem. It's what do we do to house the great majority of Americans of the next generation or two, for whom housing is going to be more of a challenge than it was for us and our parents?

NNAMDIAndrew, thank you for your call. Take, for instance, this email we got from Brian. Forgive me. It's a little long, but Brian wants to make a point. Brian writes, "It occurs to me that the built environment and the housing market, in general, does a disservice to the District. For cities to be culturally vibrant, they need a mix of people: young professionals, old timers, young families, et cetera. But the economic reality in D.C. is preventing that. I have one child.

NNAMDI"My wife and I both work, and we would like to live in the District. We're a middle-class family, but we're looking to buy in the suburbs because we can't afford anything here. This shortage of affordable houses ends up bleeding into other seemingly unrelated issues. For the schools in D.C. to get better, they need families like mine.

NNAMDI"Right now, there are a bunch of rich people who send their kids to private school and poor people who send their kids to D.C. public schools. They need people in the middle. So, I think, in a way, the housing market undermines schools and local culture."

LEWISWell, that's a very good summarize. We've actually done a show where we talked about this issue of how in the city -- and this is true of a lot of cities -- there is just no housing being built for that email writer, that is, for a family, relatively young families with young kids. All the apartments being built, all these condominiums that we talked about being converted to rentals, most of them are one and two bedrooms.

LEWISIf you go looking in D.C. for a three-bedroom apartment, which is what a family might want to live in, you won't find one. Or if you do, it'll cost $5,000 a month. Maybe you can find one for $3,000 a month. And these are not affordable rental rates.

NNAMDIUnderscoring that point, another email we got from Kardi Badel, (sp?) says, "For single families like mine, D.C. apartments are too small. Existing older single-family homes are nice but unaffordable. I know very few young families who can afford a $600- to $700,000 home. Then you go out here to the suburbs, and I feel like all the quality, older and affordable single family home stock, is being destroyed to make way for giant, new homes that seems like they're made out of cardboard.

NNAMDI"And even these giant boxes are $300- to $400,000. For a teacher and non-profit worker, this makes ownership unattainable." During the housing boom, developers made certain assumptions about who would be occupying their new properties. Is there now a mismatch between the assumption and priorities of developers and the interest and demands of local homebuyers?

LEWISI think there's always a gap, or a lag, I should say, between what the developers, the homebuilders, are doing what they want to do and what the market can actually absorb. And my understanding, right now, is simply that the traditional homebuilders are building very few subdivision homes. There's, you know, with all of the supply -- this is all economics 101. The supply and demand law still apply very substantially to the housing market.

LEWISSo you've got a tremendous amount of houses on the market. And there's no -- therefore, no justification to go build new houses. What is happening is that the -- as this email points out, is that, again, if you're looking for a place to buy and you do the math, the math may not work out, especially if you're a teacher or, you know, someone who's working on a fixed salary and not able to pay out $3- or $4- or $5,000 a month for housing.

LEWISSo it's -- I think it's -- I think this is going to continue. I don't think -- I don't see this changing very rapidly for a while.

NNAMDIHere's Ray in Bethesda, Md. Ray, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

RAYHow are you doing? Thank you for your program. It's a very useful program. I live in Grosvenor Tower in North Bethesda. And those four towers, one of them is strictly apartment building. This year, they have started increasing the rental fee by 25 percent for renewal. And the residents are going back to them and negotiate, and they reduced it to 16 digits -- 16 percent, which is still a ridiculously high amount.

RAYI wanted to know if there are any regulations. Is there any limit in your organization that can help with -- during a restriction, or the landlord or developer can raise -- increase the rent whenever they want? Because it truly puts you in a really hard position to come out. You know, 25 percent is just a substantial amount of increase. I wanted to know if you have any feedback on it.

NNAMDIVery interesting question, Ray, because, Roger, I was thinking that we have seen a certain, if not, and a significant, decline in the rent control movement.

LEWISWell, rent -- there's no question. Rent control is one of the things that has been most often used by government to prevent exactly what Ray is talking about. I mean, 25 percent rental increase is...

NNAMDIThat's a lot.

LEWISThat's really over the top. I have to admit that. Even 15 percent is substantial. And what a lot of jurisdictions, certainly, in a lot of cities -- I don't know about -- I'm not sure what the Montgomery County -- you're in Montgomery County, as I recollect. They -- I would think they probably have some provisions on this, but there can be exceptions.

LEWISGenerally speaking, what rent control laws do is they allow increases, but they limit the amount of increase that can be effectuated each year. And I know D.C. has rent control regulations. I -- what they do -- unfortunately, what their length -- I believe that controls, generally, our length to certain external costs that the landlord may face that he, the landlord, doesn't have control of.

LEWISSo if the jurisdictions suddenly doubles property taxes, the notion is the landlord is entitled to raise the rents to help, at least, defray some of the cost of that increased operating cost. Or if utilities are not separately metered and the landlord experiences a huge jump in the cost of certain utilities, they're allowed to pass that through. But, generally, what -- the only thing to protect the tenant is some form of rent control regulation.

LEWISAnd I just don't know what Montgomery County's regulations say.

NNAMDIRay, thank you very much for your call. Let's go to Benjamin who is in Petworth in D.C. Benjamin, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

BENJAMINThank you for having me on the show. I'm a new resident of D.C., having moved here from a small town in Central Kentucky. My rent from Central Kentucky, understandably, went up considerably when I moved to Petworth. It's 300 percent more than it is in Central Kentucky, and that's not a surprise. However, I've also sacrificed my personal safety and reliability of services and just the sense of being comfortable in my neighborhood.

BENJAMINI also had to sacrifice having a good sense of my landlord. I'm actually going to the D.C. Tenant Advocate Office this afternoon to handle the final inspection. My point being that the rent control is also a problem, as you just discussed before I got on the phone, but the other issue is what percentage of the income is affordable housing. I've often heard 30 percent. I'd be curious to hear Roger's point about how do they calculate that and how do -- what is the -- what can we do in government to change some of these policies?

NNAMDIYeah, I've always wondered whether that should be 30 percent of your gross or your net, Roger.

LEWISWell, it's, I mean, the -- you get into discussions about cost of living. I mean, it -- when I first bought -- or built the house I live in, I think the criterion then was 25 percent. They talked about -- and they talked about 20 percent or 25 percent down payments if you bought a house. And, again, the math has changed radically. The -- I believe, generally, they're talking about 30 percent of gross income.

LEWISAlthough, of course, what we are interested in when we do our budgeting, we look at our net income. I mean, we want to know what do we have in our pocket after our withholding tax and our FICA and so forth have been deducted. There are certainly, I mean, the challenge of D.C. -- and this is true of certain other cities, obviously -- is that the cost of living is generally high.

LEWISAnd, you know, what the right number is for D.C. -- I don't know whether it's 30 percent or 32 percent or maybe it should be 27 percent. These are somewhat arbitrary numbers anyway. I mean, what -- after all, if you've got -- if you're a family with one child versus four children, that's -- it's going to be a different number that's affordable to you.

NNAMDIYep.

LEWISThis gets back to our discussion of what's affordable. I think the -- I think there is -- and you mentioned some other issues relative to your location in Petworth, an area that I generally am familiar with. I'm assuming you've moved to Washington, Benjamin, because Washington offers some other things for you that you might not have had in, I think you said, Central Kentucky.

NNAMDIIs that correct, Benjamin?

BENJAMINThat is true. But I'm consistently weighing to pay off of, you know, living in the suburbs and commuting, and what's my -- what's better for me to spend, my -- an hour-and-a-half on the Metro and the train every day or, you know, $800 more a month to live in a neighborhood that is entirely safe that I know is a lot better off than it was even four years ago?

BENJAMINBut it's -- there's a trade-off there, and I wonder if D.C., to your earlier point, is pricing themselves out of the affordable housing.

LEWISYeah, well, I think what's happened is, again, because of the market, none of this is being -- is the result of some conspiracy between government officials and real estate developers. But the fact is that District of Columbia is a fixed amount of land. It's been mostly developed. I think there's no way, given, again, supply and demand reality is that that values generally in the District of Columbia are going to rise.

LEWISAnd what's happened is they've risen the point where there are many, many people in Metropolitan Washington who just can't afford to live here, no matter how much they'd like to live in the city. You've made a choice, which I don't think is unreasonable. You know, you've looked at the cost versus the benefits, and you, right now, have decided the costs are worth the benefits. I mean, that could change, but it points out how every individual household's conditions are different.

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. If you have all ready called, stay on the line. We'll try our guest -- best to get to your call. When we come back, we'll talk some more about the design elements of housing in the Washington area with Roger Lewis. Taking your calls at 800-433-8850. What does affordable housing mean to you? Have you seen it in your neighborhood? Or is it disappearing? 800-433-8850.

NNAMDISend us a tweet, @kojoshow, or go to our website, kojoshow.org. Tell your story there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation on housing stock in the Washington area and how it's been affected by the boom and bust cycle. We're talking with Architect Roger Lewis. He's the writer -- he writes the Shaping the City column for The Washington Post, and he's professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland College Park.

NNAMDIToday, we're talking about the housing stock in Washington, what it looks like, whether it's adequate for what we need. Next Thursday, we'll be talking about co-housing, a unique response to those limitations, so you may want to join us for that conversation. Advocates of co-housing seek to create a community atmosphere that goes beyond the typical condo or homeowners association.

NNAMDIThat's the conversation we'll be having next Thursday in this hour. Roger, many of our iconic images of the District come from our housing stock. I'm thinking of the single family townhouses with rich towers or the Deco-influenced apartment buildings that line Connecticut Avenue or Massachusetts Avenue or garden apartments in other neighborhoods.

NNAMDIIs there a dominant architectural style here? And is there a dominant architectural style emerging in newer apartment and townhouse developments?

LEWISWell, I think, within the city itself, there's -- as you've just said, there's a diversity of styles, architectural styles, buildings that tend to reflect trends, stylistic design trends of the eras during which they are built, such as Art Deco of the pre-warriors in the early 1940s. There were -- I think a lot of the buildings now being built are clearly modernist in their characteristics. They use a lot more glass.

LEWISThey have usually a mixture of masonry and metal skins as opposed to all brick. They may involve -- I mean, I think the materials -- the palliative materials that are being used on many of the mid-rise and, in some cases, really low high-rise buildings along Massachusetts Avenue, for example, these are -- they're clearly modernist in flavor.

LEWISThey're -- for example, none of them look like they are in some way trying to be neo-classically style buildings as are so many of the civic and government buildings in Washington. I think that when you get out to suburban areas, you begin to see -- where you see a lot more garden apartments.

LEWISMany of them stick built, that is, built with lumber, not with concrete or steel, and then clad with various materials, some of which are synthetic, not real natural materials but synthetic materials and trying to look a little bit vaguely pseudo-colonial or pseudo-federalist or pseudo-neoclassical. That's still going on, I think, mostly outside the city.

LEWISIn the city itself, though, I would say most of the new housing is decidedly modernist. And there are many styles of modernism, but they're decidedly modernist.

NNAMDIBack to the telephones now. Here is Laura in Arlington, Va. Laura, your turn. Hi, Laura. Are you there? Uh-oh, I think we may have lost Laura. I'll put you back on hold, Laura, in case you decide to come back. Here is Kim in Washington, D.C. Hi, Kim.

KIMHey. How are you, Kojo? I just had a comment about the new housing being built particularly in Washington. One thing I do think, I think that the new housing does help bring more retail to neighborhoods that may have historically been ignored by retailers. But I think the problem is, you know, many people don't get to enjoy it because they're, you know, forced out. You know, I live in Brightwood.

KIMI'm the commissioner in Brightwood, and you have a lot of awesome houses with great architecture. A lot of them, you know, folks bought these places many years ago and may have paid less than $100,000. But because of the property taxes being outrageous, you know, they can no longer afford to live there, particularly if you have a neighborhood where they build half a million dollar condos and your property taxes go out.

KIMAnd I think, between the last two administrations, Williams and Fenty, I don't think that they've fought hard enough to keep long-time residents in the city, you know, helping them to be able to stay in their homes, you know? And I'm talking about the, you know, indignant people who, you know, wouldn't necessarily be able to afford to live here right now. I'm talking about people who actually work, you know, working-class, middle-class people.

KIMAnd I talked to one of the police officers in my neighborhood the other day, and he said he doesn't even live in the city. And, you know, I get upset sometimes when I hear, you know, our police officers, you know, aren't actually (unintelligible).

NNAMDIWell, Kim, that raises a very important question that I'd like to raise with Roger Lewis while you listen. And the chicken-egg question, do people move to the suburbs because they want bigger places with yards? Or do they leave because they are forced to leave because either, as Kim says, they can't afford rising property taxes or because there are no feasible housing units that can meet their needs?

LEWISWell, I know -- well, this came up at a -- during another one of our shows. It gets back to the gentrification issue and whether people are "being forced out of their neighborhoods." I think there is probably -- as Kim points out, there's probably some people that are moving out of these neighborhoods because they feel they can't afford the cost of maintaining the housing. But I suspect that's a small minority.

LEWISMy own guess is that most of them leave to go elsewhere because they, A, they -- the value has gone up and they can get a -- they can make a decent profit on -- by selling the property that they may have bought 20, 30 years earlier and that -- and the funds, the proceeds of that sale, in fact, allow them to go somewhere, where, for that same amount of money, they get more house. They get more...

NNAMDIKim, that's the argument we hear a lot, and I, like you, live in Brightwood. When you talk to your neighbors, like the aforementioned police officer who lives in the suburbs, do you get the impression that he lives in the suburbs because he cannot, A, afford to live in the District or, well, B, he can get more house and land for his money in the suburbs?

KIMA, because, specifically, what he said was that he can't afford to live in the city. And, you know, I have -- Brightwood Elementary is right behind my condo and, you know, talk to some of the teachers there. They would love to live in the neighborhood, but they just can't afford to. And I think there are some people -- you know, talking to people in the neighborhood, there are some people, maybe not so much, who purchased a property, but maybe their children, who, you know, it was passed down to them, and they decided to sell it because maybe they're not even in D.C. anyway.

KIMBut there are a lot of long-time residents who just can't -- if you paid $60,000 for a house that's, you know, now (unintelligible).

NNAMDIAnd Roger and I were just talking about that.

KIMYeah, you know? So I do think there are a lot of people who essentially have to move, not just to PG County now, but people moving out to Charles County. I've heard people there are moving out to -- out in (word?) town. I mean, it's just -- it's really hard. Even downtown Silver Spring is becoming more expensive. Anywhere in the vicinity of Washington, D.C., it's extremely hard for people to live, even middle-class people.

NNAMDIOkay. Thank you very much for your call, Kim. I'd like to go on to Ollie, (sp?) who is in Montgomery County, Md. Ollie, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

OLLIEHi, Kojo. Hi, Roger.

LEWISHi.

OLLIEI live in Kensington, Md. And I live in a high-rise condo that's pushing 50 years old. And it's a carbon footprint nightmare because everything about it is old-time construction. And it just (unintelligible). And I'm wondering if there's any programs in place, government or (unintelligible) what we could do, and it's affordable, too. It's a very nice building.

OLLIEI would like to redevelop it and keep it affordable and also make it a -- sort of a state-of-the-art, green building. Is there (unintelligible) any thoughts on that?

LEWISWell, you've identified, again, a dilemma that I think many millions of people are facing, which is that that they are -- they would like to upgrade or retrofit existing buildings that, like yours, are aging, that need to be retrofitted. But there is a tremendous cost to doing that, and finding a way to finance that -- I mean, there are probably -- there are programs. I think a lot of states and local jurisdictions have some subsidy programs for greening properties.

LEWISThere are maybe a few federal tax benefits that can come from it, but it won't get you the whole way. Most of these assistance programs that I'm referring to are only going to defer a very small percentage of the total cost. Again, most occupants of buildings like yours are -- have to face up to whether they want to actually commit, either through refinancing the loans or the mortgage or mortgages or through making special assessments, whether they want to refinance these kinds of retrofits and improvements.

LEWISI think it's a problem. You could -- I mean, what -- the more general question that I think plays into what's going on right now in Washington on Capitol Hill, dealing with the budget, is are we ever going to get to a -- back to a place we were many decades ago, where there really are substantial programs for subsidizing these kinds of housing interventions?

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call, Ollie. We have two emails that I'd like you to consider, Roger. One is from Elsa at Loughton Construction (sp?), who says, "A big problem continues to be valuation on the bank side of square footage formula. That is why big houses are still being built. A new formula based on energy-saving, adaptive reuse and quality needs to be created."

NNAMDIAnd this one we got from Kit, who says, "One of the reasons it's so difficult to build affordable housing is a simple rule of thumb that banks follow, which is that the value of the land cannot exceed 25 percent of the total value of the home. If your lot is $250,000, the home must be at least $1 million. This causes the proliferation of McMansions and killer condos and makes it impossible to build a small, affordable home on an expensive piece of land."

LEWISWell, I'm not sure. I haven't built any houses recently, but I'm not sure that you would be prevented from building on a $250,000 lot a modest home. I think probably most lenders would be okay with that. I -- yes, the rule -- there is that -- that rule of thumb is more a kind of empirical relationship. But it's not -- I don't think it's regulatory or mandatory. But I think, again, you're pointing out something that is -- has happened here and elsewhere, which is land -- the value and cost of land has gotten to be very, very high.

NNAMDILaura in Arlington, Va., you're on the air. Laura, go ahead, please. Laura, I think you dropped this completely. So we'll try John in Annandale, Va. John, your turn.

JOHNYeah, thank you. Actually, I called in about co-housing, which you're going to talk about next week. I was just at a wonderful co-housing unit in Boulder, Colo., Silver Sage. And I spoke with Jim Leach, the architect who designed it.

JOHNAnd what I really found interesting -- and maybe you could tease your viewers or listeners for next week -- was the affordable housing aspect for low-income people mixed in with people who have more expensive units, making for a really interesting integrated community of different incomes, if you could just talk about that for a while.

NNAMDIRoger?

LEWISWell, I think co-housing is something that's been more widespread in Europe than it is here. Co-housing is something that has been tried a few -- a bit. It hasn't caught fire because -- for a number of reasons. The challenge of co-housing is, of course, just the challenge of getting a group of families to get together and agree to live together and share the housing environment they're sharing.

LEWISI think the idea -- I think it's a great idea for achieving just what you said, which is creating a collection of dwellings that are -- that, by sharing a number of things, by working collaboratively are able to lower the costs substantially for some of the co-housers. I have -- I've never actually designed and built one of these.

LEWISAnd I think we -- you know, you look at a condominium or a homeowner's association in a -- that's kind of a type of co-housing. But it's one in which there's a distinct separation between each dwelling. They don't overlap. I know when I tried to -- I built a cluster of seven houses 40 years ago in Washington. And I couldn't -- I was going to make it somewhat of a co-housing project. I was going to have a shared laundry.

LEWISEverybody would do their laundry together. The bank wouldn't let me do it. The lender insisted that every house be autonomous and be independent in that regard. That's part of the challenge.

NNAMDIAs we mentioned, and as John noted, next Thursday we'll be talking about co-housing, which is a unique response to the limitations we've been discussing today. Finally, we go to Mariano in Washington, D.C. Mariano, you only have about 30 seconds. Go ahead, please.

MARIANOThanks, Kojo. I'll keep this short. I'm curious why the topic of removing height restriction hasn't been brought up as a way to address both affordable housing, address the price of land and also address economic development. You know, obviously, clusters of houses or buildings would create more opportunities for small businesses within the District, such as a city like London.

NNAMDIRoger?

LEWISWell, we've talked about height. I mean, there's -- I'm among those who think that there are places in the city where we should allow buildings to be a little bit higher or, in some places, quite a bit higher than they are now. That, basically, allows you to create a larger real estate inventory. You can build more dwellings. Whether it would substantially change the economics, probably not.

NNAMDIRoger Lewis writes the Shaping the City column for The Washington Post. He's an architect and professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland College Park. Roger, thank you for joining us.

LEWISThank you for having me again.

NNAMDIAnd thank you for all of your calls, and, of course, thank you for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.