Living large: supersizing the American home

By
now most of us are familiar with the effects of suburban sprawl; living in
Greater Rochester, it’d be almost impossible not to notice them.

            We’ve heard about the burdens that
uncontrolled growth creates: more traffic, more reliance on cars, longer
commute times, more expensive public water and sewer systems. We know that the
amount of housing in Greater Rochester is growing more than twice as fast as
the population. And we take note of clashes between new-home developers and
residents over issues like open space (see, “Growing, Growing, Gone,” February
16).

            But we don’t often think about the
new homes themselves. That’s why an illustration in the March-April 2005 issue
of Mother Jonesmagazine, http://www.motherjones.com/news/exhibit/2005/03/exhibit.html, caught
our attention. Titled “This New House,” the piece documents the growth — in size
and luxury amenities — of the average new home in the US. Among the
findings: While the size of the average American household has shrunk, the size
of new houses has grown dramatically and is continuing to grow. “One in four
Americans want at least a three-car garage,” says the Mother Jones piece. “Seven percent of
all homes are in gated communities…. One in five homes is larger than 3000
square feet…. Sales of Sub-Zero and other ‘premium’ and ‘superpremium’
refrigerators have been rising by 15 percent a year.”

Like
everything else in America, the
single-family home — that icon of middle-class prosperity — is being supersized. Monroe County has its share of McMansions,
but how closely does the area follow the national trend of expanding house
sizes?

            The size of the typical new Rochester home has
increased, says Bob Miglioratti, chair of the Greater Rochester Association of
Realtors. “People are looking for more space,” he says. “That, I think, is a
reflection of a change in the traditional household.”

            When Miglioratti began selling
houses three decades ago, he says, the typical household consisted of a mother,
a father, and a couple of children.

            “That’s changed rather
dramatically,” he says, with a variety of living arrangements now becoming
commonplace. For example, more unmarried couples are buying homes.

            And people are doing more work at
home: “There’s more of a need for an in-home office,” says Miglioratti.

            Along with the new makeup of
households, there’s less sharing of space: “You have two sets of needs and
demands,” he says. People feel they need separate spaces,and that
translates into bigger houses. Miglioratti estimates that half of all new homes
in the Rochester area are over
3,000 square feet, and 10 percent top 4,000.

            Charles Ryan, a local homebuilder,
agrees. “I’ve seen 7,000-square-foot houses go up for two people,” he says.

            Over the last 10 to 15 years, house
sizes have “probably increased 25 percent — 50 percent at the upper price
range,” Ryan says.

            (In the long run, Ryan predicts,
that will change. “I think that nationally since 2000 there’s been a trend to
go smaller,” he says, but that hasn’t taken hold in Rochester yet. “It
takes Rochester a while to
catch up with the rest of the country,” says Ryan. “It hasn’t hit here, but
it’s going to be on its way.”)

More houses
and bigger houses mean we’re using more building materials — and more
energy. There have been, as Ryan notes, developments in technology that make
houses more efficient. Better insulation, tighter duct work, and efficient
windows save energy from electricity, natural gas, and home heating oil. And
many of today’s appliances offer a far more efficient use of energy than older
models. By Ryan’s estimate, about half of local developers build homes that
meet the federal government’s Energy Star standards. Using Energy Star
techniques and products can reduce energy costs by 20 to 30 percent, according
to government estimates.

            But gains in energy efficiency can
be offset not only by the increasing size of houses but also by the costs
emerging from another area where growth is exploding: amenities.

            “Instead of one new element
replacing another, we’re adding amenities on,” says Miglioratti.

            For instance? “From about $250,000
on up, people are looking for a three-car garage,” he says. “At 3,000 square
feet, it’s almost a requirement.”

            Other new in-demand amenities:
architecturally complex decks, master baths, hard kitchen countertops (granite,
for example), and large, stainless steel appliances.

            Ryan says the biggest amenity trend
he’s noticed is ceiling height. Up until the 1980s, he says, 8 feet was the
standard height. In the ’90s, that stretched to 9 feet.

            “Now in the 2000s, it’s going to be
10 feet,” he says. That boosts construction costs by as much as 10 percent,
says Ryan. And it makes homes less energy efficient.

And then
there’s sprawl. New housing growth continues to outpace not only population
growth but also the growth in the number of households. And the growth is
outward from the city.

            “Right now, Webster’s the place
that’s hot,” says Bob King, with Cornell Cooperative Extension. But outlying
areas like Hamlin and Mendon are also experiencing housing growth. King cites
federal agriculture statistics that show MonroeCounty lost nearly
30 percent of its farmland — over 43,000 acres — between 1982 and 2002.
While not all of that gets sold to developers building new homes, a lot does.

            “It’ll sit vacant for 5 to 10 years,
and then it’ll get developed,” he says.

            “Given that our region is not
growing and houses are still being built, particularly in the suburbs, it’s
likely that buildings are becoming vacant somewhere,” says Larry Stid.

            That’s something of an
understatement; as Rochester’s deputy
director of community planning and development, Stid knows that that
“somewhere” is the heart of his city.

            Vacant housing units in the county
increased by more than 30 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to the US
Census. And in 2000, more than 60 percent of the county’s vacant housing was in
the city of Rochester. The city has
been aggressively demolishing abandoned houses for years. Still, Stid says, Rochester saw an
increase in vacant housing units in that 10-year period.

            Neil Jaschik, a planning associate with the CommonGoodPlanningCenter, struggles to find a bright spot in these trends.

            “I can’t be optimistic, because the advertising, the
promoting, the marketing, the general desire of the public for new things is
just something you can’t turn around overnight,” he says. “There are just too
many forces working against it.”

            Nevertheless, he and his organization have undertaken the
Sisyphean task of educating people about the effects of sprawl.

            “All we can do is point out the overall cost to society
and the overall cost to the individual if we go that route,” Jaschik says.
“Most people intellectually agree; they just aren’t doing it.”

            That’s because the government policies and financial
incentives favor such growth over human-scaled development. Until that changes,
says Jaschik, even people who understand the costs of sprawl will keep
participating in it.

            Next week: City Newspaper looks at municipal programs for collecting household
hazardous waste.

This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2005.