Harnessing the Real Estate Market for Equitable Affordable Housing Provision through Land Value Capture: Insights from San Francisco City, California

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Minor grammar/spelling errors require review

Author Response

Thanks for the review, we have proofread the manuscript further. 

Best wishes, 

Claudia and Bernard

Reviewer 2 Report

* There are many sentences THROUGHOUT THE PAPER that should be rephrased for clarity. For example: Lines 113-115: The notion of value capture is to mobilize for the benefit of the community at large some of the land value increments generated by actions other than the landowner’s, such as changes in land use norms and regulations (Smolka, 2013). - These ideas would be more clearly communicated in two sentences. I suggest working with an editor for support. Line 132: ...particular time-bound action such as rezoning, particularly, upzoning. (Commas need to be added) Line 477: The city’s inclusionary policy by the time required affordable units be provided at 12% of the total housing units produced by Market-rate developers. Line 530:There is noticeablY less office development in the Central waterfront which had the highest inclusivity. * This link is broken (error 404, page cannot be found): (https://www.lincolninst.edu/es/courses-events/courses/how-value-capture-can-create-affordable-housing) * why did this happen: "In 2006, the inclusionary requirements were 283 increased to 15% if units were constructed on-site, and to 20% if constructed off-site and was 284 applicable to projects of five units or more. In 2013, the inclusionary requirements were changed back 285 to projects with 10 or more units and the on-site requirement went back down to 12% (San Francisco 286 Planning Department, 2017)" * Line $00: The resulting market-produced units would address the exodus of small families unable to afford a home in the city, without requiring any public subsidy.. For how many years will these units remain affordable? please specify. * figure 2 needs to be reformatted, plus it would benefit from including the data on how the affordable housing units are funded (market vs city subsidy) - I just realized you did this in figure 3, though I do not see the justification for having TWO figures instead of one that combines these two pieces of information. * When you talk about the "potential" number of units, this is all speculative unless there is something in the IH policy that specifies that the in-lieu fees MUST be spent to build units IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD where the fees originated from. If this is the case, it is important for you to please mention this clause, otherwise, you need to mention this caveat. * Figure 4 repeats the same information AGAIN, no need for 3 figures that contain the same data, just create ONE figure that combines all the data. * Line 472: "resultant LVC through increased IH has resulted in increased social class inclusivity within the communities, if inclusivity is measured by the proportion of affordable units within market-rate developments." Please cite work that measures social class inclusivity this way. * Please define what you mean by "% of inclusion" - I would suggest using proportion of units or some other word, since you are referring, elsewhere in the paper, to inclusionary affordable housing - are these two terms the same (% of inclusion = inclusionary - I don't think so)? * Table 6 and Figure 7 are pretty much the same information displayed differently, no point in doing this, decide which of the two methods conveys the information more clearly and stick to that * The formatting on Table 7's first column makes it difficult to read, the entire number does not fit in one row, please fix

Author Response

We wish to thank the reviewer for the thought revision of our manuscript. 

We have decided to make worth of ALL the suggested amendments, but we still feel happy about having more graphics visualising data step by step. We have done all the requested amendments and clarifies all the points that appeared unclear. In particular, we have clarified that the program refers to purchasing and not renting housing, we have explained that the program went back to the original proportion of IH because it was not encouraging developers enough, and we have referred to a work of of the two authors to support the nexus between IH and integration. 

We hope we have satisfactorily addressed all the major issues but we still remain available to do further work if requested. 

We also have proofread the work again,. 

Best wishes, 

Claudia and Bernard

Reviewer 3 Report

I liked the fact that you talked about LVC and IH in a U.S. context.  This is not usually done or done well.  I also liked that you used San Francisco as a test case here...it seems like the perfect candidate for an analysis of this kind.  I also thought that the quality of writing was quite good and that the author team seems pretty knoweldgeable about the subject matter.  

I have partitioned off my comments below into two categories: a) larger editorial issues, and b) copy editing suggestions (which are mostly minor issues)

EDITORIAL

1) On page 2, bottom of the page, when you talk about regulations and their effect on house prices, you might also want to check the work of Ed Glaeser.  He has had a lot to say about this in the past.

2) I think that the readership would benefit greatly from having a visual example of how LVC works.  While you state it in the abstract language on page 3, a rudimentary example showing some of the financial nuts and bolts of how that works would go a long way here.

3) You mentioned on page 5 that LVC had its origins in San Fran...are we talking 21st century or 20th century?  Maybe a little further elaboration here would be nice.

4) On page 10, isn't the market so fluid in San Francisco that the developers can "plan" for affordable housing between 120% and 150% of SFMI, and market forces can then cause those rent prices to escalate out of control...not really "solving" the affordability problem at all?

5) Figures 2 and 4 did not really seem necessary...the same things were stated in the body of the manuscript.

COPY EDITING

1) In the abstract, "focusses" seems misspelled.

2) Throughout the document, you shift between capitalizing "eastern neighborhoods" and not capitalizing.  Go through the document and be consistent with how you handle that.

3) On p. 1 (and throughout the document), I am not familiar with the term "upzoning" referred to in the same breath as affordable housing.  Plase check and make sure that term is consistently applied to affordable housing situations elsewhere in the literature.

4) On p. 1, line 32, change to "remains inaccessible and unaffordable in many urban areas"

5) At the top of p. 2 (and throughout the document), check the order of multi-cited articles.  Also, change to "Voith & Wachter", "German & Bernstein", and "Calavita & Wolfe".

6) On p. 2, line 51, please change to "There is therefore a need".

7) On p. 2, line 52, please clarify on what "These latter" means.

8) On p. 2, line 54, change to "Voith & Wachter".

9) On p. 2, line 62, rearrange Fainstein and Goldberg in the author order.

10) On p. 2, line 63, change to "easing the affordability crisis".

11) On p. 2, line 69, should "linkages" be plural before "fees"?

12) On p. 2, line 86 (and throuhgout document), should that be an ampersand or the word "and"?

13) On p. 2, line 91, change to "There is therefore a need".

14) On p. 3, top of page, the 1909 and 1912 citations for Mill and George, respsctively, do not appear in the references section.

15) On p. 3, line 141, erase the "P.A.".

16) On p. 3, line 145, should "Increased" be initial caps here?  Be consistent throughout the document.

17) On p. 4, line 155, change to "usually between 10 and 20 percent".

18) On the same line, does the city define what "affordable" is?

19) On p. 5, line 203, clean up the Calavita and Mallach citation with page number.

20) On p. 5, lines 225-226, proceed with "data were gathered".

21) On p. 5, line 227, change to "academics"

22) On p. 6, line 254, refrain from using slang like "shooting through the roof".  I know what you mean, but just saying "increased rapidly" is better.

23) On p. 6, line 255, it seems like this SF affordability claim needs to be backed up by some type of citation.

24) On p. 6, line 258, maybe change the wording from "desire for" to "desire by".

25) On p. 6, line 269, change to "low-".

26) On p. 6, bottom of page, what do you mean "family of four adjusted for household size"?  Haven't you already adjusted?

27) On p. 7, line 277, is the AMI really that different between SF and LA/SD?  Please proivde a cite here.

28) On p. 7, line 297, change to "fueled by the internet..."

29) On p. 7, bottom of page, is "EN neighborhoods" redundant?

30) On p. 8, the Beitel citation does not show up in the references.

31) On p. 8, provide page numbers to the two Kim citations.

32) On p. 9, line 354, this citation is not in the references section.

33) On p. 9, line 367, I am not sure what you mean by "ordinary city".

34) On p. 9, line 376, change to "Tables 4 and 5 below".

35) On p. 10, I got a little confused as to what the city calls "middle income" etc.  You might want to revisit this.

36) On p. 10, line 403, does this refer to one city official or more than one?

37) On p. 12, line 457, clean up the citation.

38) On p. 15, figure 8, should "waterfront" be attached?

39) On p. 16, line 526, should "Waterfront" be initial caps?

40) On p. 16, line 530, this sounds like an anecdotal statement about "noticealy less office development".

41) On p. 16, line 542, did you mean "Figure 9"?

42) On p. 17, line 560, put a period after "biking".

43) On p. 17, line 562, replace with "such as".

44) On p. 17, line 578, replace with "better way for them".

45) On p. 18, line 617, replace with "highest and best use".

46) On p. 19, line 643, place a period after "analysis".

47) On p. 19, line 649, replace with "market-rate".

48) On p. 19, line 656, replace with "frameworks in place".

49) On p. 19, line 660, replace with "taken into account".

50) Regarding the references section, this needs considerable cleaning up.  Just for starters, here are the references listed that I did not see corresponding citations in the body of the document:

Anderson (2012)

Aurand (2010)

Ballaney (2008)

Ballesteros (2002)

Casique (2013)

Cecchini (2017)

McCarthy (2017)

Gray (2008)

Heim (2012)

Hong (1996)

Hong & Lam (1998)

Howell (2016)

Kalpanen (2017)

Krumholz & Forester (1990)

Krumholz (1982)

Loh, et al. (2016)

Marshall (2010)

Meehan (2014)

Sanyal (2012)

Song & Knaap (2004)

UDIA (n.d.)

UN News (2017)

Wen (2012)

Wolf-Powers (2012)

Zapata & Bates (2017)

It s possible I might have missed a couple, but not all of these.

Author Response

We wish to thank the reviewer for the exceptional support in improving the manuscript both substantially and formally. 

We have addressed systematically all the comments and made all the requested amendments, with the exception of the editorial comment number 5), because we still believe that it is worth showing the same data visually. 

Regarding the editorial comment 1), we wish to thank the reviewer for identifying a gap in the literature that we have filled by adding extra references. 

Finally, we have proofread the entire manuscript further, 

Best wishes,

Claudia

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Looks good