COVID-19
Addressing concerns that ADU expansion will increase COVID infections in Salem
Salem skeptics of greater urbanization say the pandemic has proven that they were right all along, pointing to orders from public health officials to use social distancing to slow the spread of the virus. But, studies show that what you think of when you use the term "density" is actually "overcrowding." New York City, the nation’s densest major city, has seen a major outbreak with more than 200k confirmed cases and 24k deaths. That state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has blamed high-rise apartment complexes and busy subways for the city’s plight. Cuomo said at a recent press conference that it is all about density. Data shows however that it's not all about density because the highest infection rates are in the “suburban-like” areas of the city including Staten Island and the outer reaches of Brooklyn and Queens. Manhattan, home for many of the tall commercial and residential towers the city is famous for, has the lowest infection rate.
Additionally, highly populated cities in Asia, including Seoul, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, have seen a fraction of New York’s cases. The same is true for America’s next densest big city, San Francisco, which issued a shelter-in-place order nearly a week before New York City. As of 7 June, San Francisco had reported only about 2700 confirmed cases.
There are several ways of looking at density. One is to look at the number of people living in a square mile, another is to look at the number of people per dwelling and another is to count the number of people per room in a dwelling, excluding bathrooms. ADUs may or may not increase the number of people living in a square mile. It is important to note that the number of people living in a square mile may increase regardless of ADUs, as children finishing college may return home to live to save money or new families with children move into homes vacated by seniors.
This leads us to overcrowding. Overcrowded housing is defined by HUD as more than one resident per number of rooms in a household. This number rises almost in lock step with rates of coronavirus infection. The Donahue Institute researchers called the link between overcrowding and the coronavirus “one of the strongest correlations we have explored.”
Previous research efforts found only loose connections between a community’s average household size and its rate of coronavirus cases. The same was true for the number of residents per square mile.
But, the correlation between density and the coronavirus became clearer when researchers looked at the density inside the homes themselves.
Economic status plays a strong role in the correlation between housing density and Covid 19. Brockton, which has the state’s second highest rate of coronavirus infections, ranked near the top of cities and towns in residential overcrowding. In Chelsea, a community with as high a rate of infection as Brockton, close to 10 percent of residents live in households where there are more residents than rooms, the highest percentage of any community in the state. People living in similarly dense but far wealthier communities such as Cambridge and Somerville (which boast the state’s highest numbers of residents per square mile) live in more spacious apartments, away from their extended families. Both Cambridge and Somerville have significantly fewer cases than Brockton and Chelsea.
To understand why the coronavirus spreads more quickly through some cities than others, overcrowding within the home, rather than the neighborhood at large, may prove to be a key factor. Rural America is not immune from COVID-19. In fact, while the overall cases and deaths have been lower so far, COVID is now spreading at about the same rate as in urban areas.
Read about California and Accessory Dwelling Units
Read about Single-Family Residential Zoning