Great study showing how multi-family housing actually benefits schools and communities!
Westchester badly needs more housing. Opponents of multifamily housing projects often cite a potential increase in school-aged children and a predicted drain on local school resources as a reason to oppose building badly needed multifamily housing, especially affordable workforce housing pegged to middle-class incomes.
Neighborhood defenders in every community with remarkable consistency have been known to cite “ghost stories” of dense multifamily projects that had a larger than anticipated school enrollment. These ghost stories are generally not rooted in data or macroeconomic theory, but gather steam from amateur internet sleuths looking for the worst anecdotes they could possibly reference.
The Welcome Home Westchester campaign recently commissioned 4Ward Planning, a land use consulting firm, to conduct a study to research the relationship between multifamily housing and school populations.