PolicyLink has researched a wide range of tools that can address the fair distribution of affordable housing in metropolitan regions. These tools are featured prominently in the PolicyLink Equitable Development ToolKit. In addition to extensive resources on affordable housing, the toolkit contains policy tools detailing tactics for financing equitable development, building assets for residents of low-income communities, and controlling land use and development processes for community benefit. Using a comprehensive approach, these tools have been crafted to help community builders achieve equitable development-diverse, mixed-income/mixed wealth neighborhoods-strong, stable, and welcoming to all.
The following list contains a brief description of the affordable housing tools in the Equitable Development Toolkit, with the title linking directly to the tool.
Affordable
Housing Development 101
Increasing and preserving affordable housing stock is critical to community
stability. There are a range of practices that are aimed at both existing
housing and new development. The focus is typically protecting low-income
residents most at risk of displacement from gentrification. Often strategies
expand to include a spectrum of housing choices from rental to ownership
in a range of income classes.
Brownfields
This tool covers strategies used to encourage redevelopment of brownfields
(abandoned, idled, or underutilized commercial or industrial sites). Brownfield
redevelopment is complicated by the real and perceived dangers of environmental
contamination. Infill development is the use of vacant land within built
urban areas. Reclaiming brownfields and the use of infill development offers
new land use options in gentrifying areas.
Code
Enforcement
Prevents and abates violations on private property such as vacant, poorly
maintained, and dangerous buildings, illegal dumping, weeded lots, graffiti,
junk motor vehicles and more. Code enforcement can be an important way to
protect existing residents or to accelerate gentrification. This tool provides
strategies to ensure resident protection.
Commercial
Linkage Strategies
A range of programs and fees that tie economic development to the construction
of affordable housing. Most require developers of new commercial properties
to pay fees to support affordable housing construction. Linkage programs
support smart growth, mitigate rising housing costs caused by economic development,
and provide a dedicated source of revenue for affordable housing.
Community
Mapping
This tool identifies key information needed to assess the considerable public
and private forces driving gentrification. The tool reviews effective community
mapping and indicator projects; identifies key data sources to guide community
interventions; and shows the role of mapping in community education and
organizing.
Community
Land Trusts
A model where nonprofit organizations acquire and hold land for community
benefit, making the land available to individuals through long-term land
leases. Residents own the homes located on the land. This alternative property
ownership model insures long term community benefits such as permanent affordability,
while creating homeownership and equity opportunities for individual residents.
Community
Reinvestment Act
A federal law that mandates that financial and depository institutions,
such as commercial banks, help meet the credit needs of the communities
in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.
To utilize the Act as an anti-displacement tool requires diligent monitoring
to ensure investment occurs, as well as strategic planning to direct investment
to benefit residents.
Developer
Exactions
Requires new commercial developments to contribute fees to the development
of affordable housing, community services and infrastructure. Creative nonprofit
organizations are utilizing exactions as an anti-gentrification tool to
finance services such as day care, cultural centers, job training, below
market rate housing, and ride sharing.
Expiring
Use: Retention of Subsidized Housing
Protects "expiring use" subsidized housing from losing its affordability-designation
and reverting to the private market. This tool clarifies ways to protect
affordable housing originally supported by HUD, with a special focus on
regions with extreme housing shortages, and not coincidentally, considerable
amounts of gentrification.
Housing
Trust Funds
Public funds, established by legislation, ordinance or resolution, to receive
specific revenues dedicated to affordable housing development. The key characteristic
of a housing trust fund is that it receives on-going revenues from dedicated
sources such as commercial development taxes, fees on loan repayments, and
transfer taxes. These funds can stabilize communities facing gentrification
pressures.
Inclusionary
Zoning
Land use regulation mandating a percentage (usually 15-20%) of the housing
units in any project above a given size be affordable to people of low and
moderate incomes. The developer can build the housing or contribute to a
fund to develop it elsewhere. This tool has particular relevance in gentrifying
communities, where high-income and luxury apartment developments can quickly
overrun the existing low- and moderate-income housing stock.
Infill
Incentives
Density bonuses allow developers to create higher density projects, increasing
affordability measures. Infill incentives reward innovative housing efforts
to expand homeownership through unused or abandoned lots in urban core neighborhoods.
Used properly, these programs can produce new housing units, reduce blight,
preserve open space, reduce traffic, and encourage retail development that
serves the needs of existing residents.
Just
Cause Eviction Controls
These laws give special protections to the elderly, disabled and catastrophically
ill, and ensure that landlords can only evict with proper cause, such as
failure to pay rent or property destruction. They protect renters against
being unfairly evicted by landlords who want to capitalize on the explosive
rental and housing markets.
Limited
Equity Housing Cooperatives
A partnership wherein residents collectively own and control their housing.
The limited equity component limits the return on resale, insuring that
housing remains affordable to future residents. Limited equity co-ops promote
democratic participation through resident control and ownership.
Real
Estate Transfer Taxes
This innovative tool reviews techniques through which tax regulations can
limit two destabilizing practices in low- and moderate-income communities:
delinquency, when property taxes are not paid on blighted property; and
speculation, when land is acquired with the intent of 'flipping' its ownership
strictly for profitability as the housing market inflates.
Rent
Controls
A review of legal and programmatic protections for renters to slow the pace
in markets with rapidly escalating rental prices. The effectiveness and
implications of rent control has been heavily debated for as long as such
ordinances have existed. This tool reviews their potential application in
gentrifying contexts, as well as the complimentary techniques necessary
to make this a useful strategy.