Q&A with the Furman Center and Abt Associates

How did The Furman Center and Abt Associates decide to assemble this guide?  

Jeff Lubell: Both of our organizations have long worked on housing policy issues, but we were struck by how much of the thinking and research on housing policy was focused at the federal level. Yet as rent burdens have risen in cities across the country, and federal government aid has not kept pace, local governments have felt increasing pressure to step up. Moreover, many housing policies to increase the overall supply of housing, such as zoning, can only be addressed at the local level.  

Mark Willis: Our conversations with local leaders, including participants in the National Community of Practice on Local Housing Policy, highlighted a demand for a site that would aggregate information on the full set of local policy tools in a single place and provide a simple framework for integrating them effectively. We hope the site will be helpful for cities, counties, and towns interested in building and implementing comprehensive and balanced housing strategies.  

What was the role of the National Community of Practice on Local Housing Policy?  

Mark Willis: The National Community of Practice (CoP) on Local Housing Policy has two components: a core working group and an advisory council.  The core working group is a diverse group of 14 leading local practitioners (including Denise Scott of LISC) from across the country with expertise in every segment of the housing and community development industry. They provided overall direction for our efforts, as well as detailed feedback on early drafts. We convened this group five times over the last three years and benefitted greatly from their abundant wisdom and insights. The second part of the CoP is an advisory council comprised of 40+ trade associations, think tanks and policy organizations that met annually during the first three-year period of the CoP and provided feedback on draft documents.  Their input has been extremely helpful in the development and launch of the site, and we look forward to their continued engagement on the site as we move forward. 

Jeff Lubell: It was really through dialogue with CoP members that the ideas for LocalHousingSolutions.org were born, as we collectively realized there was a need for all cities, towns and counties to have a comprehensive local housing strategy.  Among other challenges, there was no single source of information about how to develop and enhance local strategies to address high housing costs. In recent years, housing affordability challenges have spread to more cities and risen further up the income scale, leading to greater policy attention from local officials.  Both the core working group and advisory council of the CoP recognized that there was a real need for comprehensive guidance to help stakeholders in cities large and small, experienced and just starting out, all confronting high housing costs and affordability issues. 

How do you envision practitioners using this guide to connect with their local governments?  Do you think there is an ideal role for community development organizations in developing housing strategies with their local governments? 

Jeff Lubell: We designed the site with the primary audience of local government officials in mind. However, we knew from the start that practitioners would play a critical role in many cities by proposing and supporting policy changes, by educating local officials, and by executing key roles in a local housing strategy, including and especially the production of dedicated affordable housing. 

A major element of Local Housing Solutions’ appeal is the site’s multiple points of entry – it is designed to meet users where they are. The breadth and depth of the site – it has over 150 briefs – explain the different options available for engaging practitioners and their government partners, whatever their local capacity and experience. For example, for newly elected leaders that are just starting to grapple with the substance of these issues, the site’s explainer videos can serve as bite-sized introductions to the housing market and why affordability is an issue. While many community development organizations and other practitioners already have this background, we hope they will find the explainer videos helpful for educating local leaders whose support is important for the success of local housing strategies. 

Mark Willis: The site also features two interactive tools: a strategy self-assessment and a housing needs assessment. Those tools give practitioners the ability to create content that is responsive to local conditions. The strategy self-assessment tool can help communities identify relevant resources on the site, with a particular focus on components of a housing strategy that the user identifies as not fully developed. The housing needs assessment tool shows how to use data to demonstrate the extent of the locality’s affordable housing challenge.  Armed with those data-driven, tailored results, stakeholders can better make the case for a comprehensive policy response.   

That leads into the second part of your question, about the ideal role for CDOs. In a perfect world, CDOs and governments are working collaboratively, iteratively, with good data, towards mutually agreed- upon goals and objectives to broadly serve their shared constituents. We all know the reality is rarely that pretty, but one goal of Local Housing Solutions is to move practice in that direction. By giving CDOs and policy makers a shared set of data, a library of tools to achieve certain policy objectives, and examples of success, I think we can foster better, more equitable partnerships between governments and their key stakeholders. And as Jeff mentioned earlier CDOs can play a critical role in educating local leaders and in executing local housing strategies. 

Are there any particularly innovative housing policies that you came across during this process that promote equitable outcomes for residents? 

Jeff Lubell: There is an enormous amount of local innovation happening in the housing world right now, so it is difficult to pinpoint a single policy. Plus, part of the message of Local Housing Solutions is that local governments shouldn’t focus on single policies but rather draw on a range of tools to build a balanced local housing strategy.  But I can think of a few examples of innovative approaches worth mentioning. 

Seattle recently passed an overhaul of its minimum parking requirements for new development that, among other things, eliminates parking requirements for affordable units and decouples the costs of parking from rents. This should help subsidy dollars go further in reducing rents for households that rely primarily on public transit. 

There are also a growing number of cities working to develop the kind of comprehensive local housing strategies that the Community of Practice found so crucial. Among other recent examples, tasks forces in San Antonio and Atlanta released recommendations in 2018 for comprehensive multi-pronged efforts to strengthen their city’s housing strategy. 

Mark Willis: I have some thoughts based on recent NYU Furman Center research. A number of cities have begun relaxing regulatory barriers to low-cost housing types, such as micro-units, accessory dwelling units and new forms of home sharing. One exciting new organization started by former students of my colleague Ingrid Gould Ellen is Nesterly, which aims to help match older adults with extra room in their homes with a younger roommate who can provide help with basic chores in exchange for lower rent. And just last week New York City announced a new program aimed toward producing shared housing, drawing heavily on the Furman Center’s conclusions that it could be a very cost effective approach.  

There is also some promising innovation in the mobility arena, spurred by HUD’s Small Area Fair Market Rent policy and research showing the importance of neighborhood for children’s future work and educational outcomes. Those factors are driving a number of local efforts to help housing choice voucher holders access resource-rich neighborhoods. 

I should also emphasize that as new innovative approaches emerge, LocalHousingSolutions.org will include them. The idea of the site is to be a dynamic resource, something that changes and evolves concurrently with research, theory, and practice. So I am enthusiastic about the policies available now, but also excited to see what smart strategies users come up with that we can add and highlight in the coming months and years.  

How should cities and practitioners think about measuring the impact of newly developed housing policy plans for their communities? 

Mark Willis: As the saying goes, “You manage what you measure,” so measurement and evaluation are crucial components of an effective housing strategy. Local housing strategies are designed to address a wide range of policy objectives (LocalHousingSolutions.org lays out a whole set of these) but not all of them are easily quantified. Those that can be quantified should be tracked, particularly in those cases where data are both readily available and timely.   

Jeff Lubell: While it is tempting to focus just on one big number such as number of units created or preserved, no singular metric like this one is likely to be able to measure progress across the whole range of policy objectives driving a local housing strategy. Therefore, in addition to a top-line goal, numerical goals should include more-detailed production metrics such as the number of households or people of different income levels to be served, the distribution of units of different sizes and types to be constructed or rehabilitated, and the number of households to be assisted in resource-rich neighborhoods.  

Mark Willis: Localities should also be keeping track of other indicators such as the share of their households that are cost burdened, how quickly rent and home prices are increasing relative to income, and whether increases in the supply of housing are keeping up with increases in employment or even with the growth of the adult population. As costs increase and markets tighten, adults who in other circumstances would live alone may ‘double-up’ in increasingly crowded units. 

Jeff Lubell: Let me close by soliciting feedback that will help us to improve the site and measure its impact. Mark and I would love to hear from local government and community leaders about how they have used LocalHousingSolutions.org. We are also always looking for ways to make the site more useful and for interesting content to add. To reach out, just visit the site, or drop us a line at contact@localhousingsolutions.org.  

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