LSA

Local Planning, Housing Research, Forecasts and Analyses

Housing Solutions for Small Cities

Lisa Sturtevant

Housing Solutions for Small Cities

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I was part of a panel series in Charlottesville, Virginia earlier this month that was part of the annual Tom Tom Founders Festival that is held each year in Charlottesville and was focused on housing issues in high-cost small cities. The housing panels brought together housing planners, developers, advocates and others from communities all around the country to share best practices and to contribute to the on-going discussion in Charlottesville about housing affordability and economic and racial inequality.


After moderating a panel with local government staff from Park City, Utah; Boulder, Colorado; and Pasadena, California, I learned some new approaches for local housing solutions:


Trying to Maximize the Impact of an Inclusionary Zoning Policy
The panelists from these cities all shared ways in which their communities were trying to address rising affordability challenges. Boulder is in the process of increasing its inclusionary zoningrequirement, from 20 to 25 percent, with the idea of setting aside a share of units for “workforce housing” or for households with slightly higher incomes. That 25 percent requirement would make it one of the highest inclusionary requirements in the countryand it sounded like there was still an open question about what impact it might have on the overall housing market. So I wondered if—and how—communities should do a more formal analysis of potential impacts when adopting or modifying inclusionary zoning programs?


Providing Housing for New Public Sector Workers
In Park City, the government owns a half dozen units that they set aside specifically for new employees relocating to Park City for a public sector job, or who find themselves in a transition period (e.g. divorce). They also offer housing assistance to public employees who want to live in the community. Other places have considered housing options for new teachers and other public sector employees, but is there a role for private-sector employersto partner with developers or municipalities to build or support housing—even temporary housing—for new employees?


Going All In on Accessory Dwelling Units
Finally, in Pasadena, they are re-writing their Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) ordinancein response to recent legislative action at the state level. ADUs can be a part of the housing affordability solution but generally there is no guarantee that ADUs will be occupied by people facing the greatest challenges. In Pasadena, the city is offering incentives in the form of fee reductions to homeowners who build ADUs if they are willing to become a Section 8 landlord. Is this a good way to expand options for voucher holders? How else can we increase the number of units available to individuals and families who use a housing choice voucher?


While the policy discussion was really interesting, what was more eye-opening was the general atmosphere at the event, and the tension between people who might be called “elitists” or “outsiders” and long-time Charlottesville residents. Part of the tension stemmed from the incident a year ago when Charlottesville was the site of neo Nazi rallies and opened up a frank—and sometimes contentious—discussion about race relations in the city.


Additional tension at the Tom Tom event was just the simple recognition that no local community likes outsiders to tell it how to do things. Addressing that particular aversion is part of our on-going work with communities, which is why we always try to make communication—listening, gathering information, understanding a wide range of points of view—and partnering with local groups a key part of our consulting work.


Please contact me at lisa@lisasturtevant.com or 703-598-1220 if you’d like to know more about our approach to working with local communities—small and large!—on housing issues.

The Fair Housing Act at 50: Local Planning for Housing Opportunity

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Since the passage of the Fair Housing Act, overt discrimination in housing market transactions based on race has declined significantly. However, fifty years out from the adoption of the Fair Housing Act, the nation’s long history of both explicit and implicit racial bias means that there remain persistent inequalities in access to housing in high-quality neighborhoods with good access to employment options, transportation and high-performing schools, and the vast majority of communities around the country remain highly racially segregated.


Since the passage of the Fair Housing Act, overt discrimination in housing market transactions based on race has declined significantly. However, fifty years out from the adoption of the Fair Housing Act, the nation’s long history of both explicit and implicit racial bias means that there remain persistent inequalities in access to housing in high-quality neighborhoods with good access to employment options, transportation and high-performing schools, and the vast majority of communities around the country remain highly racially segregated.


What We Know
Access to stable, decent and affordable housing promotes positive outcomes for families and children, including better educational outcomes for children and better health outcomes for people of all ages. In addition, the prospects for upward economic mobility and self-sufficiency are strongly correlated with the availability of affordable housing that is connected to jobs, transit, and other amenities and services.


A wide range of housing types—at all price and rent levels—helps build thriving, diverse communities. When all residents—regardless of race, cultural background, income, age, or disability status—are able to access a community’s opportunities and services, everyone benefits. Affordable, quality housing in safe neighborhoods connected to opportunity is the hallmark of a successful community. In fact, recent research has shown that places with greater economic integration—that is, places where people of all incomes live alongside one another—are more economically resilient places and do a better job of sustaining economic progress during downturns.


The passage of the Fair Housing Act built on and expanded the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and expressly banned many of the public and private actions that had evolved over decades primarily to deny African Americans access to housing. In addition, the Fair Housing Act specifies that “[a]ll executive departments and agencies shall administer their programs and activities relating to housing and urban development…in a manner affirmatively to further” fair housing opportunities. As such, the Fair Housing Act was written not only to right the wrongs of decades of explicit discrimination, but also to actively promote ways to open up housing options and neighborhoods to those who had been denied access in the past.


Local Communities Struggle to Fulfill the Promise of the Fair Housing Act
Local communities—cities, counties, towns and other municipalities—are at the front lines of righting past wrongs and opening up housing options, not only to benefit those that have been historically underserved, but also to build strong communities and economies. As redlining and racial restrictive covenants limited housing options of African Americans in earlier decades, local zoning and other policies continue to play a role in dictating where racial minorities—and particularly African Americans and Hispanics—can live.


Zoning is the regulatory tool local communities use to dictate the type, amount and locations of development activity. Exclusionary zoning policies, including requirements for large lot sizes and large unit sizes, make it difficult for lower-income residents to live in certain communities. These types of zoning regulations, in essence, limit the development of smaller and less expensive housing in many communities, and therefore exclude lower-income households, including minority households.


As redlining and racial restrictive covenants limited housing options of African Americans in earlier decades, local zoning continues to play a role in dictating where racial minorities—and particularly African Americans and Hispanics—can live.


Local Communities Have the Solution
If we are truly to achieve fair housing for all, local municipalities need to be make changes to their land use and zoning to allow for the development of more diverse housing, including housing to meet the needs of lower-income and minority individuals and families. Even as the federal Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing policy sits in limbo under the current administration, localities across the country are looking for ways to use the tools at their disposal—namely, zoning and other local regulations—to find ways to promote fair housing. There are legitimate obstacles—and some less than legitimate challenges—to making the necessary changes. Housing planning needs to be accomplished in concert with transportation, land use, and schools planning. Incentives to build lower-cost housing must reflect both the housing needs and the housing market conditions of the local community. And just as important as specific zoning, land use or financial strategies, local municipalities must pay attention to how the need for particular policy changes are communicated to the broader community to educate and build broad consensus and to attempt to head off NIMBYism that can derail even the best intended local housing plans.


At Lisa Sturtevant and Associates, our mission is to work collaboratively with cities, counties and towns that seek to build inclusive communities through commonsense land use planning and housing policy designed to support housing that is affordable and appropriate to individuals and families from all backgrounds. Local communities have the power to fulfil the promise of the Fair Housing Act and to ensure that every individual and family in America can live in stable and affordable housing in a neighborhood connected to opportunity.
If you have questions about ways to promote fair housing in your community, please reach out to us!

Immigrants and the Suburban Dream

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Over the past two decades, immigrants have fueled the growth of suburban communities all across the country. And in the years to come, one of the greatest sources of housing demand in the country—and particularly in the suburbs—will be from people who come to the United States from other countries. New research I recently completed with the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing takes a look at the housing and residential location choices of immigrant households.


New immigrants could account for one-third of all household growth over the next decade, adding approximately 3.4 million new households, including nearly a million new home owners. For planners, public officials, housing advocates, and the real estate industry, this growth poses several questions: Where will immigrant households settle? What types of neighborhoods and housing will they choose? And how will they continue to change the face of the nation’s suburbs?


The potential impact of the foreign-born population on local housing markets—and the extent to which these immigrants will be homeowners or renters, suburbanites or city dwellers—depend on the socioeconomic characteristics of the people themselves, as well as on the regions in which they settle. In some cases, the growing immigrant population may fuel continued population growth in central cities. But in many instances, immigrants will be a key source of demand for single-family housing in the suburbs. The dream of homeownership—and particularly suburban homeownership—remains strong among newcomers to the United States.


Prior research has documented the growth in the suburban foreign-born population, as new immigrants are attracted to job opportunities and lower housing costs in the suburbs. I used a newtypologyof suburban places  that was developed by ULI and RCLCO in 2016 to analyze the residential locations of immigrants in five metropolitan areas–San Francisco, Houston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Charlotte and Buffalo.


More immigrants live in the suburbs than in urban areas of these five metro areas, and immigrants from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds live in the suburbs. Immigrants are somewhat more likely to live in closer-in suburban locations than are native-born populations, but the immigrant population is growing in all types of suburbs, from economically challenged suburbs to high-end suburbs.


For example, in the Charlotte metropolitan area, about 90 percent of the foreign-born population lives in the suburbs, compared to 87 percent of the native-born population. About a quarter of the region’s foreign-born population lives in economically challenged suburbs, but about a fifth live in stable middle-income suburbs and another fifth live in established high-end suburbs. In fact, foreign-born residents in the Charlotte metro area are slightly more likely than native-born residents to live in the region’s established high-end suburbs.


There are similar patterns across the other five metro areas examined.



The suburbs are increasingly attracting new immigrants, and in the metropolitan areas studied, immigrants are just as likely as the native-born population to live in the suburbs. Prior research has demonstrated the growth in the suburban foreign-born population, as new immigrants are attracted to job opportunities and lower housing costs in the suburbs. In this analysis of five metropolitan areas, immigrants from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds are choosing suburban locations, including both high-end suburbs and more economically-challenged suburbs.

Why Don’t Local Jurisdictions Track Housing Data Better?

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An audit of the District of Columbia’s Housing Trust Fund (HTF) found that the fund was significantly mismanaged over the 2001 – 2015 period. Rules about certifying income eligibility for affordable units were unclear or ignored. Below-market-rate units that were supposed to be built with HTF dollars were sometimes never built. DC’s trust fund–and local housing trust funds around the country–can only be successful if the community believes resources are being used efficiently and as intended.


Tracking data on local housing programs and funds is critical not only for ensuring transparency in local programs, but also to be able to demonstrate the impact of initiatives. Making the case for affordable housing is really challenging, especially when there are so many competing needs and local budgets are almost always stretched. Why should local tax dollars support housing affordable to low-income residents when schools need resources, roads need fixing, parks need attention, and so on? If a local jurisdiction tracks data on the number of housing units produced or preserved with public funds and, especially, if they can monitor outcomes for individuals and families that are served by housing programs, then it can be much easier to build consensus for public investment in housing.


But even taking a step back from that, it is surprising to me how many local jurisdictions do not have a good handle on the current stock of affordable housing–both subsidized and unsubsidized–and the characteristics of households living in that housing. Sometimes the data are collected by different local government agencies, for example a Planning Department and a Housing Authority. Sometimes nonprofits are collecting data on families living in assisted housing. Often no one knows how much naturally occuring affordable housing exists in a community.


It’s challenging though not impossible to compile all of this data in one place and to report on it to the community. But it involves dedicating resources to the task, which is hard to do when resources for housing are so limited and local jurisdictions want to use what they have directly for housing programs.


Let me know if you have examples of local jurisdictions that are doing a really good job collecting housing data and sharing it to build support for local initiatives!

Housing as School Policy

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There is abundant research showing that stable and affordable housing is associated with improved educational outcomes among children in low-income families. Access to affordable housing can result in fewer moves and can reduce overcrowding and other housing-related stresses. Housing assistance can help families move to neighborhoods with higher quality schools and housing investments can be part of broader, holistic community development efforts that lead to better outcomes for children.


Housing is important to educational outcomes because the school that a child attends is usually determined by where she lives. (Charter schools and school choice in some communities can weaken this link between residence location and school location.) Higher-quality schools—whether measured by test scores, teacher tenure and quality, or availability of resources—tend be located in communities where housing costs and incomes are higher. As a result, when families are segregated by income, it also means their children are segregated by school quality.


Unfortunately, income segregation is on the rise for families with children. According to a recent study by researchers at the University of Southern California, between 1990 and 2010, families with children became more likely to live in neighborhoods segregated by income. Over the same period, there was no change in income segregation among families without children. This means that all of the recent increase in income segregation in the U.S.has been among families with children. We know that place matters not just for education outcomes but also for economic mobility opportunities for children, so this recent trend in income segregation among families is particularly concerning.


It is not uncommon to hear that “housing policy is school policy.” Housing programs can help lower-income families access neighborhoods with better schools, and can help alleviate the concentration of poverty in neighborhood schools. But what housing policies have worked the best to help families access good neighborhoods and good schools?


Inclusionary zoning policies can be a key way to support positive educational outcomes. There are more than 500 local inclusionary zoning (IZ) programsacross the country, and many of the jurisdictions in the Washington DC region have IZ or IZ-like affordable housing programs. Research has found that affordable units produced through an IZ program are more likely to be located in low-poverty school districts than housing opportunities created through either the Housing Choice Voucher or Low-Income Housing Tax Credit programs. IZ is not a silver bulletfor connecting children to high-quality schools, however, and program design matters. A RAND study has shown that Montgomery County’s MPDU program has been singularly effective at locating housing in low-poverty neighborhoods, which has led to better academic outcomes for children in those homes.


Voucher mobility programs can be effective at connecting families to neighborhoods with high-quality schools, but intensive search assistance and other supports seem necessary. Research on the federal Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program has generally found that while the program helps families find housing they can afford, families receiving a voucher tend to live in neighborhoods with low-performing schools. Housing search assistance and pre- and post-move counseling can make a voucher program much more successful at getting families into housing in neighborhoods with good schools and ultimately lead to better educational outcomes for children. Furthermore, the most effective housing mobility programs operate at a regional scale, streamlining the porting and the administration process across jurisdictions.


The housing tax credit allocation process is another important mechanisms for expanding housing options in neighborhoods with high-quality schools. Tax credits are allocated to the states from the Federal government and a state entity (e.g. a state housing finance agency) awards credits on a competitive basis to projects that meet criteria and recommendations set out in the state’s Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP). (Nine-percent credits are awarded competitively.) The QAP and the allocation process can have a big impact on the number and types of affordable projects that get built in neighborhoods with good schools. According to a recent reportby Enterprise Community Partners, states can prioritize access to good schools in their allocation processes. Maryland, for example, has the option to increase the eligible basis of projects if they offer “reasonable access to jobs, quality schools and other economic and social benefits.” But the link between housing and good schools is not often an explicit part of a state’s QAP.


These policies can help families access housing they can afford in neighborhoods that have good schools. But it will never be possible to move everyone. Just like other approaches to connecting families to opportunity, developing joint housing-school policies should be a “both/and” proposition—both investing in housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods with good schools and investing in existing communities to improve neighborhoods and schools. And no matter the policy approach, it is an important first step to ensure that people who care about schools and people who care about housing—who all care about the quality of life of families and children—are talking and working together. Housing Virginia recently convened a group to explore and improve the connections between affordable housing and schools. As school gets underway, thinking about how to do more of that collaboration is essential for ensuring all students have a successful school year!

Can We Predict Gentrification?

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There is no universally-accepted definition of gentrification; however, people usually think of gentrification as the movement of higher-income, often white households into lower-income, often minority city neighborhoods. Gentrification is associated with rising rents and home prices, and can lead to displacement of lower-income individuals and families. There can be positive outcomes associated with gentrification when higher-income residents move into a neighborhood, including higher local tax revenue for public services, increased business investment, reductions in crime and improvements in test scores if higher-income families send their children to neighborhood schools. However, the potential disadvantages of gentrification are also quite clear—in addition to displacement of existing residents, there can be a loss of community identity and a shift in both public and private services away from disadvantaged neighborhoods to higher-income parts of the city.


Washington DC neighborhoods have been at the forefront of change nationwide. In fact, DC is one of four major cities in the U.S. where more than half of Census tracts gentrified between 2000 and 2010. It is difficult enough to create and preserve affordable housing options in a high-cost city like DC. Gentrification can happen so quickly which makes it even harder for local governments and advocates to act to help ensure neighborhood change creates benefits existing, as well as new residents. Strategies for acquiring existing affordable buildings or securing land for new affordable housing often depend on being able to plan ahead.


Gentrified or gentrifying neighborhoods are often identified by using Census data to look at the characteristics of residents and the housing stock. Places where there have been increases in the median household income, the median home value and rent, and the share of residents with a college degree are often characterized as gentrifying. These local data provide a good indication of the history of neighborhood change in a place but they are not very good at predicting change. In most cases, if Census data are used to identify gentrifying neighborhoods, it is already too late. Interested stakeholders find that it is already too expensive to acquire buildings or land for affordable housing.


Recently, researchers have been investigating ways to use public and proprietary data to predict neighborhood change. If these forecasting methods could be used in the Washington DC metro area, non-profit developers and other affordable housing advocates could be better able to plan, and more individuals and families could benefit from having access to affordable housing in improving areas.


Using Past Census Data to Predict Future Gentrification: The “Early Warning Toolkit” in the Bay Area
Researchers at the Center for Community Innovation at UC Berkeley were interested in the relationship between transit investment and neighborhood change in the Bay Area in California. They developed an index to be used to predict a neighborhood’s susceptibility to future gentrification. They used data from 1990 to 2000 to build model a model that explained neighborhood change, and then used that model to predict what neighborhoods would look like in 2010. Then they compared their predictions with actual 2010 data.


From this exercise, the key factors that predict whether a neighborhood is susceptible to gentrification were: 1) availability of public space amenities (e.g. small parks, public parks, youth facilities) and public transportation, 2) income diversity (e.g. a relatively even mix of households at different income groups), 3) places where renter (but not owner) cost burden was high, and 4) places with a relatively large share of non-family households. The third and fourth data points were suggestive of households that would be able to move easily, thus freeing up housing for gentrifiers.


Using Crime Data to Predict Gentrification: Evidence from New York City
Researchers at NYU’s Furman Center examined the relationship between local crime statistics and gentrification, and their results could potentially help predict future gentrification. Using special tabulations of Census data for Census tracts in New York City, they looked at households that had recently moved into an area and analyzed the characteristics of those movers alongside characteristics of the neighborhoods, including recent trends in crime. They found that high-income, college-educated households are more likely to move into both low-income and high-income neighborhoods when crime rates have fallen. These households are much more sensitive to drops in crime rates than were lower-income, less educated households. Thus, falling crime rates—and particularly violent crime rates—could signal imminent gentrification.


Using Social Media Data to Predict Gentrification: Cutting Edge Research From London
The most innovative use of data to predict gentrification has come from a study in London. Researchers at the University of Cambridge were interested in developing a model to predict which neighborhoods in London were likely to gentrify so that local policymakers could be better position to mitigate negative effects of gentrification while promoting equitable economic growth. The researchers were able to used 2010 data from Foursquare and Twitter to analyze the places individual users “checked in.” They were able to combine these data with basic information about the users themselves and link the users to friends who also “checked in” at the same locations. Then the researchers analyzed the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of different neighborhoods five years later, in 2015. Basically, the researchers found that when higher income people began visiting unfamiliar locations in so-called “materially-deprived” neighborhoods, these neighborhoods were most likely to gentrify. Places that were more likely visited by locals or regulars, and places that were either majority very low income or majority very high income, were less likely to be gentrified five years later.


Understanding where gentrification will occur in the future could be important for local housing staff, planners and developers to plan for strategies to preserve affordable housing options in neighborhoods set to experience increases in housing costs. Some of these methods involve a fair amount of data collection and analysis. However, it is possible that by working both regionally and collaboratively—with developers, local governments, researchers and foundations—we could do a better job at forecasting gentrification and ensuring all individuals and families benefit from neighborhood change.

Housing as Part of the Roadmap for the Region’s Economic Future: The Prospect for Regional Collaboration

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The Washington, D.C. area economy is the in the midst of dramatic restructuring – largely as a result of declines in federal spending in the region. A group of business and community leaders, along with advocates, philanthropists and funders, have come together to work on strategies for repositioning the regional economy to ensure that the Washington, D.C. area is able to compete in today’s global economy.
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They called this strategy the “Roadmap for the Region’s Future Economy.”


In a series of recent interviews with senior business executives in the region, it was clear that quality-of- life issues—specifically housing and transportation—were key to our economic success. Many business leaders interviewed for this project said that “reducing social inequality across the D.C. region was critical to bolstering the region’s economy” and policies related to affordable housing and transportation were “more important than adjustments to corporate tax policies.”


So, according to the Regional Roadmap project, having sufficient affordable housing is vital to the region’s economic future.

Separating Fact from Fiction in Research on Inclusionary Housing Programs

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Why should we study the impacts of local affordable housing policies? One key reason is to help planners and policymakers design better programs that will meet their communities’ needs. But what if research studies seem to come to different conclusions? How can you figure out what research to rely on?


In the report Separating Fact from Fiction to Design Effective Inclusionary Housing Programsprepared for the National Housing Conference (NHC), I reviewed the studies of the impacts of inclusionary zoning policies and found that the most highly-regarded empirical studies show that these programs can produce affordable housing and do not lead to significant declines in overall housing production or to increases in market-rate prices.


So, how are critics of inclusionary zoning able to point to research to support their claim that inclusionary zoning is bad for housing markets? Not all research is of equal quality and some of the key studies cited by critics have some serious design flaws. When evaluating the quality of research on housing programs, it is good to ask a few questions about how the researchers set up the study:


When evaluating a local housing program, did the researchers simply compare outcomes (e.g. housing production, home prices) in a locality before and after the program was implemented? That is not usually the best approach. Rigorous evaluations use a research design that i) compare outcomes in localities with inclusionary housing programs to similar localities without inclusionary requirements, and ii) account for other factors that could influence housing market outcomes.


Did the research study examine program impacts in a place that is very different from the community you are working in? For planning and policymaking purposes, it is a good idea not to generalize findings from a research study conducted in one particular place (e.g. a high-cost city with rising home prices) and assume those findings would be true in a place with very different characteristics (e.g. a rural area with a stagnant housing market).


Was the program implemented as stated in the policy documents and/or ordinance? In some cases, researchers conduct an evaluation of a program without first ensuring that the policy was actually administered as it was intended. A process evaluation—that is, an assessment of how, or even if, the program was implemented—is a helpful first step to understand whether the change in outcomes that are measured can actually be attributed to the policy.


Evaluation research is an important tool for local affordable housing planners and policymakers. Indeed, “evidence-based policymaking” is increasingly part of crafting public policy at all levels of government. We need to be sure to review research with an understanding of what makes a good research study, and to avoid cherry-picking studies that support our point of view.