Housing & Community Development

The trend line is moving in the direction of urban community models. If borne out over the next decade or two, this shift will represent the most dramatic change in land use, housing and transportation patterns since the completion of Levittown in 1951. The impact of this trend on local governments will be as unique as each community’s geography, demographics and capacity to manage change.

As part of ongoing initiatives between NLC and The Home Depot Foundation, an NLC Capstone Corporate Partner, the two organizations will combine efforts to support housing programs for the nation’s military veterans, especially those who are disabled. This investment will help build NLC’s capacity to provide local officials with resources, best practices and learning opportunities focused on neighborhood-based housing rehabilitation and retrofitting initiatives addressing the needs of special populations, with a particular focus on military veterans returning from combat service and with disabilities.

Great cities have great central libraries. Some are architecturally significant such as in Seattle or Copenhagen. Others are signature buildings that embody the civic spirit and unique character of a community, such as in Fort Smith, Arkansas where the citizens voted to tax themselves in order to build a main library building and neighborhood branches.... 
Citiesspeak is the official blog of the National League of Cities.

NLC, in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation’s Building Resilient Regions Network (BRR), commissioned a scan of six cities—Camden, Dayton, Milwaukee, Oakland, Phoenix and Tampa—to determine the actions these communities took to address the ongoing housing foreclosure crisis and specifically to explore methods for becoming a more resilient community. Interviews were conducted with elected officials, nonprofit housing organizations, civic leaders, bankers, developers, housing activists and advocates and other observers of housing and policy work. This publication contains a synthesis of the important findings that emerged from the interviews and a detailed description of each of the six cities’ response to the foreclosure crisis.

Housing and Land Use

Basic shelter is the essential foundation of any block or street. Decades of housing development have defined where people live, the type of dwelling in which they reside, the quality of neighborhood schools, the opportunities for jobs, the network of transportation options, and the level of personal safety. In the U.S. economy, housing construction and rehabilitation have traditionally been a significant source of employment. In the best circumstances, a broad array of housing choices serve a myriad of individual and family housing needs. Moreover, housing ownership can put people on a path to build wealth through the appreciation of a home’s value and the increasing equity stake in the property. Subthemes under this topic include:

• Vacant and abandoned real properties
• Mortgage finance
• Housing foreclosure
• Home ownership
• Shared equity housing
• Rental properties
• Single-family and multi-family dwellings
• Community gardens
• Mixed-use or inclusive zoning

Neighborhoods and Community

The uniqueness and livability of a place define a neighborhood. Investments in neighborhoods result in housing choices and employment opportunities that strengthen a community for individuals and families. Citizens connect to their city through the neighborhood and the level of services and amenities that are available. Subthemes under this topic include:

• Parks and open space 
• Public libraries
• Community centers
• Citizen empowerment
• Inclusion and equity
• High-speed Internet access
• Small business and entrepreneurship
• Public transportation

Reports & Publications

NLC, in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation’s Building Resilient Regions Network (BRR), commissioned a scan of six cities—Camden, Dayton, Milwaukee, Oakland, Phoenix and Tampa—to determine the actions these communities took to address the ongoing housing foreclosure crisis and specifically to explore methods for becoming a more resilient community. Interviews were conducted with elected officials, nonprofit housing organizations, civic leaders, bankers, developers, housing activists and advocates and other observers of housing and policy work. This publication contains a synthesis of the important findings that emerged from the interviews and a detailed description of each of the six cities’ response to the foreclosure crisis.

Flexibility and community support have enabled the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program to provide real help for low-income residents since its inception in 1974. The creative and innovative use of CDBG dollars has transformed local ideas and designs into practical solutions that strengthen communities and the bonds between local actors. This guide exhibits five city projects that are exemplary in their use of CDBG funds.

The foreclosure crisis is an opportunity to reorient housing strategies to focus on creating and supporting neighborhoods that offer residents an attractive place to live.  The Building Resilient Regions Network, funded by the MacArthur Foundation through the University of California at Berkeley, is developing applied knowledge about how regions can be resilient in the face of significant challenges, such as foreclosures, rapid immigration and economic restructuring.  As part of this project, “Resilience in the Face of Foreclosures: Lessons from Local and Regional Practice,” highlights the ways in which cities and counties, and their elected local leaders, are successfully responding to the continuing waves of home mortgage foreclosures, vacant properties and destabilized neighborhoods.  Covering six metropolitan areas, St. Louis, Atlanta, Chicago, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Cleveland and Riverside-San Bernardino, the report offers a summary of significant strategies that help mitigate the foreclosure challenge and set the stage for initiatives designed to revitalize the neighborhoods that have been adversely impacted.

Shared equity housing models are increasingly becoming a popular tool of providing permanently affordable housing for low and moderate income households. This municipal action guide explains this new framework, expands on its benefits, and provides action oriented steps for city officials.

As published in PA Times, a publication of the American Society for Public Administrators, this article discusses the three factors that will influence decisions about new housing development in the coming decade.  These factors are an increase in the number of homeless families; the slowdown in household formation by young adults in the “echo boom” generation; and the severe cost burden that so many face for housing.  The combination of these factors, added to the recession and the millions of mortgage foreclosures, means that there will be a much greater need for rental housing than for ownership opportunities in the early and middle years of the next decade.

Summary Report: NLC Forum on Housing Trends & Solutions

Nation's Cities Weekly

The home rental market is growing at a powerful rate. The 2011 State of the Nation’s Housing report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University attributes the booming rental market to a combination of factors, including a troubled homeowner market, unemployment and demographic shifts.

Despite signs of economic growth, the lack of improvement in the national and regional housing sector remains troubling, and in some cases, demoralizing. According to the 2011 State of the Nation’s Housing report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, the national homeownership rate continued to decline last year to a low of 66.9 percent, 2.1 percent below the 2004 peak.

A report by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) entitled “America’s Rental Housing: Meeting Challenges, Building on Opportunities,” presents the current state of the rental housing sector and highlights the vital role the rental market plays in providing affordable housing. The report recommends that cities nullify land-use and building regulations to allow expansion of modest, high-density rental developments.

Here’s a value that often eludes urban policy thinkers: adding beauty to the world. Blair Ruble, in contrast, thinks "there is no higher mission for an urban community to fulfill." He’s not so much talking about the aesthetics of physical surroundings; he’s moved by the beauty of what people do and create in the places they make. Ruble asserts this view in his terrific "biography" of "Washington’s U Street."

In a remarkable partnership, the City of Morgantown, W.Va. and West Virginia University (WVU) have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars since 2004 to stabilize and rejuvenate the Sunnyside neighborhood adjacent to the school’s downtown campus.  The Sunnyside Up Campus Neighborhoods Revitalization Corporation is the vehicle providing the residents of Sunnyside with a voice in decisions affecting their neighborhood.

Community leaders in Camden, N.J. are focused with laser precision on the tangible steps being implemented to achieve progress and improvement in the areas of revenue, poverty, crime, and unemployment.  At the heart of the community building efforts are the Greater Camden Partnership and Cooper’s Ferry Development Association.

The City of Buena Park, Calif., has approved development of a multi-family, affordable housing community that utilizes a distinctive "green" roof and will be developed on a vacant infill site.  The community will be built using the recently developed “New Block” approach. The concept features a unique green roof with grass and other landscaping that’s housed over the interior parking area, which creates useable open space for residents and has significant sustainable advantages.

Citiesspeak

Citiesspeak is the official blog of the National League of Cities. 

Housing has always been complicated; it’s just that most folks never really noticed until the decades-old pattern of increasing home construction and increasing home values came to a blinding, crashing halt...

The first thing a visitor to Barcelona may notice is the time shift. At 7:30 in the morning, even the Starbucks is not open. In fact, the only people on the streets of the Gothic Quarter are the tourists streaming from their small hotels past the closed shops with the doors covered in graffiti... 

Efforts at “place making” have seldom been so visible in both federal policy and local initiative. But author Edward Glaeser in his popular work Triumph of the City, suggests that a focus on place is truly, well, misplaced...

For the past two days, The Washington Post has lambasted the Department of Housing and Urban Development and local housing authorities and community development corporations for failing to adequately manage programs that build or rehabilitate affordable housing...

The stretch of land has all the attributes to warm the cockles of a city planner’s heart. Bordering the west side is a major sports venue and the nescient development that often accompanies such a facility...

Go to Citiesspeak to read more on Housing & Community Development and other topics.

The Windy City's placemaking initiative facilitates community oriented development and management of public spaces promoting community interaction.

Joy Roller, Executive Director of the Gordon Square Arts District, discusses a collaboration between the City of Cleveland and three non-profit organizations, Cleveland Public Theatre, Near West Theatre, and Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization. At the center of this partnership is a high priority role for the arts as a catalyst for economic development and job creation through preservation and renovation of historical buildings and complimentary new construction in the Gordon Square Arts District. The district’s five major construction projects, targeted for completion by 2013, have generated hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in new tax revenue to the city, county and state.

Coon Rapids' Home for Generations project enlists homeowners to affordably invest in their homes via repairs and upgrades.

Coral Gables is home to the region’s original Gallery Night, which was started more than 20 years ago and showcases various works from European and Latin American art masters to outstanding contemporary artists. The Gallery Night Trolley is free and allows visitors an easy way to discover what’s happening in the world of art in the city by taking them directly to the galleries’ front doors.

• VIDEO: Leonard Roberts presents about the program at the 2011 Congress of Cities & Exposition in Phoenix
• Gallery Night Trolley Presentation

Located between the Port of Dubuque and Dubuque's downtown, the Historic Millwork District is a warehousing district being renewed as a urban mixed use development while preserving environmental sustainability.

The CityDeck was developed on a four-block length along the banks of the Fox River in downtown Green Bay. The development has reacquainted the community, including nearly 10,000 downtown workers, with the river and the opportunities for revitalization that it provides. The promenade, which stretches for a quarter of a mile along the river, hosts a variety of year-round cultural and recreational events, including outdoor dining, live performances, fitness runs and boating and fishing.  Already, the development has boosted the local economy and encouraged new downtown investment.

The irony could not be more dramatic. In the “city that never sleeps,” the New York Guggenheim is creating spaces where people can at the very least pause, disconnect, rest and possibly reinvigorate. Stillspotting nyc is a two-year project launched in June 2011. Every three to five months the architects and designers at the Guggenheim will transform an urban space into a stillspot as a refuge from the “ever-present cacophony of traffic, construction, and commerce; and the relentless assault of constant communication.” The ultimate goal, says creator David van der Leer, is to “weave a web of tranquility throughout the city.”

• Guggenheim Project Explores Stillness and Quiet within the Urban Environment of New York City over Two-Year Period  
• Sanatorium, by artist Pedro Reyes 
• Mute Button Intervention at Grand Army Plaza, by Improv Everywhere

Located in Manhattan's West Side, the High Line is a 1.5 mile urban park built upon a former aerial railroad track.

Civic Space Park offers residents, workers, ASU students and downtown visitors a park with unique urban design, sustainable construction and operational features and a landmark public sculpture.  The park, which opened in April, 2009, utilizes sustainable design techniques to generate power, keep the area cool and capture rain water.

Through funding of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Hope VI program, this project will facilitate the phased demolition of old housing units and construction of new, energy efficient housing units with a variety of home ownership and affordable rental opportunities.

The initiative's project helped create a mixed use, mixed income housing development with features such as a clubhouse, community garden and greenspace. Fellwood is also a early participant in the US Green Building Council's LEED for Neighborhood Development pilot program.

Described as an oasis within St. Louis, City Garden is a 2.9 acre urban park boasting 24/7 access and art and sculpture pieces envious of art museums.