Top Ten Ways Planners Can Encourage Affordable Housing Development
Housing Choice and Affordability is the American Planning Association’s new ’supertopic’ slated to receive greater consideration over the next couple of years. In an effort to make this ’supertopic’ an issue for planners everywhere, the APA has developed a list of the top ten ways in which planners can support affordable housing. These precepts will help them encourage greater housing choice within their community.
10 Things Planners Can Do to Support Housing Choice and Affordability
1. Demonstrate how the entire community will benefit from affordable housing.
2. Conduct a housing needs assessment and use the results to craft a housing plan that responds to your community’s unique needs.
3. Help preserve existing housing stock. Encourage your community to maintain affordable housing units and replace units lost to redevelopment.
4. Implement development practices, plans, and regulations that result in innovative and diverse housing choices such as cluster housing, single room occupancy developments, mixed-income housing and accessory dwelling units.
5. Encourage universal design by enforcing federal and state accessibility requirements and adopting visitability codes for all single and multi-family residential construction.
6. Tell your elected leaders that you support the establishment of a National Housing Trust Fund to produce, rehabilitate, and preserve housing units.
7. Incorporate energy efficiency goals and green building standards in guidelines that impact the design and construction all residential development, including affordable housing.
8. Support the reauthorization of federal housing resources such as Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), Housing Choice Vouchers, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care Homeless Assistance Programs.
9. Share examples of affordable housing projects that are high-quality, attractive, and maintain community character.
10. Learn more about the impact of housing on schools, employment, and transportation in order to craft comprehensive policies the respond to interconnectedness of planning.