Adding an affordable ownership option to inclusionary housing

I was recently at a meeting of artists, teachers, and residents. Topic: displacement. We had a powerful discussion about ownership. (Of 35 people in the room, 4 owned their homes.) It's a fact that community groups, long term renters, and those who work to improve their neighborhood end up raising property values, benefitting landlords and inevitably, it seems, driving themselves out.

This really struck me because, as a renter, and one who works to make this neighborhood better, I am very close to being priced out of my apartment. My neighbors, who have lived in Williamsburg for three generations, are also renters and facing the same problem.

I've never thought I could or would ever own my home. I'm a writer, after all. But it's shocking to me how disenfranchised those who do not own homes really are. It is those who own buildings who can sell to developers, or rent to bars, and other things that have a material effect on the day-to-day life of everyone else in the neighborhood. It's perfectly easy for me to see how the housing crisis happened and all those bad loans were made. People who feel they have no voice or power are going to grasp at it, even if it is offered by a huckster. Or a bank. (I know, home ownership doesn't mean your life becomes butterflies and roses, and we are lucky to have many owners who are fighting irresponsible development and other woes, but let's face it: renters are the ones who get displaced.)

One solution to this is to work to make responsible property acquisition more possible to those already in the community. Which is why I was very interested to read about an update to the city's community housing program that will add an ownership option to the inclusionary housing program. It gives developers a floor area increase in exchange for creating a permanently affordable home ownership program for some of their units. Currently in this program the affordable housing units that are created are al rental units. There's a presentation of the plan here.

I'm sure there are all sorts of devils in the details. Is it worth letting developers build bigger monsters in order to promote ownership among lower-income groups? Will the units created (which can include rehabbing existing offsite units) be shoddily constructed, or so far offsite that they don't solve the displacement problem. But still I am interested to see that the city, way off there on the other side of the river, is talking about the same kinds of things that we are talking about over here. I think the group I was meeting with is going to come up with some creative ways to help residents fight displacement as well. It's something that should concern all of us--and I mean displacement of manufacturing and other businesses as well as residents.

I read about this on the excellent Campaign for Community-Based Planning blog


Photo by azure, via a Creative Commons license