Regulatory Barriers - Nation Call To Action: Toolkits

This document, prepared by the Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI), contains a number of affordable housing policy suggestions for the city of Evanston, Illinois. Included in the document is a brief description of each recommendation, as well as case studies illustrating how the recommended action is used elsewhere. The authors describe affordable housing trust funds, community land trusts, new revenue sources, regional housing programs, employer-assisted housing, and property rehabilitation and sale programs. For new local revenue sources, the authors suggest the city consider commercial linkage fees, real estate transfer tax, and a tear down fee and tax. Regulatory tools they discuss include flexible zoning tools which consist of using inclusionary zoning, allowing more flexible rehabilitation codes, providing accessory dwelling units, and increasing the amount of land zoned for multifamily and mixed use developments.

The BPI provides a list of questions and answers for each of the concepts presented which describe the concept, how it works, and why the city should use it. The authors provide a series of case studies that examine various aspects of the suggested strategies. They examine housing trust funds in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Chicago, Illinois; San Diego, California; and Santa Fe, New Mexico. They examine inclusionary zoning programs in Davis, California; Newton, Massachusetts; Montgomery County, Maryland; Burlington, Vermont; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Durham, North Carolina. Community land trust linkage programs and employer-assisted housing initiatives from a number of communities are considered by the authors.