Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse
Strategy-of-the-Month Club
August 2008
As many communities struggle to provide
affordable
housing options for their teachers,
police officers, fire
fighters, paramedics, and other workers,
there is a need for
state and local governments to step
in to implement policies
that will have a substantial impact
on increasing the
affordable housing supply. The Center
for Housing Policy
has published a handbook, "Increasing
the Availability of
Affordable Homes," with
22 high-impact solutions that state
and local governments can adopt to
encourage affordable
workforce housing development.
The solutions, which are easily adapted
to meet the unique
needs of a community, are broadly categorized
under six
strategies for affordable housing preservation
and
production. Some of the strategies
include increasing the
amount of land available for housing,
reducing regulatory
barriers, and preserving existing affordable
homes. To
increase housing production, the handbook
recommends
that local governments rezone larger
tracts of land for
residential purposes, and allocate
tax-foreclosed properties
for affordable housing purposes. There
are also examples
of expedited permitting and revised
impact fee structures
that can decrease housing costs, augmented
by strategies
for reducing lengthy administrative
approval processes and
high development fees. Other strategies
include offering tax
abatements to stimulate construction
and rehabilitation,
establishing incentives to increase
the housing supply,
adopting building codes that facilitate
rehabilitation of
existing homes, and creating housing
trust funds.
To view the complete handbook and its
examples of real-
world solutions adopted by communities
across the nation,
please visit https://www.huduser.gov/rbc/search/rbcdetails.asp?DocId=1595.
We hope this information proves useful
in your efforts to
grow your region's affordable housing
stock. If you have
regulatory reform strategies or resources
that you'd like to
share, send us an email at rbcsubmit@huduser.gov,
call us
at 1-800-245-2691 (option 4), or visit
our website
at www.regbarriers.org.
Feel free to forward this message to
anyone who is working
to reduce regulatory barriers to affordable
housing.
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