Interested in learning about how states are identifying -- and
overcoming -- the regulatory barriers to affordable housing?
For the past eight months, HUD’s Regulatory Barriers
Clearinghouse (RBC) has been collecting and assembling a
searchable database of just this type of useful information,
so that municipalities across the nation can learn from one
another's successes in improving access to affordable housing.
In our efforts to make this information more broadly available,
we're reaching out to members of our online community -- the
4,600+ members of this listserv -- with occasional examples of
what we regard as particularly elegant solutions that have been
submitted by our members or otherwise identified through research
on the part of our staff.

The first of these comes in the form of a report, prepared in
2001 by the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic
Development (DCED), that offers solutions to more than 25
regulatory barriers. You can find the full text on the RBC website
at https://www.huduser.gov/rbc/search/rbcdetails.asp?DocId=348.
Among the report’s recommendations are suggestions that local
governments eliminate the time delay involved in allowing various
types of special exception and conditional uses by allowing those
uses automatically or "by right". In another section, the DCED
suggests that reducing required parking spaces will lower development
costs if local governments required fewer parking spaces for those
apartment units with fewer bedrooms. Many other recommendations are
contained throughout the study; some or all may be readily adaptable
to the needs of your own community.

If you or your colleagues have identified regulatory barriers or
addressed similar affordable housing issues,
send us an email at mailto:rbcsubmit@huduser.gov or visit our
Web site at http://www.regbarriers.org and let us know of the
barrier... and if applicable, any viable solution you may have
achieved. Who knows -- in addition to inclusion in our database,
you might just see your strategies highlighted in our bimonthly
newsletter Breakthroughs, or in future (and we promise, only
occasional) messages such as this.

Kind regards,

The Regulatory Barriers Clearinghouse Staff

Office of Policy Development & Research, U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development