Search results
Jun 24, 2022 · Most of the current government’s housing plans are based on recommendations from the Housing Affordability Task Force Report published in February 2022. The report recommends the development of 1.5 million homes over the next decade which means doubling the rate of housing construction.
Ensure secure and stable housing: States can help strengthen legal protections for low-income renters (including ensuring legal representation for low-income tenants facing eviction), expand funding for rental assistance, and channel more investment to housing for extremely low–income households.
Nov 15, 2021 · Although specific policy priorities and strategies will vary across states, based on underlying housing market conditions, most states could benefit from policies to address the next...
Apr 4, 2024 · Across the country, there are states and municipalities tackling the same pervasive but tedious problem: overly restrictive zoning that makes it challenging or nearly impossible to build new...
- Victoria Guida
- Overview
- How Place-Based Programs Work, and Why They Disappoint
- Strategies to Improve Targeting of Place-Based Programs
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Descriptions of Major Place-Based Programs
- Endnotes
Data from an array of sources has shown that Americans who grow up in economically distressed areas experience lower-performing schools, higher crime rates, a variety of health and environmental hazards, and less upward mobility. The consequences of these disadvantages have been on stark display during the coronavirus pandemic as low-income neighbo...
For decades, local, state, and federal policymakers have pursued initiatives to strengthen the economies of distressed areas. Geographically targeted tax breaks and other financial incentives for businesses, developers, and investors emerged as governments’ predominant approach in the 1970s and 1980s as policymakers tried to reverse population loss...
Target programs using quantitative measures
Former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) once declared that tax increment financing was “the only game in town” for promoting development in his city.14 Although the program is intended to redevelop struggling areas, Chicago’s leaders have created TIF districts not only in distressed communities, but also in some of the city’s most prosperous neighborhoods in order to fund prominent development projects. In Daley’s time, TIF was used to build luxury office developments in Chicago’s downtown...
Assess geographic targeting systematically
In 2016, the staff of Maryland’s Department of Legislative Services (DLS)—which conducts regular evaluations of place-based programs that offer insights on targeting—studied a tax credit for rehabilitating historic buildings and determined that the program’s targeting rules were only partially achieving the intended goals.25 In the years preceding the DLS review, Maryland lawmakers had added provisions to direct benefits toward localities that historically had been underrepresented in the pro...
Regularly update the set of eligible locations
In 2008, the transformation of Washington, D.C.’s NoMa neighborhood was national news. The New York Times declared NoMa, short for “north of Massachusetts Avenue,” to be “Washington's newest and hottest commercial neighborhood, with residential development expected to follow.” The construction of a subway station, the Timesreported, had helped set off a building boom in a neighborhood that had “formerly held mainly parking lots, warehouses and light industry.”36 Federal government agencies we...
Local, state, and federal policymakers have committed billions of dollars to economic development programs designed to strengthen distressed areas. Too often, however, these programs have been poorly targeted so that benefits accrue to wealthier communities instead. And although all levels of government have a role to play in place-based economic d...
Community Development Block Grant
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) offers billions of dollars to city and county governments each year through the Community Development Block Grant program. Local governments must use the program in service of three primary goals: fighting blight, helping low- and moderate-income people, and meeting urgent public health and welfare needs in the community. However, those goals are general enough that localities can use CDBG funds for a wide range of purposes, such as h...
Enterprise zones
Most states have created programs that offer tax breaks to companies that locate or expand in designated areas. How these “enterprise zone” programs function differs across states, but many follow roughly the same framework. Generally, state laws set standards designed to limit the zones to distressed areas. These standards frequently involve quantitative criteria, including unemployment and poverty rates, per capita income, and population growth and sometimes more subjective measures, such a...
Job creation and investment tax credits
Most states offer tax credits to select businesses in exchange for creating jobs or making capital investments such as building a new facility. The details of how the credits work vary from state to state, but many of the programs share some commonalities. They often involve multiyear performance agreements between companies and the state, with the credits’ value linked to the number of jobs added or the cost of capital investments made. Generally, the programs seek to encourage businesses to...
A. von Hoffman, “The Past, Present, and Future of Community Development in the United States,” in Investing in What Works for America’s Communities (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, 2012), ht...D.A. Kenyon, A.H. Langley, and B.P. Paquin, “Rethinking Property Tax Incentives for Business” (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012), 5, https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/policy-focus-repo...T.J. Bartik, “A New Panel Database on Business Incentives for Economic Development Offered by State and Local Governments in the United States” (W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2017)...R. Briffault, “The Most Popular Tool: Tax Increment Financing and the Political Economy of Local Government,” University of Chicago Law Review 77, no. 1 (2010): 65, https://chicagounbound.uchicago....Aug 21, 2023 · The eight policies are: The Affordable Housing Bond in Raleigh, North Carolina, which provides $80.0 million in affordable housing dollars; The 2021 expansion of the Virginia Housing Trust Fund, which provides additional funding to promote affordable housing and efforts to reduce homelessness;
People also ask
What are the current housing plans based on?
Who is responsible for housing policy & programs?
Do state policymakers have a role in place-based economic development?
How can municipalities accelerate the supply and creation of affordable housing?
Why is housing development so controversial?
Do economic development programs work for distressed communities?
Global State of National Urban Policy 2024. A robust national urban policy (NUP) facilitates achieving sustainable urban development as a shared responsibility across levels of government and amongst all actors by setting a shared vision, providing adequate coordination mechanisms, and guiding investments to address national and subnational ...
