First Look: Initial tools from State and Local Housing Action Plan released

Today, the National Housing Crisis Task Force is releasing the first tranche of tools in its State and Local Housing Action Plan for communities to begin to test, iterate, implement, and improve. The introduction to the State and Local Housing Action Plan summarizes all of the expected tools we plan to release in the coming months and includes a “how to” guide for the action plan. This plan shows that state and local governments have more power than they might realize, more capital than is first apparent, and more capacity than they may have utilized in recent decades. 

The first tranche includes six of what will ultimately be upwards of 15 innovative housing tools for state and local government leaders. As practitioners use the tools, the Task Force will refine, finalize and update online over the coming months, along with additional innovations that have the greatest potential to transform state and local housing ecosystems by rapidly expanding production and preservation.

The Action Plan serves as a guide for communities to implement the tools now and as a roadmap to identify how these innovations can be scaled more rapidly in more places to create more attainable housing. It is not meant to be exhaustive but rather to highlight new innovations from across the country that have the potential to be catalytic when implemented and do not rely on federal systems and programs.

The Task Force releases these innovations as the Trump Administration and Congress appear likely to carry out the most sweeping restructuring of federal policy in decades. Actions taken by the Administration have already eliminated fair housing protections and scaled back the HUD workforce. Further actions, if successful, could increase the cost of construction, reduce federal support for public housing, vouchers, and other appropriated programs and tax incentives, as well as alter the current system of primary mortgage insurance and secondary market credit enhancements.  

The end result of these actions would be to devolve greater responsibility to states and localities and to private and civic stakeholders for expanding the supply of housing, boosting homeownership, and helping low- and moderate-income households afford and access quality housing. This would amount to the greatest change in the U.S. housing ecosystem since the 1930s.

The initial tools that the Task Force is releasing span the five segments of the housing ecosystem: land, capital, construction, regulation, and governance.

Responding to a Crisis: Lessons from Atlanta’s Housing Strike Force – The Housing Strike Force is a model for how local governments can organize. It profiles Atlanta’s Housing Strike Force, led by Mayor Andre Dickens, which includes the senior executives of every major public agency that touches housing or has public land that could be developed for housing.

Housing Ballot Measures – Ballot measures create a dedicated local funding source through sales, property, or other taxes to leverage funding from the private, philanthropic, and federal sources and boost housing production and preservation. This tool has proven successful in big cities including Seattle, Los Angeles, and Denver and more rural areas, including Ingham County, MI.

Pre-Purchasing to Increase Modular Construction Capacity – The cooperative pre-purchasing of modular housing by local governments or housing authorities would drive the proliferation of modular housing factories across the nation. Cities like Cleveland are actively recruiting modular factories with the promise of using a combination of government grants and publicly owned land.

“Right-Sizing” Property Tax Incentives to Increase Housing Affordability – This tool highlights programs in Texas, Atlanta, and Chattanooga that allow for tax exemptions and tax abatements to subsidize the creation and preservation of affordable housing by for-profit and nonprofit developers. It also proposes creating an open-source model for public sector officials and developers to evaluate property incentive programs.

Expanding Housing Supply: A Call for Municipal Property Advisors – By engaging a real estate advisor, local and state governments can identify and redevelop publicly owned properties that have sat underutilized for years, or decades in some cases, for community benefit. This tool profiles Austin’s hiring of third-party entities to manage the disposition and repositioning of its public assets and drive their redevelopment with a focus on housing.

Land Use, Permitting, and Building Code Reform: A Path Forward – Reducing permitting timelines and regulatory barriers through land use, permitting, and building code reforms ultimately helps reduce housing production costs and other barriers to housing creation. This tool emphasizes the critical importance of coalition building and state leadership.

The Action Plan’s tools are complementary, and implementing multiple tools across the segments simultaneously could have a catalytic impact in a region. Additionally, the Action Plan connects the roles of different actors in the housing ecosystem — state governments and housing finance agencies, local governments and public housing authorities, philanthropies, private sources of capital, and private companies — serving as a node between traditionally siloed components of the ecosystem to more efficiently diffuse innovations across the country. 

As we continue to finalize the Action Plan, we will update and add to these tools. An overview of the upcoming tools is available in the introduction to the State and Local Housing Action Plan. We hope you will take the time to review them and identify how your community can begin working toward implementing some or all of these innovative practices. If you have questions or feedback, please contact us.