Cities across the U.S. possess extensive but underutilized land and property assets with immense potential for addressing pressing housing challenges. Leveraging these public assets can make affordable housing projects financially viable by reducing production costs and engaging public entities as equity partners. Unlocking this potential could be part of broader initiatives to produce hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units.

The Putting Assets to Work (PAW) Initiative has worked with several U.S. cities to pioneer a replicable solution. Cities like Austin are using local procurement practices to engage third-party entities — Municipal Property Advisors (MPAs) — as intermediaries. These MPAs identify, monetize, and driving the redevelopment of underutilized public assets to advance public objectives, including affordable housing production, through private investments.

The Challenge This Tool Solves

Cities face multiple challenges in maximizing their property assets. Most U.S. localities lack a full inventory of public assets, partly because ownership is fragmented across numerous local governments and their individual departments, public authorities, and public utilities. Moreover, these separate public entities often lack the knowledge and expertise to work with public, private and nonprofit developers and financial institutions to convert public land and buildings into housing.

Types of Communities That Could Use This Tool

Governments of all levels and sizes could benefit from a new approach to identifying and developing public assets.

Expected Impacts of This Tool

The use of MPAs could potentially unlock hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units on currently underutilized public assets. Indeed, the Center for Geospatial Solutions at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy estimates that local governments own over 230,000 acres of land served by transit, with potential to support up to 5.9 million housing units.