There is a large shortage of affordable housing across Europe. In high‐demand urban areas housing shortages lead to unaffordable prices for many target groups. This book explores innovations to support a sufficient supply of affordable and sustainable rental housing. Affordable housing is increasingly developed, financed and managed by a mix of market, state, third sector and community actors. Recent decades in large parts of the Western world have consecutively shown state-dominated, non-profit housing sectors, an increased role for market forces and the private sector, and the rise of initiatives by citizens and local communities. The variety of hybrid governance and finance arrangements is predicted to increase further, leading to new affordable housing delivery and management models. This book explores these innovations, with a focus on developments across Europe, and comparative chapters from the USA and Australia. The book presents new thinking in collaborative housing, co-production and accompanying finance mechanisms in order to support the quantity and the quality of affordable rental housing. Combining academic robustness with practical relevance, chapters are written by renowned housing researchers in collaboration with practitioners from the housing sector. The book not only presents, compares and contrasts affordable housing solutions, but also explores the transferability of innovations to other countries. The book is essential reading for researchers and professionals in housing, social policy, urban planning and finance.

Presents a lively in-depth look at the efforts and struggles of the New York City Housing Partnership to build moderate and middle-income housing in New York City.

The community land trust (CLT) movement is young but expanding rapidly. Nearly 20 community land trusts are started every year as either new nonprofits or as programs or subsidiaries of existing organizations. Fueling this proliferation is a dramatic increase in local government investment and involvement. Over the past decade, a growing number of cities and counties have chosen not only to support existing CLTs, but also to start new ones, actively guiding urban development and sponsoring affordable housing initiatives. Two key policy needs are driving increased city and county interest in CLTs, particularly in jurisdictions that put a social priority on promoting homeownership for lower-income families and a fiscal priority on protecting the public's investment in affordable housing. Long-term preservation of housing subsidies. With local governments now assuming greater responsibility for creating affordable housing, policy makers must find ways to ensure that their investments have a sustained impact. CLT ownership of the land, along with durable affordability controls over the resale of any housing built on that land, ensures that municipally subsidized homes remain available for lower-income homebuyers for generations to come. Long-term stewardship of housing. Preserving housing affordability requires long-term monitoring and enforcement, an administrative burden that local governments are neither equipped for nor generally interested in taking on. CLTs are well positioned to play this stewardship role by administering the municipality's eligibility, affordability, and occupancy controls, while also "backstopping" lower-income owners to protect subsidized homes against loss through deferred maintenance or mortgage foreclosure. Municipal support comes in a variety of forms, depending on how well established the CLT is. For example, local governments may offer administrative or financial support during the planning and startup phase, followed by donations of city-owned land and grants or low-interest loans for developing and financing projects. They may help a CLT acquire and preserve housing provided by private developers to comply with inclusionary zoning, density bonuses, and other mandates or concessions. As the CLT builds its portfolio, municipalities may provide capacity grants to help support its operations. Finally, local jurisdictions may assist CLTs by revising their tax assessment practices to ensure fair treatment of resale-restricted homes built on their lands. As welcome as their support has been, local governments may inadvertently structure CLT funding and oversight in ways that undermine the effectiveness of the very model they are attempting to support. The challenge lies in finding the most constructive ways of putting municipal resources to work in pursuit of common objectives. Based on a review of three dozen municipal programs and in-depth interviews with local officials and CLT practitioners, this report describes the mechanisms and methods that cities across the country are using to structure their investment in CLT startups, projects, and operations. In addition to describing the full range of options for providing municipal support, the report highlights specific model practices for rendering that assistance. These practices have the most potential to balance the interests of all parties by: protecting the public's investment in affordable housing; expanding and preserving access to homeownership for households excluded from the market; stabilizing neighborhoods buffeted by cycles of disinvestment or reinvestment; and ensuring accountability to funders, taxpayers, and the communities served by the CLT. The city-CLT relationship continues to evolve. This report ends with a discussion of three emerging trends: shifts in the city's role from supporter to instigator, and from participant to g

With the ongoing recession and housing crisis, it has never been more important to understand the federal and state governments' roles in affordable housing. The Creation of a Federal Partnership takes a fresh look at the history of national and state housing policy by examining the role played by state housing agencies since the 1970s. Establishing new ground in the field, this volume discusses how the relationship between the federal and state levels has evolved over time. The result, Margaret M. Brassil argues, is that the federal government's broad policy guidelines allow states to better address their own social issues, an improvement for policy and ultimately for the people it serves.