Shifting the Housing Policy Paradigm

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• Learn how economic fundamentals have changed and how these shifts have compromised the effectiveness of the common resources, tools, and strategies we use to address housing affordability today.
• Think more critically about how our tools are (or are not) coping with higher barriers to entry, the disappearance of middle-income housing, gentrification, and displacement.
• Become a partner in building a new paradigm that more effectively, equitably, and comprehensively identifies and targets changed fundamentals in our own communities to better remedy housing and economic systems.

MORE SESSION DETAILS

Their cities are at the forefront of adopting some of the country’s most progressive, creative, and localized solutions to housing-affordability problems. Hear senior managers of housing, economic development, and public policy from Denver, Nashville, and Portland discuss the multi-faceted challenges confronting their communities and how their solutions have or haven’t hit the mark. They answer two questions. First, how have the problems changed since the establishment of our standard “tool box” of approaches? Second, how have today’s problems exacerbated the barrier to entry, scraped away our middle-income housing inventory, led to gentrification and displacement, and led to decreased workforce availability, all of which ripple through our economies affecting quality of life and economic prosperity? And, third, what might more effective, equitable, and comprehensive approaches look like if we begin to identify and target the changed fundamental indicators of our housing and economic systems more directly? While one-off projects, policies, and partnerships that solved a problem in someone else’s community may be intriguing, we want to engage this panel and you (our audience) in a broader discussion that reflects on these stories and refreshes our collective understanding of how we could be managing change in our communities better.