Issues Community Revitalization Legislation Needs to Address:

Affordable Housing

One argument that is often used against revitalization efforts is that they simply lead to gentrification and that increased housing prices drive low income residents out of their neighborhoods. Overall, increasing housing values are a good sign for communities. Higher housing prices demonstrate that people value the neighborhood and want to live there. In addition, higher property values improve local economies by increasing an area’s tax base. However, while higher housing prices are good for communities, provisions should be made to insure that lower income residents are not forced out of their area’s housing market. It is important for revitalization initiatives to include programs that will encourage the development of affordable housing in revitalized areas.

“Taming Sprawl with Affordable Housing,” by Miriam Axel-Lute, Associate Director, National Housing Institute

Public Schools

Many experts argue that the single strongest factor driving families out of urban neighborhoods and into the suburbs is the lack of quality public schools. In many underprivileged urban neighborhoods, the schools are suffering from physical deterioration, overcrowding, chronic absenteeism, and violence. These conditions do not create a learning environment that parents want to send their kids into so they move to economically homogeneous new neighborhoods where the schools are safe and well-funded. As urban schools crumble and middle class families move to suburbs, new schools need to be built. This need for new suburban schools drains the tax base from deteriorating urban schools. In addition, new schools are typically built in roughly the same style as suburban shopping centers, since school districts have large acreage requirements. This results in the disincentive to build where land prices are high and strongly discourages construction of new schools in the city. The new schools thus occupy large tracts of land, are surrounded by huge parking lots, the buildings lack architectural merit, there is little sense of connection between the school and the community, and the automobile is the only viable mode of transportation to get to them.

“Why Johnny Can’t Walk to School,” a report by the National Trust for Historic Preservation

Infrastructure Deterioration

Unsightly public spaces and deteriorating physical structures are common in older urban neighborhoods. In order to revitalize communities, it is important to improve and maintain physical elements such as roads, sidewalks, bridges, transit stations, etc. When infrastructure is left to crumble, the people and businesses who can afford to live somewhere else pick up and move. The remaining residents are left with few employment opportunities, surrounded by deteriorating public spaces, and feeling abandoned and hopeless. This contributes to increases in crime and poverty.

Urban Neighborhood Decline Has a Disproportionate Impact on Minorities

Racial segregation of schools and discrimination against minorities by employers are no longer legally or socially acceptable policies. However, in spite the fact that overtly racist polices are no longer tolerated, schools are still highly segregated and funded unequally, and minorities often do not have access to the same job opportunities as whites. Sprawl and the economic decline of urban neighborhoods are part of the reason racial problems still exist.

The Environmental Justice Resource Center: “Race, Equity, and Smart Growth: Why People of Color Must Speak for Themselves” by Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D. Glenn S. Johnson, Ph.D. Angel O. Torres, M.C.P.

SERC’s “Environmental Justice” policy issues package.

Spatial Mismatch

Spatial mismatch refers to an imbalance between the amount of housing in an area and the number of jobs available for residents. The impacts of this problem are most often felt by low-income residents of older neighborhoods in central cities or interior suburbs. Recent decades have seen the large-scale relocation of retail and industrial operations away from the cores of cities and into the peripheries of urban areas. This exodus has removed low-skilled jobs from the neighborhoods where they are most needed. Housing in affluent suburbs is typically out of the price range of low-income residents of older neighborhoods and they often do not have easy access to the information needed to learn about suburban job opportunities or the transportation needed to commute to these jobs. In order to effectively address this problem, legislation must take steps to bring jobs back into low-income neighborhoods, provide affordable housing in the suburbs, and improve public transportation networks to help low-income residents travel within the region

Legislative Tools for Community Revitalization:

Inclusionary Zoning

Inclusionary zoning is a tool that can ensure an adequate supply of affordable housing while encouraging economic integration and community revitalization. Inclusionary zoning laws typically mandate the construction of a specific number of affordable housing units in new developments that are above a certain density. Neighborhoods that are integrated with respect to the income of residents are typically more interesting and naturally more efficient because they contain a range of different types of workers. Inclusionary zoning is an effective way to create economically integrated neighborhoods with adequate affordable housing and without an over-concentration of low-income residents. Inclusionary zoning creates housing opportunities for the poor without separating them from middle income neighborhoods and isolating them from economic opportunities. Montgomery County, MD provides an example of the effectiveness of inclusionary zoning programs. The county’s Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit program mandates the creation of affordable housing in large developments and 11,000 affordable housing units have been created in the two and one-half decades since this ordinance was enacted.

Center for Policy Alternatives: Inclusionary Zoning

Brown, Karen Destorel. “Expanding Affordable Housing Through Inclusionary Zoning: Lessons from the Washington Metropolitan Area.” October 2001. The Brookings Institution on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. May 2003 <http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/es/urban/publications/inclusionary.pdf>.

Burchell, Robert, et al. “Inclusionary Zoning: A Viable Solution to the Affordable Housing Crisis?” October 2000. New Century Housing. May 2003 <http://www.inhousing.org/NHC-Report/NHC-Main.htm>.

Smart Building Codes

Today’s building codes are designed for new construction, but when applied to yesterday’s buildings they can pose inflexible barriers to redevelopment. One simple way in which policy-makers can encourage redevelopment is by reviewing and updating zoning and building codes to remove unneeded obstacles to the redevelopment of existing buildings. For example, both New Jersey and Maryland have adopted Smart Building Codes. New Jersey’s smart code legislation was enacted in 1997 and in three years the state experienced an eight percent increase in rehabilitation projects statewide. New Jersey cities have been more dramatically affected, including a sixty percent increase in rehabilitation projects in Newark and an eighty three percent increase in rehabilitation projects in Jersey City. Maryland adopted legislation modeled after that of New Jersey in 2000. Specifically, Senate Bill 207 allows for rehabilitation to take place in only one area of the building, thus reducing rehabilitation costs, and it is designed to end codes mandating urban sprawl.

Smart Growth America: Rehabilitation Codes

Beaumont, Constance E. “Testimony for National Smart Growth Coalition.” Maryland Senate Economic and Environmental Affairs Committee. 18 February 2000. National Trust for Historic Preservation. May 2003 <http://www.nationaltrust.org/news/docs/20000218_beaumont.html>.

See SERC’s sample Building Rehabilitation Code Act.

Foster Regionalism

Efforts to revitalize communities often focus exclusively on a few blocks of an urban area that are particularly troubled. In order to effectively address the root causes of urban decay, legislators need to adopt a regional approach. As urban areas expand and cover more land, they transcend old political boundaries. In many of the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, multiple cities, counties, and sometimes states have jurisdiction over part(s) of the same urban area. Issues such as housing, transportation, jobs, schools, race-relations, and the environment are now region-wide concerns. State legislatures need to create mechanisms that allow all the governmental bodies in metropolitan areas to collaborate and make policy decisions together. Metropolitan Planning Organizations are an example of a method being used to coordinate federal, state, and local transportation funding. These organizations were established through federal transportation legislation, ISTEA TEA-21. This landmark legislation requires that a portion of Surface Transportation Program funds be made available for expenditure in metropolitan areas with a population over 200,000. ISTEA TEA-21 also requires that transportation project selection be conducted through the metropolitan planning process. This is one mechanism that has brought shared responsibility for highway and transit investment decisions in metropolitan regions. For more information on ISTEA and Metropolitan Planning Organizations please go to the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations’ website.

The Regionalist, a quarterly publication produced jointly by the National Association of Regional Councils through its Institute for The Regional Community and by the Schaefer Center for Public Policy at The University of Baltimore.

“How to Heal Our Cities,” Sierra Magazine talks with regionalist Myron Orfield

The Trust for Public Land: “Thinking Regionally – A Conversation with Peter Calthorpe”

Fix-It-First Policy for Transportation Infrastructure Improvements

Before building new roads in the outskirts of town, cities should first make sure all the existing roads are adequately maintained. Fix-it-first legislation ensures that localities will bring existing roads and transit systems up to par before building new roads.

For more information on the fix-it-first policy, see SERC’s “Traffic Congestion Relief” policy issues package.

Historic Preservation

Historically significant and architecturally interesting buildings are rarely found next to suburban shopping malls or in new housing subdivisions. Rather, they are located in older neighborhoods near the center of cities. Sadly, as older neighborhoods decline economically, historic buildings are often abandoned and allowed to crumble. An important element of community revitalization efforts should be to rehabilitate and protect historic buildings.

National Trust for Historic Preservation

Mixed Use Development

Mixed use developments include multiple uses in one project. For example, a building or buildings that incorporate retail space on the bottom floors and residential or office space on the upper floors. Providing multiple uses in one area creates more interesting and efficient spaces as well as increasing density, and reducing development pressure on forests and farmlands. Mixed use developments often contain residential space located in close proximity to employment opportunities, which can reduce traffic congestion exasperated by long commutes.

Community Development Exchange

Improve Public Schools and Remove Acreage Requirements

Perhaps the strongest force driving middle class families out of interior urban neighborhoods is the quality of public schools. Any community revitalization program needs to include efforts to improve public schools in the targeted area. One way to do this is to change the rules to allow for building and redevelopment of schools in preexisting communities. Federal school construction guidelines, which local school boards often use in their decision-making process, favor building new facilities instead of revitalizing older ones. The federal recommendations for a high school are, for example, 30 acres of land plus one acre for every 100 students. The result of this policy is huge institutional-sized complexes surrounded by acres of parking lots and athletic facilities whose locations distance students from their neighborhoods and virtually eliminate the centuries-old pastime of walking to school, or from school to the public library and local stores. By eliminating acreage requirements, schools can be built within communities, instead of outside them.

National Trust For Historic Preservation

Brownfields Redevelopment Programs

The term “brownfields” refers to former industrial sites that are underused or abandoned and often polluted. These sites are often found in low income urban neighborhoods and are wastes of space and health hazards when they are allowed to remain vacant. State governments can enact legislation to encourage developers to clean up brownfields and redevelop them into valuable property. Brownfield redevelopment eliminates environmental hazards and boosts the local economies of rundown neighborhoods.

For more information about cleaning up brownfields, see SERC’s “Cleaning up Brownfields” policy issues package.