Policies against gentrification

Policy1:  Aggressively build middle-income housing. 

    Thousands of middle-income households today cannot afford to rent or buy in Roxbury. New construction home prices are at $550,000, requiring an income of $150,000 to buy. The city is selling its stock of small vacant lots to developers to build middle-income housing, but that’s not nearly enough to prevent displacement. We need a much more aggressive middle-income housing production program including investment of city subsidies. The city should resist calls to devote all of the city’s housing resources in low-income housing production.

Policy 2:  Reduce or freeze property taxes to protect long-time residents.

   Major cities are considering tax programs to help retain long-time homeowners in at-risk neighborhoods. In Boston, the city council recently passed a bill allowing homeowners whose taxes have grown by 10 percent or more to defer property tax payments until they sell. Approval of the state legislature is required.

Policy 3:  Protect senior homeowners. 

In Boston, a major concern is that low- and moderate-income seniors are choosing to sell because they cannot afford rising property taxes in gentrifying neighborhoods and cannot afford the upkeep on their homes. The city should dramatically increase funding for existing senior home repair programs, and these programs should prioritize gentrifying neighborhoods. The existing property tax deferral available for Boston seniors with incomes under $55,000 should be vigorously marketed in gentrifying neighborhoods. Seniors owning and living in 2- and 3-family homes in at-risk areas should be rewarded for keeping rents affordable.

Policy 4:  Prohibit large-scale luxury development in at-risk neighborhoods.

     The single biggest cause of displacement is large-scale, high-cost housing development. Boston should accordingly promote small- and medium-scale, mixed-income development in at-risk neighborhoods like Roxbury, and forbid market-rate, large-scale development. 

Policy 5:  Create a stabilization voucher. 

Some community development advocates propose that the federal government create a new type of housing voucher, to be awarded to long-time residents of low-income communities to help them stay when gentrification poses a risk. I call this a stabilization voucher, because it retains low-income residents to help stabilize communities by avoiding displacement.

Policy 6:  Change the fair housing rules.

 In order to provide federal resources disproportionately in at-risk majority-minority neighborhoods, such as the stabilization voucher described above, the fair housing rules need to be re-written. Traditional fair housing rules can discourage equitable investment in at-risk neighborhoods, based on policies opposing concentrations of poverty and favoring relocation to suburban “opportunity communities”. Fair housing instead should affirmatively promote equitable investment in emerging urban opportunity communities--the neighborhoods of color at-risk of gentrification.

Policy 7:  Production! 

According to the Metro Area Planning Council, we have to build 14,000 units a year in order to meet the demand for housing in metro Boston.  However, actual annual production has ranged from 4,000 to 9,000 units. In the long term, the only way to meet demand and stop gentrification is to make it much easier to build more housing in Boston and the region. Even new luxury housing will help meet this goal, but these developments should be confined to Boston’s high-cost ghettos—Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Fenway, the Seaport and downtown (after carving out a buffer zone protecting Chinatown).



Sources: http://www.rooflines.org/3731/7_policies_that_could_prevent_gentrification/