The federal government can improve housing choices and remove barriers to investing in urban areas, and especially in poor neighborhoods and without additional subsidy, simply by reforming the outdated program rules inhibiting mixed-use.
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Daniel Kay Hertz, a Senior Fellow at City Observatory, joins the Strong Towns Podcast this week to talk about housing finance and how it impacts disadvantaged neighborhoods.
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What is the true value of walkable neighborhoods? Why do we need them and desire them so much?
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In our dense cities where land is valuable and housing is expensive, why is parking cheaper than rent?
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San Francisco's Mission District is an example of everything that makes a Strong Town work: incremental development, urbanism oriented to people rather than cars, a deeply rooted local economy, and a distinctive sense of place. It's also in peril because of decades of collective failure to allow more places like it to be built.
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There’s a weird war raging these days between people who advocate high rise living in the urban core and folks who can’t stand to live in anything but a fully detached home on a quarter acre lot. I always choose the thing in the middle. I’m a Main Street kind of guy.
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In spite of the fact that ⅓ of all American are renting their housing, there seems to be a notion in many neighborhoods and towns that owners are the only residents who are going to be valuable members of their communities. Instead, renters should be more fully welcomed into their neighborhoods and respected as the diverse, engaged community members that they can be.
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Comprehensive affordable housing that actually benefits a community is not just cheap housing.
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Last week, I was pulled into a task force conversation on affordable housing by a couple local champions. The situation is this: our government operating subsidies for affordable housing are drying up. I'm putting together a "next-steps" sort of document for this task force and my brain keeps running in circles. I'd love to crowdsource from the best. Please fill me in on your Strong Towns approach to affordable housing in the comments. What would you do?
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Your town is not strong if some of your residents lack homes.
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