Community of Practice 2024: Summary Report

Throughout the convening, speakers, panelists, and attendees encouraged one another to identify ways to take action today in support of equitable housing and community development in their communities. A recurring thread throughout the discussions was the importance of following the data, sharing insights and learning from each other’s successes. Participants highlighted the power of setting achievable goals tied to immediate actions. These efforts provide a starting point for meaningful progress—steps that will continually shape our communities and cities into places anyone would want to call home.

See highlights from the breakout sessions below: 

• ADDRESSING SYSTEMIC BIAS explored how cities assess and redress systemic bias in key local housing market functions, such as mortgage lending, home appraisals, property tax assessments, and property transfer. It emphasized the role of legal aid, proactive planning, and innovative financial tools to make housing outcomes more equitable. Targeted interventions, such as resolving tangled title and heirship complications, can preserve property equity and naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH). Additionally, non-extractive financial intermediaries like CDFIs can help individuals and small businesses who are most impacted by bias access capital, preserving and creating new avenues for wealth building.

• ENGAGING PRIVATE FUNDERS TO SUPPORT HOUSING explored the roles different types of private funders play in advancing local housing priorities, including philanthropies, CDFIs, impact investors, commercial banks, and local anchor institutions. Foundations are best positioned to drive innovative housing solutions through pilot initiatives and research, convening key stakeholders, and building political momentum. CDFIs and other impact investors can deploy capital and subsidies to directly fund affordable housing development, while signaling to commercial investors that underserved markets can offer reliable returns.

• HOUSING AS A SOCIAL DETERMINANT OF HEALTH explored the intersection between housing and health, focusing on how improved housing quality can enhance both physical and mental wellbeing for residents. Other social determinants of health that housing can influence include access to meaningful work, safe and toxin-free environments, and reliable transportation. Access to safe and stable housing is a foundation for individual health and safety as well as community cohesion and economic prosperity. The interdependence of individuals, families, and communities weaves individual wellbeing into the wellbeing of others.

• INVESTOR PURCHASING IN DISTRESSED MARKETS – UNDERSTANDING AND ADDRESSING TRENDS examined how cities monitor and respond to investor purchases of single-family homes in distressed markets. Investors tend to be most active in areas with relatively low sales prices, elevated vacancy, opportunities to build new units for sale or rent, and proximity to desirable amenities. Cities can mitigate the loss of affordability that has followed intensive investor activity by strategically acquiring vacant or distressed properties, designating publicly owned land and buildings for affordable housing, engaging landlords to preserve existing affordable housing, encouraging the acceptance of vouchers, expanding protections for renters, and incentivizing investor-owners to maintain and improve the quality of their properties.

• PRESERVING AFFORDABILITY IN RAPIDLY APPRECIATING MARKETS explored strategies for preserving housing access and maintaining local character in neighborhoods where homes prices are rising. Key themes included the need to pair data-informed strategies with sufficient funding, and to recognize that effective preservation efforts are iterative; cities must continuously identify new funding sources while monitoring market conditions at the neighborhood level to adjust their next steps. Tracking just a few selected metrics, such as home sales prices, longtime resident incomes, and subsidy expiration, can prevent data fatigue and identify places experiencing the most acute price pressure where it is still possible to preserve affordability.

• ASSESSING IMPACTS OF HOUSING INTERVENTIONS considered how cities evaluate the effectiveness of their housing investments and support programs. Participants emphasized the importance of allocating resources for impact assessment at the outset of new initiatives to ensure a focus on outcomes, not just implementation. Tracking results at the individual, neighborhood, and citywide levels can fully convey the value of the intervention, and contextualizing analyses within prevailing market conditions can best illuminate long-term neighborhood impacts. Finding reliable external partners to conduct assessments ensures the results are unbiased and more compelling to decision-makers and funders.

• INTEGRATING MARKET DATA INTO COMPREHENSIVE PLANNING explored how cities incorporate market data, such as the MVA, into comprehensive and regional planning. Communities often feel that data is used “against them.” Planners can build trust by democratizing access to data so the public has the same information as developers, and show how it can be a tool to plan with communities, not just for them. Data like the Market Value Analysis are not an end product but a tool for decision-making. Market data can validate resident experiences, push back against misconceptions, and reinforce stories that support policy and investment changes. It is essential to have data at various scales (i.e. regional, county, neighborhood) to support both community engagement and impactful policy decisions. Finally, market data should not only highlight challenges but also frame assets and opportunities, helping communities create a vision for the future.