Posted by:
Steve Dubb
Permanent affordability strategies gain new prominence
A new website, based on the research work of Rick Jacobus of Burlington Associates, who has served as a consultant for a number of community land trusts, and Jeffrey Lubell of the Center of Housing Policy, with financial support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, provides an important new resource for making the concept of “shared equity housing” accessible to community activists and policymakers.
One interesting feature of their work is how they situate community land trusts on a continuum of affordable housing policies. As the authors point out, community land trusts are really one of a number of forms of shared equity (related forms include limited equity cooperatives and deed-restricted housing). The shared equity strategy community land trusts and related forms employ sits between rental housing on the one end (where the resident gains no equity) and homeownership (where the resident gains the entire amount of the equity gain).
The materials on the site demonstrate the benefits that community land trusts can provide in better leveraging subsidy dollars to promote multi-generational housing affordability. There is also considerable discussion of how changes in “shared equity” formulas can affect housing outcomes, including an interactive spreadsheet that allows users to see how different shared equity strategies will work based on area home prices and other factors and thus facilitate customization to meet a given community’s needs.