The Lincoln Institute provides a variety of early- and mid-career fellowship opportunities for researchers. In this series, we follow up with our fellows to learn more about their work.

With a master’s degree in urban planning and a PhD in anthropology, Adriana Hurtado Tarazona has long been fascinated by the intersection of human behavior and urban form—especially how and where people choose to live. After receiving a graduate student fellowship from the Lincoln Institute’s program on Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), she spent years studying social housing megaprojects on the outskirts of Colombia’s cities, speaking at length with the people who lived in them to learn how they experienced their community and built environment.

Today, Hurtado Tarazona is an associate professor of planning, governance, and territorial development at the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies (CIDER) at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. “I teach an introductory course on land planning instruments, so I’m still talking about what the Lincoln Institute taught me back in 2005, when I went to a course in Quito,” she says.

In this conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Hurtado Tarazona discusses why housing ought to be a social policy versus an economic one, shares some of the surprising sentiments she’s heard from residents of social housing, and explains why paying people to upgrade existing homes may be a better solution than subsidizing new homebuyers.

JON GOREY: What is the general focus of your research, and how did your Lincoln Institute fellowship support that work?

ADRIANA HURTADO TARAZONA: I received the fellowship for my master’s thesis in 2006. I was doing an analysis of the impact on land values of some of the BRT infrastructure in Bogotá —the TransMilenio. It was one of the first studies; at the time, the TransMilenio had only four years of implementation, so it was very new. I was trying to document the changes in the urban space around the two big stations, from the perspective of the land market and from the perspective of the residents of the area.

It was very nice to be in that program, because I got to meet a lot of the professors linked with the Latin America program. I loved the experience. And three years ago, one of my students got the same fellowship that I got almost 20 years before. So it was really nice to now be in a different position, sponsoring my student, and she got to live the benefits of that fellowship.

JG: What are you working on now, and what are you hoping to work on next?

AHT: Right now I have four research projects—two of them are related to the main topic of my PhD thesis, which is social housing, specifically the production and urban expansion of social housing megaprojects in urban borders. One project, which we are finishing this year, is called vertical peripheries, with York University in Toronto. We analyze the subjective impact of living in the periphery, but also the impacts on urban planning and governance of this metropolitanization process, where the social housing overflows the urban limits of Colombian cities. The other one is focused on the economic impact of access to social housing. So we are going to analyze specifically how women-led households have to change their domestic economies to keep up with the costs of accessing homeownership for the first time.

The third one is the care infrastructure project, led by the University of Washington in Seattle. It’s a comparative project between Belfast, Belo Horizonte in Brazil, and Bogotá. We are trying to analyze stories of urban change in general, and specifically, in Bogotá, we are analyzing how care became a focus of urban policy, which was not the case until very recently, and we are analyzing the birth of the district CARE system as urban infrastructure. We have these new regulations that understand care infrastructure at the same status as water, sewage, and roads, which is very interesting, and we are trying to document how that could happen, under what conditions did that happen?

And another thing I’m doing with the Lincoln Institute is a small research grant from last year. The main researcher is from Brazil, and along with Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia, we’re trying to do a comparative analysis of interventions that try to support densification.

JG: What’s something surprising or unexpected you’ve learned in your research?

AHT: I have been asking people if they’re happy with their homes, in general, and the first surprise was from an urbanistic perspective. Local urbanists are very critical of these peripheral, massive, standardized, social housing megaprojects, because they are far away from the city, disconnected, with problems of accessibility. I knew all that, and I came to the fieldwork with this very critical perspective.

But then I sat with people, and the first thing they told me was, ‘No, I love this. I love the order. I love that everything is standard.’ Everything that urbanists see as the ‘unlivable city’ and the ‘nonplace,’ the people were saying, ‘No, I like this because it’s planned, it’s orderly, it’s clean.’ That was the first thing that surprised me.

And it surprised me more because they had lived before in self-constructed houses where they had more space, more flexibility of spaces, and they were better located in the city. But then when I spent time with them, I started realizing that this is part of the trade-off people make, because the housing market didn’t allow them to buy anywhere else, and they prioritized homeownership in the formal city over the time they had to spend in transport, over being close to family, to friends, to networks of support.

They knew what they were losing, but this was part of a very conscious trade-off: I am losing this, but I’m gaining this. And the thing they were gaining was the stability of their own home, even if it was small, far away, and very expensive. And that has a lot to do with the opportunities that this country gives to people for social mobility, which are narrowly focused on having access to property. Being part of the new middle class in Colombia means primarily having your own home in the formal city, not in the informal neighborhoods.

JG: When it comes to your work, what keeps you up at night? And what gives you hope?

AHT: What worries me is that housing policy in Colombia—and I think this is the case in other countries also—follows the logic of real estate agents, that the only way to solve the housing problem is to build new housing and sell it to low-income households with subsidies. But we also have lots of alternatives and lots of different ways to address the housing problem.

In Colombian cities, including Bogotá, the qualitative housing deficit is three times more than the quantitative housing deficit. So that means three times more households need better housing and not new housing. But our housing policy gives all the resources and all the attention to building new housing. Neighborhood housing upgrade programs exist, but they don’t have enough budget, they don’t have enough attention, and they are not seen as the legitimate way to solve the housing problem.

So what I really wish we would do is to change the focus and to start paying enough attention and giving enough resources to upgrading what we already have, the built city. It would be environmentally better, economically better for people. There are a lot of advantages, but of course, it’s a slower process. It doesn’t show lots of big numbers, and it doesn’t follow the interest of these real estate and financial sector agents.

What gives me hope is that we have some interventions that are showing good results. One of them is the support for densification in informal-origin neighborhoods. These are programs that recognize that there are neighborhoods of informal origin, with self-constructed homes, that are older, they have good locations in the city, they already have access to the urban goods and services and infrastructure, but they need support to grow in height.

So we have a program here that offers help in structural reinforcement, and they offer subsidies for people to build a second floor on their houses, and then that new unit they could use to live in, if they are crowded, or they could rent it to other households, so they have a new source of income. I think it’s a really innovative program, because at the same time, it ameliorates housing availability and the structural security of the houses, and also gives low-income households the opportunity to have new income from these new units.

The state is supporting a thing that will happen anyway, with or without their help. But if the state intervenes, it happens better, it happens more securely, and it’s a different way to invest public resources to solve the housing problem. But these are small pilot projects. So the thing I want to work on in the future is to figure out how to scale this up and make housing and neighborhood upgrading a more central part of urban policy.

JG: Can you talk about the connection between anthropology and urban planning?

AHT: In all my research projects, I try to understand urban processes from above and from the ground, and I think the combination of having studied anthropology and urban planning allows me to do that. It’s a very good way to understand one process from different perspectives. And specifically for technical topics, such as land management instruments or land value capture, when you talk to people that are living the process, you can amplify your understanding.

Since my master’s thesis, I’ve been curious about how people understand land value. In the contexts I studied, people are very preoccupied about the changes in land value of their properties, but they deal with those changes, or prospective changes, in very different ways.

For example, my student’s thesis was analyzing ethnographically how people deal with the uncertainty of the delays of an urban renewal plan, how they understand the prospective land value increment of their home, and how that aspiration of profit implies tensions in daily life with other values of their home, like the use value of their home.

And I have found the same thing in social housing, this constant tension between the home as a place for living and the home as an investment, from which they are interested in profiting. Even if they are very low-income households, those two narratives and values of home are always in tension, and they impact not only their individual behaviors, but also their community behaviors, and even their ways of relating to public institutions and the city.

So that’s my main curiosity, and that’s why I combine talking to people, being with people, and just spending time with them, with more technical things like analyzing documents, laws, regulations, and quantitative data, too.

JG: What’s one thing you wish more people understood about social housing?

AHT: We need to recenter housing policy as a social policy and not as an economic policy. We have the opportunity in Colombia, and other Latin American countries that have not yet fallen into hyper-financialization, to not follow the trajectory of the United States, of Spain, of places in which the housing crisis is worse now than ever; we are not yet in that state.

JG: What’s the best book you’ve read lately, or a favorite TV show you’ve been streaming?  

AHT: I really enjoyed reading Melissa García-Lamarca’s book about people in debt in Barcelona, Non-Performing Loans, Non-Performing People. It’s about the subjective impacts that living in debt has on people, and how we understand debt as not only an economic issue, but also as a moral issue.

I’m trying to link that with our new project. I’m starting to read feminist economic analysis and anthropological economic analysis, to have a very deep understanding about what living in debt, and housing debt specifically, means for people, and what impact does this have on different aspects of their daily lives. Because here, debt is not only restricted to mortgages—low-income people here have to resort to all kinds of formal and informal debt to pay their living costs. So it’s debt with a relative, debt with a bank, the mortgage, and then it also links even to criminal debt, a criminal lender, people that charge illegally high interest rates to low-income households.

I try to watch TV on really unrelated topics. I was watching Silo, which is a dystopian futurist series about people that live in a high rise, but it’s subterranean—which is really depressing! But I like these post-apocalyptic things.

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: Adriana Hurtado Tarazona of Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Credit: Courtesy photo.

That we need more affordable housing—a lot more of it—is hardly in dispute. Attainable housing is the foundation of economic and social stability for American families, and by most estimates, the shortage of available, affordable homes in the US numbers in the millions.

And yet actually building more of the affordable housing that everyone seems to agree we need remains a challenge in communities across the country, as theoretical support crashes headlong into real-world resistance and constraints.

In a December webinar hosted by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, experts dove into the devilish details to address two of the thorniest questions that tend to haunt housing discussions: Where can we locate affordable housing? And how do we pay for it?

Mapping Public, Buildable Lots

In the first of two sessions, Jeff Allenby, director of geospatial innovation at the Lincoln Institute’s Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS), shared how CGS is leveraging technology to help local policymakers get the data they need to act on housing.

“We’ve developed a unique, rapid, and robust method to unlock critical information about America’s housing stock,” Allenby said, describing Who Owns America, a unique analysis CGS developed to help local leaders understand and act on emerging issues like out-of-state investor ownership or locating underutilized lots in parcel-by-parcel detail. “It’s the same type of sophisticated insights the private sector uses to profit from residential housing, but instead we put these insights in the hands of policymakers so they can protect and preserve affordability.”

CGS cleans and standardizes parcel-level ownership data, fusing it “with authoritative sources like deed information, corporate structures, and census data to fill in gaps and paint a richer picture all in one place,” Allenby explained. “There’s never been such a severe shortage of homes in the United States,” Allenby said. “To address it, we need more housing—affordable housing—built close to where people work and where they want to live. But the big question we’re trying to answer is, where do we build it?” he added. “For us, the answer starts with data—building an inventory of available land in your area.”

Researchers and officials from across the political spectrum have expressed a growing interest in siting new housing on city- or government-owned property. That prompted CGS to evaluate all the government-owned lots across the country and their potential to support new housing, explained Reina Chano Murray, associate director at CGS. “We were curious: How much land is government owned, and how much of an impact can it truly have?” she said.

Murray demonstrated how the CGS team identified over 270,000 acres of buildable, transit-served lots owned by government agencies in major metro areas—enough acreage to support nearly two million homes at the relatively low density of seven units per acre. Most of that land, Murray noted—237,000 acres—is controlled by local governments, making them uniquely positioned to act. “Ultimately, the ability to turn these housing opportunities into reality rests with local policymakers,” she said.

The process began with identifying publicly owned land at all levels of government and scouring parcel records for keywords that would indicate government ownership, such as “Department of Transportation.” Many records are not so straightforward or standardized, though. Murray said her team has encountered “over 50 different ways to spell USA or United States of America, and the variations in naming conventions only increase” at the local level.

From there, the team winnowed the data further to include only census tracts in urban areas and economic centers — where the most housing demand exists — and further still, to areas within a quarter-mile of a transit stop with hourly service or better at rush hour. Murray’s team then removed parks and other green spaces, vital infrastructure, and public buildings, such as administrative offices, schools, community colleges, and hospitals.

To narrow it down to truly buildable lots, they excluded places located in flood hazard areas and chose parcels of at least 20,000 square feet where any existing structures occupied no more than 5 percent of the lot. “We now have a clear and data-backed answer that indicates significant opportunity for addressing the affordable housing crisis using government-owned land,” Murray said. “Our analysis identified over a quarter of a million acres of prime, development-ready land in transit-accessible, urban neighborhoods.”

Murray then presented findings from another inquiry. In response to so-called “YIGBY” laws (Yes In God’s Backyard) passed in California and Arizona—which make it easier for churches, temples, mosques, and other faith-based organizations to build housing on their properties—the Boston-based Lynch Foundation commissioned CGS to determine how much affordable housing could be built on land owned by faith-based organizations in Massachusetts.

After identifying about 7,000 properties owned by faith-based organizations statewide, a team of 15 students at Boston College “virtually visited” each site through a custom application, using Google Street View to examine each parcel and answering basic survey questions, such as whether there was developable space on-site or additional buildings not used for worship. CGS confirmed 1,973 faith-based parcels deemed to have over 203 million square feet of total developable space. At seven homes per acre, Murray said, “That’s enough land to build over 140,000 units of affordable housing in Massachusetts alone.”

The effort took less than two months to complete, from start to finish—showing plenty of potential for religious institutions to alleviate the housing shortage and for technology to help policymakers quickly and accurately identify buildable land that has been hiding in plain sight.

Funding the Future

If locating land is the first step, finding the financing to build housing on those lots is the next challenge. Lincoln Institute Senior Fellow R.J. McGrail welcomed three partners affiliated with Lincoln’s Accelerating Community Investment (ACI) initiative to discuss funding strategies for affordable housing development.

Laura Brunner, president and CEO of the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority, kicked things off on a positive note. She explained how Cincinnati, like other Midwestern cities, has been a prime target for institutional investors whose playbook involves outbidding first-time buyers to purchase single-family homes, then renting them out, often at inflated rates, locking residents out of homeownership opportunities.

But in 2022, the Port learned about a portfolio of almost 200 investor-owned rental houses that were being auctioned out of receivership. With a goal of restoring homeownership opportunities for the city’s low- and middle-income residents, the Port issued both taxable and tax-exempt bonds to enter a $15.5 million bid on the portfolio—and won.

“We first went to our nonprofit partners to ask if they would support us, and what we heard back was, ‘Yes, you have a mandate, a moral imperative to do this. We have to save these homeownership opportunities,’” Brunner said.

The plan was to rehab the vacant homes and sell them at prices affordable to buyers earning 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), while stabilizing the existing tenants and getting them prepared for eventual homeownership through home-buying education and financial counseling.

“We issued these bonds really confident that we were going to be able to take 200 homes and put them back into homeownership from rental without any subsidy, which is unheard of—all the new home construction we do requires a significant amount of subsidy,” Brunner said.

But while the receiver had claimed 10 of the properties were vacant, at least 60 of them turned out to be unoccupied—and in very bad shape. The Port has thus spent more money than expected to get the vacant houses ready for resale (and, at a local appraiser’s suggestion, to perform essential upgrades that most low-income homebuyers can’t afford to do themselves, like installing air conditioning). “When we found out the condition the houses really were in, we did need subsidy,” Brunner said. “But we’ve been successful . . . raising a number of grants that allow us to continue to keep the price down as much as possible.”

To date the Port has rehabbed and sold half of the 60 vacant homes at an average price of $150,000. “These are low- and moderate-income Black and brown neighborhoods [where residents] have basically not had an opportunity to purchase a home because such a high percentage were owned by these investors, and so we’re suppressing the sales price as much as we can,” she said.

The Port, which has also created affordable housing through a local land bank it’s managed since 2011, requires homebuyers to occupy its homes for at least five years before reselling. And after more than a decade of doing so, their efforts are creating real neighborhood wealth, Brunner said.

“We’ve done it long enough now that we’ve had about 30 people that have subsequently sold their house, and what we found is that those homeowners had a profit of 52 percent,” Brunner said. “So it proves that, even in these deeply distressed neighborhoods, we are making a market and . . . there’s wealth creation opportunity, which is what we’re all about.”

Plugging Gaps with Flexible Funding

MassHousing, the state housing finance agency for Massachusetts, also views homeownership as a way to help close the racial wealth gap, said Executive Director Chrystal Kornegay. “We sell tax-exempt and taxable bonds and use the proceeds of those bonds to lend to low- and moderate-income homebuyers,” she explained, as well as to developers of rental housing to ensure they keep a portion of their units affordable.

But when MassHousing conducted a study on where people of color were buying homes in Massachusetts, the organization noticed a pattern: Not only was new housing not being built at the pace it was two decades ago, Kornegay said, “but where it was being built was not the places in which people of color lived.” In response, the agency is trying to ensure some of its programs, such as down payment assistance for first-time buyers and incentives for affordable housing developers, are used more often in communities where people of color want to live.

Kornegay then discussed how zoning is often perceived as the primary obstacle to getting more affordable housing built but said that financing has become an even bigger hurdle in recent years, due to higher interest rates and other market conditions.

“Getting access to capital has become a huge barrier,” she said, noting that over 20,000 already-permitted units in Massachusetts have stalled out in development “because the capital stack for those deals just didn’t make sense anymore.”

Most large-scale, multifamily buildings in Massachusetts are permitted through the state’s comprehensive permit law, known as 40B, Kornegay said. And since those projects require at least 20 percent of the units to be affordable, at 80 percent of AMI, “they have affordability built into them,” she said. So Massachusetts created a flexible financial product geared specifically toward such projects, available through MassHousing, called “Momentum Equity.” While not a subsidy, it’s designed to blend with private financing and inject the extra capital needed—up to 25 percent of a project’s equity—to get more of those developments off the sidelines and into production. (Equity financing refers to an investment-style ownership stake, as opposed to a loan that is paid back at agreed-upon terms.)

A second new product, which can be paired with Momentum Equity funding, is called the FORGE loan. “We’ve created this product along with Freddie Mac, in which MassHousing as a lender would put up 10 percent of the total loan amount and serve in the first loan-loss position,” Kornegay explained, thereby securing more favorable lending terms. “These products together really can make an impact in the capital stack and get a bunch of units into construction in the next six to 12 months.”

Tapping Federal Funds Outside of HUD

Greg Heller, director of housing and community solutions at the global consulting firm Guidehouse, described how the two major pandemic relief acts passed by Congress provided a huge influx of federal money that could be used for housing over the past few years—and how more funding exists, if communities know where and how to look for it (and if the funds survive possible freezes or cuts enacted by the Trump administration).

Federal pandemic relief funding provided “new sources of capital that could be applied for things like eviction prevention programs, for things like housing and counseling, and first and foremost for gap financing for either tax-credit projects or non-tax-credit projects,” he said. “Everybody all over the country was trying to figure out how to harness and use these new financing sources.” About 10 percent of the $350 billion that cities and counties received in local recovery funds through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) went to housing, he added—money that needs to be spent by 2026.

What’s interesting, Heller added, is that none of that money came through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). “Obviously, HUD continues to play a leading role . . . but all of these sources came through Treasury, and Treasury started to play a significant role in creating guidance around these programs and understanding how to blend and braid and layer this financing with conventional HUD entitlement sources.”

With ARPA funds hitting their obligation deadlines in 2026, Heller said, “the question is what comes next? And the answer is the funds in the Inflation Reduction Act.”

While ARPA funds were very flexible and could be used for a broad range of activities, he said, the IRA funds are funneled through specific programs at different agencies, including the US Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Treasury, as well as HUD.

“They all have different program guidelines, they all have different definitions of things like low-income disadvantaged communities, and so again it falls on cities, states, counties, to figure out how to harness these programs and use them to fill capital gaps for affordable housing, because it’s one-time funding,” he said. But the scale of the funding makes it worth wrestling with the complexity of the programs, he added.

The EPA, for example, has made $27 billion in funding available through three sources: the $7 billion Solar for All program, the $6 billion Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, and the $14 billion National Clean Investment Fund. “The latter two are flowing through awardees which are coalitions of green banks and CDFIs who are developing their product and starting to close loans and get those funds out on the street, and a lot of that is going to affordable housing,” he said.

The Solar for All program works through designated state entities and regional nonprofits, who aren’t as accustomed to housing finance. But Guidehouse has been working with state housing finance agencies to find ways to also tap into these funds, which can be used to help cover costs associated with rooftop solar installations and building electrification, for example.

“There’s a huge opportunity, for not just financing [on-site] energy generation, but also a range of other costs within the projects to get them solar-ready,” he said. “So those are tremendous opportunities for gap financing for affordable housing projects.”

Heller also urged attendees not to overlook home energy rebates from the Department of Energy, even if they’re more commonly associated with single-family homeowners who want to install a heat pump or insulate their attic, for example.

“These are actually huge opportunities for financing affordable multifamily [housing],” he said. “It’s $8.8 billion, and 10 percent of every state’s rebate assistance has to go to low-income multifamily . . . so there’s a huge focus on low-income multifamily, and there’s categorical eligibility for a whole range of subsidized affordable housing programs, including LIHTC, public housing, HUD and FHA multifamily programs, and a variety of others.”

“Then finally there are a range of tax credit programs that were amended through the IRA to make them more flexible and more available for affordable multifamily projects,” he said.

Of course, Heller acknowledged, some of those programs could see cuts or changes in the Trump administration. “There’s uncertainty [about] how that’s going to impact the programs and their guidance and availability moving forward, and I don’t think anybody has the answer on all of that quite yet,” he said. But the administration has shown an interest in financing more affordable housing, so there could be new opportunities as well, he added. “There will continue to be new programs that everyone has to sort of, in real time, figure out how to pivot and harness those funds and get them into projects that need them.”

Where There’s a Way, There’s a Will?

Wrapping up the webinar, Lincoln Institute President and CEO George W. McCarthy reflected on how a huge national challenge—such as building an extra million homes per year on top of the 1.4 million a year we’re already constructing—can feel unassailable. “[And yet] we produced 2.4 million units of housing in 1972—a much smaller economy, a much smaller population,” McCarthy noted. “So it’s not that we can’t do it.”

As the presenters made clear, he said, buildable lots and funding options do exist—it’s a matter of showing people how to put the pieces together. “We have CGS ready to map it out for you, we have R.J. ready to show people how to blend public, private, and civic capital,” he said. “If we have the money, we have the land, we have the financing, what is missing? And what’s missing, of course, is the political will.”

And even that may not be the immovable obstacle it once was. Citing 12 states from across the political spectrum that have stepped in to preempt local zoning “to make sure that it’s possible to build housing where people have been preventing it from being built,” McCarthy said, “it’s not as if we don’t have some kind of bipartisan support for taking this on.”

With the land, money, and knowledge necessary to address our housing shortage, McCarthy concluded, “we just have to summon the real political will to get it done—and that’s a less daunting task than people would have you believe.”

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: The Boston Housing Authority’s Old Colony redevelopment project has used federal funding to convert distressed public housing into safe, affordable, energy-efficient rental units. Credit: Andy Ryan Photography via BHA.

A veces, los traumas de las comunidades tienen sus orígenes en desastres naturales u otros eventos inesperados. Pero, en las ciudades de los Estados Unidos, gran parte del dolor del último siglo surgió de decisiones planificadas con minuciosidad que se mapearon de forma meticulosa y con antelación.

Avenidas nuevas que dividieron o destrozaron los barrios de comunidades negras y mestizas. Reglas de zonificación racistas que privaron intencionalmente a las personas de color de la propiedad de las viviendas. Una tendencia a considerar que barrios de comunidades negras e inmigrantes, incluso los prósperos, estaban “arruinados” y necesitaban una revitalización mediante demoliciones. Con estas y otras acciones, la profesión de planeamiento urbano contribuyó al racismo sistémico y a la segregación que plaga nuestras ciudades. Pero los planificadores de hoy en día están intentando resarcir tal legado.

Decenas de urbanistas de todo el país firmaron una declaración de “Compromiso con el cambio” que surgió de conversaciones en el Instituto de Directores de Planificación de Grandes Ciudades de 2020, una conferencia anual que organiza el Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo y que reúne a los mejores planificadores de las 30 ciudades más grandes de los Estados Unidos. “Después del asesinato de George Floyd, realmente se cristalizó que, como personas que tienen un efecto sobre las vidas de la gente, tanto de forma visible como invisible, los planificadores debían estar del lado correcto de la historia”, dice Eleanor Sharpe, vicedirectora de planificación y desarrollo de Filadelfia, sobre todo, dados los “antecedentes de fraude de nuestra profesión”.

La promesa resultante, elaborada por el personal de muchas ciudades y presentada por la ciudad de Filadelfia, tiene dos partes (ver la página 21). “Una es reconocer el daño que nuestra profesión causó, y sigue causando”, dice Sharpe. En Filadelfia, por ejemplo, la construcción de avenidas arrasó o bifurcó vecindarios de comunidades de color como el Barrio Chino o Nicetown, y las prácticas discriminatorias, en las que las entidades crediticias y otros negaron de forma sistemática hipotecas basándose en la raza, dejaron cicatrices al restringir el acceso a una fuente clave de riqueza intergeneracional. “Al mapear los análisis sobre dónde surgen problemas sociales vertiginosamente en nuestra ciudad, la mayoría de estos coincidían con mapas de prácticas discriminatorias de años anteriores”, explica Sharpe. “Décadas más tarde, las prácticas discriminatorias siguen dominando por completo nuestra ciudad”.

La segunda parte de la declaración se centra en el futuro, y compromete a los signatarios a que inviertan en vivienda, espacios abiertos, transporte, justicia medioambiental y servicios públicos, entre otras acciones, “con el objetivo de crear comunidades inclusivas y equitativas”. La promesa también prioriza la preservación y el fortalecimiento de la cultura, los negocios y las instituciones de comunidades de color, y la prevención de desplazamientos causados por inversiones nuevas.

Si bien la promesa pública ha puesto el foco de los planificadores en la equidad racial, las ciudades de todas partes siguen luchando por equiparar el acceso a oportunidades, y los avances en el desmantelamiento de sistemas de inequidad arraigados suelen ser lentos y graduales. Las semillas del racismo sistémico y las inequidades de hoy en día se sembraron décadas atrás, dice Jessie Grogan, directora asociada del sector Menos Pobreza y Desigualdad Espacial del Instituto Lincoln, “y las herramientas que los planificadores tienen en sus manos también demoran décadas . . . no es una profesión que pueda recurrir a parches rápidos”.

Pero, así como el mejor momento para plantar un árbol fue hace 20 años, y el segundo mejor momento es ahora, lo mismo sucede con la planificación de un futuro más justo. Con tal espíritu, aquí se presentan algunos de los caminos en los que los urbanistas están trabajando para restaurar la confianza, corregir equivocaciones históricas y avanzar en la equidad racial en sus ciudades.

Zonificación para la equidad

La crisis de vivienda del país castiga con más fuerza a las personas de bajos ingresos y comunidades de color, que son más propensas a experimentar situaciones de sinhogarismo debido a la escasez de viviendas asequibles. Con relación a esto, la presidenta de la Asociación de Planificación Estadounidense, Angela D. Brooks, dice que las reformas que conducen a más vivienda son cruciales para mejorar la equidad, en parte porque ningún debate sobre equidad tiene sentido para alguien que no tiene dónde vivir. “Es algo que podríamos solucionar con facilidad”, explica, “y el primer paso es decidir crear más unidades de todos los niveles de vivienda, para que las personas tengan un lugar asequible, seguro y decente donde vivir”.

Esa es una razón en la que Emily Liu, directora de la Oficina de Planificación de Louisville Metro, se ha centrado al actualizar las reglas de zonificación de la ciudad. En 2020, Liu y un equipo de planificadores voluntarios y miembros de la comunidad pensaron 46 formas en las que podrían mejorar la equidad en su ciudad; seis de las políticas sobresalieron como “cosas en las que podríamos avanzar rápido”, dice Liu.

Algunos de los esfuerzos iniciales, como permitir la agricultura urbana en cualquier parcela, casi no tuvieron oposición. Pero una propuesta —permitir que los propietarios de viviendas de Louisville construyan departamentos anexos para familiares (in-law) o unidades de vivienda accesorias (ADU, por su sigla en inglés), por derecho— generó algunas resistencias. Organizaciones como la Asociación Estadounidense de Personas Jubiladas (AARP, por su sigla en inglés), la Coalición Metropolitana de Vivienda de los Estados Unidos y la United Way colaboraron para elaborar materiales educativos y artículos de opinión para contrarrestar parte de la información errónea que circulaba en la comunidad, relata Liu, lo que ayudó a que se logre el cambio. “Esto fue, sin duda, algo que no podíamos hacer solos. Hubo mucho apoyo de organizaciones y ciudadanos de afuera”.

En el pasado, para agregar una ADU hubiese sido necesario contar con un permiso de uso condicional; ahora, las unidades accesorias están permitidas por derecho en Louisville, siempre que cumplan con los estándares básicos, y que puedan alquilarse si el propietario vive en el lugar. “La gran mayoría de ellas son aprobadas en la oficina por nuestro personal, y solo toma un día o dos, es muy fácil”, dice Liu, destacando que la ciudad vio un aumento en las solicitudes de ADU en el primer año después de que entrara en vigor el cambio de zonificación.

Liu también logró que los requisitos de retranqueo frontal se reduzcan de entre 8 y 9 metros a 4,5 metros, lo que liberó más espacio para potenciales ADU. Además, presionó para lograr un cambio pequeño pero significativo que permitirá más de un dúplex en parcelas inferiores a 1.500 metros cuadrados, si se zonificaron para uso multifamiliar. Apenas un 6 por ciento de la ciudad está zonificada para viviendas multifamiliares, dice Liu, y entre aquellas parcelas, “10.000 estaban zonificadas para multifamilias en el pasado, pero no se podía construir ni siquiera un dúplex”, porque la parcela no cumplía con los requisitos mínimos.

Esos son solo algunos ejemplos de lo pequeños pero cruciales que pueden ser los cambios de zonificación para abordar la inequidad. La nueva Equity in Zoning Policy Guide (Guía de Equidad en Políticas de Zonificación) de la APA es un recurso fácil de usar que expone decenas de recomendaciones específicas para ayudar a erradicar las inequidades sistemáticas a través de tres aspectos de zonificación: las reglas mismas, las personas involucradas en redactarlas y las formas en que se aplican y se vela su cumplimiento (APA 2023).

“Realmente, se centra en las formas en que el sesgo y los patrones históricos de segregación se refuerzan por medio de la zonificación”, dice Brooks. “Pero también ofrece formas específicas de cambiar el trazado y el compromiso público, el mapeo, e incluso el cumplimiento de las regulaciones de zonificación, para desmantelar las barreras y expandir las oportunidades”.

Otras ciudades, como Mineápolis, Portland y Arlington, Virginia, e incluso algunos estados, como California, Oregón y Maine, lograron aprobar medidas de mejora de la zonificación de gran alcance que permiten ADU o viviendas multifamiliares pequeñas en casi cualquier parcela residencial. Atlanta y Denver, entre otras, también están en proceso de hacer reformas de zonificación de gran envergadura.

El departamento de Liu ahora está trabajando para involucrar y educar a la comunidad en torno a las viviendas intermedias faltantes. Para esto, realiza excursiones a pie, por ejemplo, por los barrios más antiguos de Louisville, y les muestra a los residentes cómo los dúplex y tríplex abundaban en la ciudad antes de que se los erradicara casi por completo después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. “El objetivo es ver dónde podemos permitir esto por derecho”, dice Liu, y destaca que estas viviendas más pequeñas y con mayor densidad “están dando lugar a viviendas asequibles”.

Difusión “incesante”

Los departamentos de planificación también están actuando con mayor determinación para expandir su alcance más allá de los propietarios de viviendas masculinos, blancos, adinerados y de mayor edad que tienden a dominar las sesiones de contribuciones públicas, y ejerciendo una presión coordinada para conectar con residentes que vienen quedando afuera de la conversación.

“Gran parte de esto consiste en ir donde están las personas”, dice la directora de Planificación de Washington, DC, Anita Cozart, y en “insistir” en eso. Esto implica asistir a festivales comunitarios, celebraciones de la cuadra y reuniones de agrupaciones de jóvenes para recopilar información sobre cualquier plan específico en curso o, simplemente, para que las personas sepan cómo involucrarse con el departamento. “Si tenemos una reunión y alguien dice, ‘No sabía que existía este proceso, ¿dónde se divulgó?’”, dice, “llamamos a esa persona y le preguntaremos sobre sus redes”, y sobre la mejor forma de conectarse con él/ella.

Por más de una década, Filadelfia ha ofrecido un Instituto de Planificación Ciudadana, en el que se enseña a los residentes sobre el proceso de planificación urbana y sobre cómo pueden formar parte de él, “y, de alguna manera, se lleva ese conocimiento de regreso a los barrios, y se lo aprovecha de una forma que es útil para la comunidad”, Sharpe dice.

El programa se volvió tan popular que el personal no da abasto con la demanda. En la actualidad, existen dos cohortes por año, una sesión de primavera y otra de otoño con más de 30 personas en cada una, pero suelen postularse más de 200 personas.

“Estamos encaminando a la ciudadanía hacia el éxito, le estamos quitando el velo”, dice Sharpe, “para que las personas puedan entender qué está pasando y cómo suceden las cosas en el gobierno”. Las más de 700 personas que integran el alumnado del programa viven en distintas partes de la ciudad y pueden mejorar la comunicación en las reuniones vecinales. “Pueden actuar como nuestros traductores”, añade. “Hay un factor de confianza que no necesariamente existe” entre los residentes y los funcionarios de planificación.

Mientras tanto, a los inquilinos, que, con mayor frecuencia que los propietarios, son personas de color y tienen ingresos bajos, se los ignoró por mucho tiempo en los debates sobre zonificación o desarrollo. Por lo tanto, en Luisville, cuando un proyecto implica una reunión pública, la ciudad ahora exige que los solicitantes notifiquen a los inquilinos cercanos, no solo a los propietarios colindantes. “El propietario puede vivir en California, pero ellos son quienes viven aquí, quienes se verán afectados por los desarrollos propuestos”, dice Liu.

Como inquilina, Brooks está a favor de dichos esfuerzos y dice que las ciudades deberían perseguir otros canales de comunicación también. “En la era de las redes sociales, existen tantas formas de informar a las personas que es irresponsable, e inexcusable, no estar usando formas más creativas”, afirma. “Incluso si fuera propietaria de mi vivienda y me enviaran una carta, existe una probabilidad alta de que no la vea hasta pasada la reunión”.

Aplicar un lente de equidad

Muchas grandes ciudades, incluidas Nueva York y Washington, ahora requieren que las solicitudes de cambio de uso o de desarrollos de otra índole incluyan algún tipo de informe sobre el impacto en la equidad racial. Tal evaluación inyecta una medida de responsabilidad en el proceso que, muy a menudo, se ha pasado por alto, con base en una simple pregunta: ¿el cambio que se propone generará un avance hacia una mejora en la equidad racial, o empeorará las inequidades existentes?

Evaluar los impactos potenciales sobre la equidad racial de los cambios nuevos en materia de urbanización y zonificación como parte de un proceso de planificación oficial es un paso simple pero importante, expresa Grogan. “Asegurarse de que se piense en los impactos de cada proyecto sobre la equidad es una práctica que no necesariament implica costo alguno, y puede sumar mucho valor al trabajo de planificación diario”, explica.

El Departamento de Planificación Urbana de la ciudad de Nueva York se asoció con el Departamento de Desarrollo y Preservación de la Vivienda para crear un Explorador de Datos de Desarrollo Equitativo interactivo que mapea el riesgo de desplazamiento en los barrios y datos desglosados en base a la raza, la seguridad económica, las presiones del mercado de viviendas, las consecuencias sanitarias y otros indicadores clave (Ciudad de Nueva York 2022). Los solicitantes que envían un informe de equidad racial, como se empezó a exigir recientemente, como parte de su revisión de uso del suelo deben citar datos relevantes de la herramienta e incluir una declaración en la que se explique cómo su proyecto y su contexto barrial “se relacionan con el compromiso de la ciudad de favorecer la vivienda justa y fomentar el acceso equitativo a las oportunidades”.

En Filadelfia, donde el alcalde Jim Kenney encargó a todos los departamentos de la ciudad que crearan planes de acción de equidad racial, Sharpe dice que la ciudad está intentando incorporar el análisis de la equidad dentro del ciclo presupuestario de los programas de capital, pidiéndoles a las agencias que reciben fondos de capital que expliquen cómo cada dólar contribuirá al racismo sistémico o lo desmantelará. “Estamos intentando incorporarlo con determinación en la cultura y la filosofía de cómo se aborda el trabajo” dice, pero destaca que aún es un trabajo en proceso.

Y en Washignton, DC, los planificadores usan los datos desglosados para evaluar “los beneficios y cargas que podría conllevar un cambio en la zonificación”, explica Cozart, incluido el potencial de desplazamiento. Los planes de áreas barriales pequeñas del Distrito ahora presentan un análisis de “Equity in Place” (Equidad en vigor), que puede informar diferentes prioridades en diferentes barrios (Ciudad de Washington, DC). Por ejemplo, en Chevy Chase, un barrio adinerado y poblado en su mayoría por personas blancas, el plan de áreas pequeñas busca sumar viviendas asequibles especiales y remediar la larga historia de uso discriminatorio del suelo de la zona. En Congress Heights, un barrio con predominio de personas negras que experimenta un aumento del redesarrollo, el foco está en las medidas de resiliencia comunitaria y antidesplazamiento.

“Presentamos preguntas agrupadas, pero se trata de un sector demográfico diferente, así que acabas obteniendo recomendaciones diferentes, sentidos diferentes del esfuerzo de planificación, incluso si estás haciendo las mismas cosas, como desglosar los datos por raza e involucrar a las comunidades que se han marginalizado del proceso”, dice Cozart.

Preguntar por qué

Cuando la directora de Planificación de San Diego, Heidi Vonblum, estaba trabajando en la Iniciativa “Build Better SD” (Construir Mejor San Diego), un trabajo para apoyar el desarrollo sostenible y equitativo en toda la ciudad que asumió el concejo municipal en 2022, cuestionó políticas de larga trayectoria a fin de encontrar una razón válida para su existencia. Ella y su personal preguntaban por qué se hacía algo de la forma en que se hacía, y por qué esto y por qué lo otro, y así, hasta que llegaron a la causa fundamental. Espóiler: las historias sobre cómo se originaron algunas políticas, vistas de cerca, se parecían más a la historia de vida de un villano ambicioso que a la de un superhéroe.

“En algunos casos, había sido una buena idea en ese momento, a veces tenía sentido en función de la información que los planificadores tenían a disposición”, dice Vonblum. “Y, en otros, estaba muy mal, y no había ninguna necesidad de perpetuarla”.

Dicha filosofía ayudó al departamento de Vonblum a realizar una serie de cambios, aprobados por el concejo municipal en etapas durante los últimos dos años.

Comenzó con la reescritura de un plan de ordenamiento territorial de parques de casi 70 años de antigüedad, y desafiando lo métodos de participación comunitaria tradicionales que estaban generando opiniones públicas del tipo “lo amamos, no lo cambien, todo está bien”, relata Vonblum. “Lo que fue interesante de la contribución Phase One (Fase uno) es que no todo está bien”.

Así que, además de buscar opiniones de voces no representadas, Vonblum y un puñado de miembros del personal condujeron por San Diego durante la pandemia y documentaron las condiciones profundamente contrastantes de los espacios recreativos de la ciudad en un StoryMap llamado “Una ciudad, dos realidades”, para educar mejor a los grupos vecinales y otras partes interesadas (Ciudad de San Diego 2021). “Algunas partes de nuestra ciudad tienen parques bellos, relucientes y radiantes, y, después, hay otras partes con mucha más gente y más niños y personas ancianas, que tienen un parque, pero muy diferente, o con los juegos del área recreativa rotos, y eso no está bien”.

Un aspecto clave de Construir Mejor SD fue cambiar el sistema de recaudación y gasto de las tasas de impactos de desarrollo específicas de cada barrio. Estos impuestos únicos, que los desarrolladores pagan para solventar el costo de la infraestructura municipal y los servicios asociados con el nuevo desarrollo, variaban drásticamente a lo largo de la ciudad, y tenían que gastarse en el barrio donde se habían recaudado. Las tasas de impactos por unidad eran hasta 50 veces más altas en los distritos adinerados, lo que desmotivaba el crecimiento más denso en las áreas pudientes a la vez que concentraba la reinversión en esos mismos lugares. Ahora, la ciudad pasó a tener a una estructura de tasas que abarca a toda la ciudad, en la que las tasas de impactos son las mismas en todos los barrios y las inversiones en infraestructura pueden priorizarse según las áreas con mayor necesidad.

Al principio, algunos cambios no fueron bien recibidos, lo que demandó un par de intentos para ingresar al consejo de la ciudad. Pero sentaron las bases para otras iniciativas impulsadas por la equidad. “El progreso puede ser lento y doloroso, pero avanzamos mucho en tan solo un par de años”, dice Vonblum. “Pasamos de tener conversaciones controversiales y muy difíciles a bum, bum, bum: las acciones están sucediendo ahora mismo”, agrega. “Nos estamos centrando en aumentar el acceso a nuestros recursos costeros y aumentar las conexiones entre las comunidades por medio de un plan de ordenamiento territorial de caminos en toda la ciudad”, así como en desarrollar un plan de ordenamiento territorial para un nuevo parque regional en un barrio desatendido cuyos pedidos de espacios verdes se han cajoneado por 20 años.

Como planificadores, dice Vonblum, “tenemos que aprovechar una oportunidad de decir, ‘Bien, ¿por qué planificamos los parques de esta forma? ¿Por qué recaudamos tasas de impactos de desarrollo de esta forma? ¿Por qué priorizamos las inversiones en infraestructura de esta forma?’ Mientras no lo hagamos, no vamos a ser capaces de realizar ningún progreso para lograr avances en la equidad, avances en las políticas antirracistas y para invertir de forma equitativa en nuestras comunidades”.

Alimentar el suministro de planificadores

En el Instituto de Directores de Planificación de Grandes Ciudades en octubre de 2022, Liu compartió cómo la inspiró la cantidad de diversas mujeres y personas de color en la sala, lo que marcó un gran cambio desde su primer conferencia 10 años atrás, recordó.

Pero, a pesar de ese cambio motivador en la representación en los niveles más altos, la profesión sigue teniendo una mayoría blanca. Con la mirada puesta en la construcción de una profesión que refleje mejor a la población a la que brinda servicios, Sharpe y otros planificadores aprovechan cada oportunidad para estimular la planificación en las personas jóvenes de color.

“Nuestro personal está siempre entusiasmado y haciendo trabajo voluntario en los colegios primarios y secundarios, porque muchos de los planificadores se enteraron de esto tarde en la vida, y queremos decir, ‘Ey, aquí hay una profesión legítima que pueden realizar, sobre todo, si quieren ayudar a su barrio’”, dice Sharpe. “Está abasteciendo la cadena de suministro, así que, con suerte, en 10 años, si más personas escuchan hablar de esto, entonces el proceso dejará de generar una mayoría de personas blancas”.

Cozart y su equipo realizan trabajos similares en los alrededores de Washington. “Hemos estado visitando a los estudiantes de las escuelas secundarias simplemente para hablar sobre la planificación e involucrarlos en el mapeo, para involucrarlos en el análisis de datos que los planificadores usan, y para realmente pensar sobre el diseño, el diseño de comunidades y qué espacios los favorecerán”, explica.

Después de todo, Cozart agrega, dadas las líneas de tiempo de 10 y 20 años de la mayoría de los barrios y los planes integrales, esos estudiantes de secundario pueden ser quienes conviertan las recomendaciones de hoy en día en una realidad más equitativa mañana.

Jon Gorey es escritor de planta del Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo.

Imagen principal: Miembros y simpatizantes del piquete de la Asociación Nacional para el Progreso de las Personas de Color (NAACP, por sus siglas en inglés) contra la discriminación en la vivienda en Detroit en 1963. Crédito: Fotografía del personal de Detroit News/Biblioteca Walter P. Reuther, Archivos de asuntos urbanos y laborales, Universidad Estatal de Wayne.

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Land Matters Podcast: Addressing Structural Racism in Urban Planning

Two years ago, the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority pulled off something of a municipal miracle. The agency learned that almost 200 corporate-owned houses in Cincinnati were in receivership and up for sale. Rather than forever forfeit all that single-family housing to yet another institutional investor, the Port launched a bold bid to purchase the homes, with the goal of fixing them up and creating affordable homeownership opportunities for the existing tenants and other Cincinnati residents.

Well into the project, the Port would discover that many of the 194 houses it had purchased were in worse condition than expected, and dozens were vacant. “When we bought the portfolio, we thought there were only going to be 10 vacant, but 60 were vacant, and those were in really bad shape,” says Laura Brunner, the Port’s president and CEO. “So that’s where we’ve been focusing our capital investment, getting those homes ready to sell.”

The Port has now started selling the first of those fixed-up homes—19 of them so far—at affordable prices, to owner-occupants who earn less than 120 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI). The agency also helped stabilize the housing situations of the 130 or so renters in the other properties, addressing a backlog of hundreds of repair requests, helping tenants get current on their rent, and offering them free homebuying and financial literacy education.

Given the state of the houses, repairs and essential upgrades have cost more than double what the Port expected—averaging $96,000 per house so far, compared to a projected $40,000. But the agency has been able to make up the difference with grants so it can still sell the homes affordably, at cost. Unlike a house flipper, the Port only needs to break even to fulfill its debt obligations, not turn a profit.

In reclaiming rental houses from institutional landlords and converting them into homeownership opportunities, the Port is helping low- and moderate-income residents build generational wealth. And the agency’s approach is supporting sustainable growth in other areas of the local economy, too.

Spreading the Wealth

While homeownership itself has historically been an engine of wealth creation for millions of Americans, the real estate market is also a massive driver of economic activity in a community. New homebuyers tend to also buy new home goods, from dishes to lawn mowers, and a whole suite of local service providers participate in a home purchase, from appraisers to contractors.

So as the Port rehabs and sells what it calls its CARE (Creating Affordable Real Estate) Portfolio, it’s been very intentional about involving local businesses throughout the process.

“We’ve been really conscientious in our contracting to use small minority- and women-owned businesses,” Brunner says. With the cost of renovations averaging almost $100,000 per house, “the project size is perfect to really help grow and scale a small business. . . .And we’re not just giving them a contract and hoping they do a good job; we’re doing some technical assistance along the way to help them scale and grow their businesses sustainably.”

Rather than list the homes through an internal real estate agent, as it has historically done to save costs, the Port has partnered with Black-owned brokerages through the Greater Cincinnati Realtist Association (GCRA) to handle at least a quarter of the sales. The Port pays agents a standard commission, which adds some costs, but is essentially just another expenditure supporting local small businesses, Brunner says. “It’s helping to grow the whole ecosystem.”

The GCRA is a local chapter of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, the oldest and largest African American trade organization in the country. “Prior to 1962, African Americans were not allowed to be members of NAR, the National Association of Realtors—or to even be called a Realtor, because that’s a trademarked name,” says Marcus Parrish, president of the GCRA. So in 1947, a group of 12 Black brokers, including Cincinnati hotelier Horace Sudduth, formed their own real estate organization, NAREB, whose agents would be called Realtists. “Our mission is democracy in housing—representing the underserved and providing education and resources,” Parrish says.

Only a quarter of Black households own their home in Cincinnati—less than half the homeownership rate of the city’s white families—and both the Port and Parrish hope that converting investor-owned rental units to affordable homeownership opportunities can help close that gap. “The Cincinnati market is just as challenging as any other market in the nation,” Parrish says. “Low housing inventory just creates a challenge for anybody who’s purchasing, but specifically for our first-time homebuyers and our Black and brown communities.”

A GCRA selection committee chose a handful of Realtists to handle the Port listings, although Parrish and other board members listed the very first batch of CARE portfolio houses themselves so they could get a feel for the process and work through any kinks. Buyers need to prove their income eligibility, and the houses include a deed restriction that prevents owners from reselling them for the first five years.

As for the renovations, the Port isn’t trying to chase HGTV trends or install high-end finishes, Parrish says; they’re focused on making the homes safe, efficient, and functional for first-time buyers. “I listed and sold two of those properties, and for the most part, the updates and rehabs have been good,” Parrish says. “If it needs a new furnace, needs new central air, if the roof is beyond repair, they’re going to do that.”

Early this year, Parrish sold a Port-rehabbed house at its list price of $165,000, and he recalls the ripple effects of the sale: The mortgage lender at First Financial Bank, who helped the Latino homebuyers get a five-figure down payment grant, also belonged to the GCRA, and so did the title company representative. “Everyone involved in the process was a member of our organization,” Parrish says.

That’s important, because Black brokers, agents, and appraisers are underrepresented (and often underpaid) in the real estate industry. Nationally, only 6 percent of real estate agents are Black; less than 2 percent of appraisers identify as Black. “The main thing is, you want to have representation, so the push is to get more African Americans in the real estate profession,” Parrish says.

Rent, Renovate, Replicate

While it renovates vacant houses, the Port is also acting as a landlord for over 100 households. The agency holds its contractors to high standards and offers technical assistance to ensure they succeed; it’s also been careful in its hiring practices.

Brunner says the Port was very close to signing a contract with one property management company until a company representative referred to the renters as “these people,” a rhetorical red flag. “That’s obviously coded for the kind of practices we’re trying to fight against—that ‘these people’ are not trustworthy, just assuming the worst,” Brunner says. “We had to have somebody that we could trust.” They hired a different firm.

In addition to addressing hundreds of repairs that the corporate landlord had ignored, the Port has helped dozens of tenants catch up on back rent—some of them were over a year behind. “We were successful in working with our local community action agency to secure ARPA funding to bring 60 of them current,” Brunner says, adding that “there’s a whole psychological benefit to knowing you’re current. We’ve got a good collection record now, after people were able to kind of wipe the slate clean with grants.”

The Port also hired a local nonprofit called Working in Neighborhoods to offer financial literacy training and first-time homebuyer classes to interested tenants. Many of the renters still lack the financial stability needed to buy a home, and some have been hesitant to engage with these resources. But about 60 of them have participated in the classes, and that’s helping to create a pipeline of potential buyers. “We’ve got maybe half a dozen who will be ready [to purchase a home] in the next six months, and half a dozen who’ll be ready in the next year,” Brunner says.

Even if it takes longer than expected to convert existing renters into homeowners, what the Port has accomplished is remarkable, says Robert ‘R.J.’ McGrail, senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and director of its Accelerating Community Investment initiative.

“These are largely stabilized rental households now, and that is an extraordinary public policy outcome,” he says. Selling the rehabbed homes has enabled the Port to pay the debt service on its bonds, buying itself more time to move existing tenants along a track to homeownership. “It’s just win, win, win across the continuum of policy outcomes that you’d like to see from a financial intervention like this.”

Proof of Concept

Could the Port’s approach be replicated elsewhere? “Technically, transactionally, yes,” McGrail says. “There are debt-issuing authorities in other cities that have the powers to execute a financing transaction like this. There are fewer that have the rest of the Port’s powers around taxes and around landholding; they’re also a land bank, so they’re more empowered than your typical municipal financing-only entity. They can do it all in house.”

The Port also had plenty of previous experience hiring construction crews and managing properties, primarily for commercial properties. “That set of tools—the financing, the property management, plus the redevelopment expertise—is a unique set of competencies to have under one roof,” McGrail acknowledges, but there’s no reason this strategy couldn’t be replicated by a more typical financing entity working with civic and nonprofit partners. “You don’t need the one-stop shop to do this. You just need the will to tell three shops to do it together.”

Brunner says the Port has proven that the approach can be replicated and scaled. “We’ve shown that we can recover our costs, that you can buy a house, fix it up, and sell it for what you put into it,” she says. “We’ve established that, even in these poor neighborhoods, there is a market for ownership. And we’ve proven that, even with the highest interest rates in 20 years, many people can still own a home with a lower mortgage payment than what their rent was.”

What’s more, Brunner insists, it must be replicated. “We can all agree that our racial wealth gap is one of the biggest problems in our country,” Brunner says. “We can all agree that homeownership is the most direct way to increase wealth. So how can we not play whatever role we possibly can to make that possible for more people?”

Beyond the economics, she says, “there’s a moral imperative, for those of us in this country who can, to fight back against these institutional investors. It’s not a little thing, just every here and there a bad actor as a property owner; it’s become an epidemic. We cannot just give up on all these poor to moderate-income neighborhoods, and wipe out that potential of first-time ownership, largely for our Black and brown communities. We have to fight back.”

Jon Gorey is a staff writer at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Lead image: The Port of Cincinnati bought 194 homes formerly owned by institutional investors in neighborhoods across the city. Credit: Port of Cincinnati.