To Save Neighborhoods, Get Creative With the Law

Lisa T. Alexander

Lisa T. Alexander is a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. She is the author of "Hip Hop and Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power and Law" and the forthcoming "Occupy the Right to Housing."

Updated April 15, 2014, 10:12 PM

Spike Lee’s Brooklyn rant reignited a continuing controversy: Does gentrification help or hurt the poor? It depends. But one critical and often overlooked factor is affordable housing law.

Even some gentrification supporters like Columbia University’s Lance Freeman acknowledge that New York’s rent stabilization and affordable housing laws prevent some poor residents from being displaced in the city’s gentrifying neighborhoods.

Cities with significant subsidized and rent-restricted affordable housing stock should consider using legal tools to preserve their subsidies for the long-term.

History has shown that existing renters and low-income homeowners rarely benefit from gentrifying markets that operate unabated. And while we can’t stop gentrification, with effective legal tools, we can work to ensure that current and future low-income residents share in the gains.

Urban centers with significant subsidized and rent-restricted affordable housing stock should consider using legal tools to preserve their subsidies for the long term. Some cities like Chicago have created municipally-run community land trusts, while other community groups have created nonprofit land trusts, which take ownership of the land under homes, cooperatives, rental units and businesses.

This strategy makes home ownership more affordable by taking the cost of land out of a property's purchase price, while also controlling what happens on the land. A CLT retains ownership of the land, and then leases the use of it to home owners or commercial ventures. The ground lease includes resale price restrictions that preserve affordability for future generations while still allowing investors to earn profits from the appreciation of their homes or businesses. And studies show that homeowners and residents of these community land trusts are less likely to go into foreclosure than market-rate owners.

Municipalities can also use eminent domain and land banking to gain title to vacant and foreclosed homes, and then dedicate those homes to community land trusts. Important community assets and businesses can also be preserved through a land trust. Applied wisely, these strategies facilitate income-mixing and help maintain the diversity and vibrancy of gentrifying neighborhoods. These tools must be used, however, before neighborhoods substantially gentrify and before land costs escalate.


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Topics: Economy, inequality, public policy, urban planning

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