Transcript Six Steps to Building Community Support for Affordable Housing and Services Michael Allen Relman & Dane, PLLC National Alliance to End Homelessness July 11, 2007

Six Steps to Building
Community Support for
Affordable Housing and
Services
Michael Allen
Relman & Dane, PLLC
National Alliance to End Homelessness
July 11, 2007
Contact Information
Michael Allen
Relman & Dane, PLLC
1225 19th Street, N.W., Suite 600
Washington, D.C. 20036-2456
202/728-1888, ext. 114
FAX: 202/728-0848
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.relmanlaw.com
Confronting
Common
NIMBY
Concerns
Defining NIMBYism
Communities have said it many times: “We don’t
oppose housing for poor people. We just think it
ought to be located somewhere else.”
 This phenomenon, often described as
“NIMBYism” (deriving from the acronym, “Not
In My Back Yard”), appears to be nearly universal,
occurring with different variations on a common
theme in urban, suburban and rural areas from
coast to coast.

WHAT YOU ARE LIKELY TO
HEAR
– We have worked all our lives to buy this house. Now you want
to come in here with this affordable housing and rob us of our
life’s savings.
– No one in his right mind would ever buy my house now that a
group home is next door.
– My brother-in-law is a real estate agent. He says that it will
take much longer to sell my house, and that I won’t get my
investment back out of it now that there are apartments going
up down the block.
– We have enough apartments in this town already. We ought to
be encouraging single-family home ownership, which will help
protect the value of our homes.
MOST COMMON OPPOSITION
CONCERNS

While extensive research over more than 25
years has disproved these concerns, they are still
raised anew in almost every conflict over
affordable housing:
–
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Property values
Crime rates
Character of the neighborhood will change
Affordable housing is badly designed and cheaply
built and will be unattractive
Affordable housing contributes to overcrowding of
public schools
Property Values: Research Findings

A...single-family home values in the neighborhood
of [affordable housing projects] are not adversely
affected by their proximity to those projects.
Indeed, in some cases, home values are actually
higher the nearer the home is to [such a project].
– Paul M. Cummings and John D. Landis, Relationships
between Affordable Housing Developments and
Neighboring Property Values, (Univ. of California at
Berkeley, Sept. 1993)
Crime and Affordable Housing:
Research Findings

There is no evidence of an increase in crime
resulting from the introduction of affordable
housing into a neighborhood. In fact, much of the
affordable housing now being developed in inner
cities and older neighborhoods replaces brokendown and crime-ridden buildings and can serve to
reduce the neighborhood crime rate
– Urban Institute, The Impacts of Supportive Housing on
Neighborhoods and Neighbors (April 2000).
“Character of the Neighborhood”

If an affordable housing project can locate
“by right” on a particular parcel, the
uneasiness of neighbors cannot be an
obstacle to such a use. If variances are
routinely granted for other uses but
withheld for affordable housing, such
practices might be challenged if they
discriminate on the basis of race, national
origin or disability.
Affordable Housing and Design

The most prestigious architectural award in
the nation—the American Institute of
Architects National Honor Award—has
been won by affordable housing
developments.
– HomeBase, Building Inclusive Community
(1996)
Affordable Housing and Schools:
Research Findings

According to the Census Bureau's current
population survey in 1998, 20% of all occupied
apartments had one or more school-aged children,
compared to 33% of owner-occupied singlefamily homes. The average apartment household
had 0.3 children, while single-family homes had
0.6 children.
– National Multi Housing Council, Debunking the
Homeownership Myth (September 1998)
Building Local Support:
The Six Step Process
Step One: Meet to Develop
Strategy in Five Areas
Political
Support
Public Support
Community Issues
Legal Rights
Public
Relations
Step One: Planning
Meet and Assess:
– Local government’s current knowledge of and
support for your organization’s work, and the current
proposal.
– Full analysis of the neighborhood surrounding the
proposed site
– Likely concerns neighbors might have and potential
for organized opposition
– Potential legal issues
– The media’s view of your work and clients.
Step Two: Political Strategy

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Get to know your local government players and policies.
Find ‘key leaders’ in every community; to find them
always ask: “Who else should I talk with about this?”
Identify solid supporters, committed opponents, and
uncertain votes.
If the vote were taken tonight, do you know who
would vote for and against your proposal?
Determine education, advocacy efforts needed to keep
supporters, neutralize opponents, win uncertain votes.
Step Three: Building Public
Support
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–
–
–
–
Ensure active, vocal community support
Develop solid support before contacting potential opponents.
Don’t spend all your time responding to opponents.
Identify and prioritize actual and potential supporters
Plan recruitment of supporters and what you want them to
do
– Organize and support your allies with background
information, housing tours and up-to-date information.
– Mobilize supporters at critical points (e.g. using a database
and fax sheets.)
– Keep them informed and encouraged.
Step Four: Dealing with
Community Issues
– Notification and community out-reach
– Consider alternative methods for community outreach
(e.g. door-to-door canvassing, open-house forums or
small house meetings) instead of the large open
community meetings.
– Only when you understand why a person opposes, can
you select the best response.
– Find out the probable basis of their concerns before
fashioning a response (e.g. misinformation, fears about
impacts, expectation to participate, prejudice, or issues
unrelated to your proposal.)
Step Five: Legal Strategy
– Identify your organization’s and prospective
tenants’ legal rights and learn how to spot
potential legal violations.
– If your proposal is likely to encounter illegal
discrimination or raise complex legal issues,
contact legal assistance immediately to learn
what you should do now to protect your rights,
and how and when to get further legal assistance.

Step Six: Public Relations
Strategy

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Decide if you want to generate or merely respond
Designate and prepare a spokesperson
Develop your message(s) and alternative stories
for your target audiences (e.g. decision-makers).
Prepare brief, easily-faxable, fact sheets
Invite reporters for a tour of your existing
facilities and to meet your staff and clients.
Follow-up on any coverage you receive with
thank yous and corrections.
Develop on-going relationships with media
Case Study:
Engaging the Community

Pine Street Inn (PSI) provides street outreach,
emergency shelter, health care, job training, and
housing to 1,300 Bostonians every day. It
consciously involves neighbors prior to opening
permanent supportive housing for homeless
people.
 In early 1993 PSI learned that a large duplex on
Rockwell Street was being offered for sale. PSI
decided to buy and renovate the building to
provide ten single room occupancy (SRO) units
and an on-site manager’s apartment.
Pine Street Inn

Converting the building to an SRO required
zoning relief. The city’s planning staff said that
couldn’t be granted without a public hearing. But
PSI knew that a public hearing was often a method
of deflecting political fallout from the planning
commissioners and city council members onto the
housing provider, and that neighbors had begun to
organize against the project within days of its
announcement.
Pine Street Inn

PSI put together a plan for getting political
support. It focused on elected officials and
neighborhood residents. PSI provided tours
of the proposed site, and subsequently made
a presentation to the entire neighborhood
organization.
Pine Street Inn

Prior to the public hearing, PSI staff conducted intensive
door-to-door canvassing on and near Rockwell Street, in
order to:
– (1) meet the majority of residents and explain the project;
– (2) answer questions about all aspects of the project; and
– (3) determine the extent of initial opposition.

This work put many neighbors’ concerns to rest, and
actually produced a number of supporters. The
neighborhood organization even wrote a strong letter of
support.
Pine Street Inn

After a nine month effort, the project
received all necessary approvals and
construction began. The facility welcomed
its first residents in early 1995. The building
is widely recognized as the best-kept on the
block, helping to increase property values of
surrounding homes.
 See www.pinestreetinn.org
Best Practices
Things Local Governments Can Do To
Comply with Civil Rights Laws and Create
an Environment More Conducive to the
Development of Affordable Housing
HOUSING FRIENDLY LAND USE
POLICIES

Austin, Texas: SMART Housing, which works with
developers to ensure submissions that respond to
legitimate community concerns about land use impacts and
which explicitly rejects extraneous grounds of opposition.
By getting the developer and the neighbors at the same
table early in the process, the staff is able to identify and
deal with legitimate land use issues, and it does so very
quickly. Its internal goal is to have a zoning application on
the docket of City Council for final action within 45 days
after it is filed.
HOUSING FRIENDLY LAND USE
POLICIES

Portland, Oregon: The Office of
Neighborhood Involvement has instituted
the Community Residential Siting Program
(CRSP), which is designed to be a
centralized point of information and referral
to deal with questions and concerns around
the siting of residential social services as
well as provide mediation and facilitation
services for groups in conflict.
HOUSING FRIENDLY LAND USE
POLICIES

Montgomery County, Maryland: The Moderately
Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) program is a form
of inclusionary zoning which rewards developers
with additional density and requires them to
incorporate moderately priced units in every new
development of 50 or more units, reserving to the
county housing authority the first right of purchase
of rental units.
HOUSING FRIENDLY LAND USE
POLICIES

In 1998, the New Jersey Department of Human Services
launched a public education program to increase public
awareness about people with disabilities and the kinds of
community living arrangements in which they reside.
Under the program, called “Good Neighbors, Community
Living for People with Disabilities,” DHS representatives
reach out to municipal officials, private organizations and
New Jersey residents to provide information and to answer
their questions, in hopes of achieving broader public
acceptance and accommodations for people with
disabilities.
HOUSING FRIENDLY LAND USE
POLICIES
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The City of Rochester and surrounding jurisdictions won
a HUD “Blue Ribbon” award in 1999 for developing a
Fair Housing Action Plan designed to overcome
impediments to fair housing experienced by low-income
people of color, families with children and people with
disabilities.
The significance of these efforts is that they were
accomplished through a unique intergovernmental
cooperation and extensive public/private partnership; it
is metropolitan in scope; there has been significant
public involvement; and there is a commitment to
implementation.
“Fair Share” Housing Programs

While the effort to enact “fair share” legislation
has taken a unique path in each of the following
jurisdictions, the impetus has common roots.
Spurred by a sense that people of color and people
with low-incomes were systemically excluded
from affordable housing opportunities and that,
left to its own devices, the private market would
continue to foster segregated communities, the
civil rights and affordable housing advocacy
communities coalesced behind reform efforts.
Massachusetts

Statewide legislation in Massachusetts, has been
credited with producing 25,000 affordable housing
units since its passage in 1969.
 The statute sets a goal that each city and town
should have at least 10 percent of its housing stock
defined as affordable or subsidized housing. If an
affordable housing proposal were denied in a town
with less than 10 percent, the developer could
appeal the decision at the state level to the
Housing Appeals Committee.
New Jersey
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New Jersey’s Mount Laurel doctrine, requires all New Jersey
municipalities to zone for their “fair share” of affordable housing.
In the most densely populated state in the nation, the mandate was
initially seen as a way to stem the tide of increasing racial and
economic segregation.
Through nearly 30 years of living under the state policy, thousands of
units have been built for people who could not afford market rate
housing.
Much of that housing has been built because of the “builder’s remedy,”
which provides that developers can bypass significant zoning and land
use approvals in cities and towns that do not have their fair share of
affordable housing.
California

Every city and county in California must adopt a
comprehensive “general plan” to govern its land
use and planning decisions. All planning and
development actions must be consistent with the
general plan. The general plan must contain 7
elements, including a housing element. The
housing element must “make adequate provision
for the housing needs of all economic segments of
the community.”
For More Information

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Massachusetts “anti-snob” zoning law: Aaron Gornstein, Executive
Director, Citizen’s Housing and Planning Association, 18 Tremont
Street, Suite 401, Boston, MA 02108. Phone/TTY: 617-742-0820. Email: [email protected]
New Jersey “Mount Laurel” doctrine: Susan Bass Levin, Chairman,
Council on Affordable Housing, 101 South Broad Street, P.O. Box
813, Trenton, NJ 08625. Telephone: (609) 292-3000. Website:
http://www.state.nj.us/dca/coah/
California “Housing Element” Law: Diane Spaulding, Executive
Director, Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California, 369
Pine Street, Suite 350, San Francisco, CA 94104. Telephone: 415/9898160. Michael Rawson, California Affordable Housing Law Project
of the Public Interest Law Project, 449 15th Street, Suite 301, Oakland,
CA 94612. Telephone: (510) 891-9794, ext. 145
For More Information

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Montgomery County “Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit”
program: Eric B. Larsen, MPDU Coordinator, Montgomery County
Department of Housing and Community Affairs, Phone: 240-7773713. E-mail: [email protected] . Website:
http://hca.emontgomery.org/Housing/MPDU/summary.htm
Austin “S.M.A.R.T. Housing”: Stuart Hersh, Neighborhood Housing
and Conservation Department, City of Austin. Telephone: 512-9743154. E-mail: [email protected] . Karen Paup, Co-Director,
Texas Low Income Housing Information Service, 508 Powell Street
Austin, TX 78703-5122. Telephone: 512/477-8910.
Portland Community Residential Siting Program: Eric King
Coordinator, Referrals and Information Services, , City of Portland
Office of Neighborhood Involvement, City Hall, 1221 SW Fourth
Avenue, Room 110, Portland, Oregon 97204. Telephone: 503/8232030
For More Information
New Jersey “Good Neighbors” Program:
Margaret Sabin, Office of Public Affairs, New
Jersey Department of Human Services, 240 West
State Street, P.O. Box 700, Trenton, NJ 08625.
Telephone: (609) 633-8652. E-Mail:
[email protected]
 Rochester Fair Housing Planning: Thomas R.
Argust, Commissioner, Department of Community
Development , City Hall, Room 125-B, 30 Church
Street. Rochester, NY 14614 . Telephone:
716/428-6550

Ten Tips to Ensure Fair Zoning
and Land Use Hearings

Establish a maximum time frame for the hearing
in advance and enforce it
 Consider recording the hearing, through tape
recording or other mechanism
 Arrange for a presentation from the developer;
arrange for a presentation from planning staff or
other official to set forth a staff recommendation
and any objective issues that must be addressed
Ten Tips to Ensure Fair Zoning
and Land Use Hearings


Identify one person who will manage the meeting
Before the hearing begins, remind all participants
to listen respectfully, to remain polite, not to
interrupt others, or engage in cross talk.
 Maintain an official sign in sheet that includes the
name, address and phone number for each speaker.
Call speakers in order
 Establish an order for speakers. The order may be
in order of sign in, or sign in may be divided into
speakers who are pro and con the proposed action
and the speakers may alternate.
Ten Tips to Ensure Fair Zoning
and Land Use Hearings
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Limit the amount of time each speaker may take and
announce that amount of time on the sign in sheet.
Enforce it.
If any speaker makes discriminatory remarks the speaker
should caution them and the audience about making
discriminatory remarks. If any speaker makes profane or
foul remarks, stop the speaker, and caution them and the
audience about making such remarks
Consider taking a vote or making a decision at another
meeting to avoid demonstrations from the audience about
an unpopular decision
Finding and mobilizing
research and advocacy
resources
NIMBY Resources

Building Better Communities Network
(information clearinghouse and
communication forum dedicated to building
inclusive communities and to successfully
siting affordable housing and community
services.).
– http://www.bettercommunities.org/
NIMBY Resources (cont’d)
Addressing Community Opposition to
Affordable Housing Development: A
Fair Housing Toolkit, available at
http://content.knowledgeplex.org/kp2/ca
che/documents/68549.pdf
NIMBY Resources (cont’d)

Corporation for Supportive Housing:
www.csh.org

Fair Housing: The Siting of Group
Homes for People with Disabilities and
Children (National League of Cities,
2000)(Local Officials Guide series)
http://www.bazelon.org/cpfha/1group_home
s.pdf
NIMBY Resources (cont’d)

Group Homes, Local Land Use, and the Fair
Housing Act (Joint Statement of the
Department of Justice and the Department of
Housing and Urban Development, 1999)
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/housing/final8_1.htm
 “Why Not in Our Back Yard?” 45 Planning
Commissioners Journal 4 (Winter 2002),
available at
http://www.bazelon.org/issues/housing/moreres
ources/articles/Why-Not-In-Our-Back-Yard.pdf
NIMBY Resources (cont’d)

The NIMBY Report
 (The NIMBY Report supports inclusive
communities by sharing news of the NIMBY
syndrome and efforts to overcome it. Published for
nearly 10 years by the American Friends Service
Committee, it is now published by the National
Low Income Housing Coalition, in collaboration
with the Building Better Communities Network.
http://www.bettercommunities.org
NIMBY Resources (cont’d)
Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law
 (Organization and website dedicated to
enforcement of civil and constitutional
rights of people with disabilities)
 http://www.bazelon.org
– What Fair Housing Means for People with
Disabilities
– Digest of Cases and Other Resources on Fair
Housing for People with Disabilities
NIMBY Resources (cont’d)

No Room for the Inn: A Report on Local
Opposition to Housing and Social Services
Facilities For Homeless People in 36
United States Cities (National Law Center
on Homelessness and Poverty, 1995)
 Building Inclusive Community: Tools to
Create Support for Affordable Housing
(HomeBase/The Center for Common
Concerns, 1996)