Search Results (6)

Driven by many factors, the housing affordability landscape in the United States (U.S.) is in crisis. This research examines the potential role of inclusionary zoning (IZ) policies as a tool to alleviate housing cost burdens and deliver affordable housing in the rapidly growing southeastern region of the U.S., with a specific focus on Greenville County, South Carolina. Utilizing data from LawAtlas, this study first conducts a policy scan on the state of IZ policies across seven comparable jurisdictions. This study further employs qualitative semi-structured interviews with stakeholders to assess the current challenges to affordable housing in the county. Our findings suggest that growing regions such as Greenville County face unique challenges as they strive to meet the growing demand for affordable housing that serves a wide range of community members. A major finding from interviewees includes a need for more localized and nuanced metrics of housing affordability, greater density, and mixed-use development. However, the county faces challenges for such developments due to NIMBYism and preference for a more traditional rural and suburban typology of housing in the county. Finally, our study finds that zoning policies that enhance the supply of affordable housing by design can promote equity, trust, economic growth, and quality of life. Full article

Domestic workers represent an essential yet invisible workforce within urban economies, especially in developing countries. Predominantly women in low-income, single-headed households, they often work informally and rely on buses or minibus taxis for suburb-to-suburb travel. Despite their contributions, their transport needs are overlooked in traditional planning, which prioritises CBD-centric routes over the suburb-to-suburb journeys that define their invisible commute. The purpose of this study is to examine the transport mobility patterns of live-out domestic workers in urban areas, focusing on Centurion, one of the affluent neighbourhoods in the Metropolitan City of Tshwane, South Africa. To assess the transport challenges faced by domestic workers during their commutes, a Likert scale was utilised. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics facilitated by the SPSS software package to identify key trends and patterns in the responses. The key challenges of domestic workers are high transport costs, lack of access to affordable transport modes like rail and long commute times. Minibus taxi is the most commonly used mode accommodating both standard and non-standard working hours. The study also found that most of the domestic workers working in Centurion are migrant workers. To reduce the need to travel to work, mixed-income developments, and inclusionary housing are some of the concepts that can be adopted in affluent suburbs like Centurion. These two concepts not only address the need to travel to work but also spatial inequality and promotion of social integration whereby affordable housing are created within higher income areas. Full article

Inclusionary housing (IH) is a regulatory instrument adopted by local governments in many countries to produce affordable housing by capturing resources created through the marketplace. In order to assess whether it is efficient, scholarly attention has been widely focused on its evaluation. However, there is a lack of studies evaluating IH from a governance perspective. Since IH is about involving private actors in affordable housing production, the governance point of view of cooperating governmental and non-governmental actors governing society to achieve societal goals is highly relevant. The two most important elements of governance—actors and interrelationships among these actors—are taken to build an analytical framework to explore and evaluate the governance of IH. Based on a research approach that combines a literature review and a case study of China, this paper concludes that the ineffective governance of Chinese IH is based on three challenges: (1) The distribution of costs and benefits across actors is unequal since private developers bear the cost, but do not enjoy the increments of land value; (2) there is no sufficient compensation for developers to offset the cost; and (3) there is no room for negotiations for flexibility in a declining market. Given that IH is favored in many Chinese cities, this paper offers the policy implications: local governments should bear more costs of IH, rethink their relations with developers, provide flexible compliance options for developers, and perform differently in a flourishing housing market and a declining housing market. Full article

Public-driven attempts to provide decent housing to slum residents in developing countries have either failed or achieved minimal output when compared to the growing slum population. This has been attributed mainly to shortage of public funds. However, some urban areas in these countries exhibit vibrant real estate markets that may hold the potential to bear the costs of regenerating slums. This paper sheds light on an innovative hypothesis to achieve slum regeneration by harnessing the real estate market. The study seeks to answer the question “How can urban public policy facilitate slum regeneration, increase affordable housing, and enhance social inclusion in cities of developing countries?” The study approaches slum regeneration from an integrated land economics and spatial planning perspective and demonstrates that slum regeneration can successfully be managed by applying land value capture (LVC) and inclusionary housing (IH) instruments. The research methodology adopted is based on a hypothetical master plan and related housing policy and strategy, aimed at addressing housing needs in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. This simulated master plan is complemented with economic and residual land value analyses that demonstrate that by availing land to private developers for inclusionary housing development, it is possible to meet slum residents’ housing needs by including at least 27.9% affordable housing in new developments, entirely borne by the private sector. Findings suggest that under a robust public-led governance umbrella, market forces can (1) significantly contribute to fill the financial gap in order to achieve the end of slums by 2050 in coherence with the United Nations Agenda 2030 targets and principles, and (2) increase both affordable and market housing in upgraded neighbourhoods, hence enhancing social inclusion in cities of developing countries. Full article

Affordable housing remains a serious problem in many countries. Even as the housing affordability crisis deepens, most cities continue to exhibit robust real estate markets with high property prices. The low-income and poor households are unable to access affordable housing and remain excluded. This paper draws from empirical research conducted in the city of San Francisco and focuses on the application of Land Value Capture (LVC) through increased Inclusionary Housing (IH) requirements after plan changes that increased density potential in San Francisco’s Eastern Neighbourhoods to evaluate its effects on the goals of increasing both affordable housing and social inclusion. Findings reveal that the increased inclusionary requirements used as LVC mechanism enabled 76.2% of all the affordable housing units produced in the Eastern Neighbourhoods to be produced by market-rate developers in 2011–2015 as compared to the rest of San Francisco, where 35.5% of the affordable units were produced from the market through inclusionary policy during the same period. The study demonstrates that upzoning underutilised land coupled with a well-planned LVC mechanism can help harness the strength of the real estate market and increase both affordable housing production and social inclusion. Full article

Transit-oriented developments (TODs) are commanding high land and rental values due to improved accessibility and economic opportunities. Owing to the increase in land and rental values, the highly desirable TODs are gradually becoming inaccessible to the poor, creating social exclusion and housing inequities within the TODs. To address this consequence, the study proposes a three-level stakeholder deliberation framework (inform, involve, and collaborate) towards developing inclusive housing strategies for equitable and sustainable TODs. The framework is applied to the context of the Yeshwanthpur industrial area, Bengaluru, India. The first level of deliberation, ‘information’, foregrounds the need for affordable housing strategies for stakeholders. In the second level of deliberation, the stakeholders involved identify the major challenges in incorporating affordable housing into TODs. In the third level of deliberation, stakeholders collaborate to contemplate strategies to combat each challenge. The results show that mandatory inclusionary zoning, special-purpose planning vehicles, land banking entities, innovative financing tools, and local area level plans in collaboration with the community, emerged as potentially feasible strategies to create inclusive housing outcomes in the TOD case study area. Full article