Housing is on everyone's lips, says Sheila Rice, who just completed a term as interim executive vice president and chief operating officer for NeighborWorks America. She expects the trend to continue through 2020.
For starters, the health-care industry is highlighting housing, Rice says, pointing to a quote that is everywhere from the Champlain Housing Trust to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "Housing is health care."
Moderators asked a housing question at the November Democratic presidential candidate debate. "That's the first time anyone can remember that happening," Rice says.
Legislators are discussing housing constantly, too. As an example, she points to her home state of Montana, where housing coalition officials have spent the last seven sessions asking the legislature to support housing.
"The 2019 session was the first time in seven sessions that we had any success at all," said Rice, who served as executive director of NeighborWorks Great Falls in Montana for 15 years. "More than ever before, we heard that there was a lack of housing. Businesses couldn't hire new people. They couldn't grow the economy. People who worked in resort towns couldn't live in the resort towns because there was no housing for them. All of that led to enough bipartisan support that we got a low-interest loan program passed. By Montana standards, it was a big victory."
Homelessness still a challenge
Across the country in San Francisco, Whitney Jones, director of housing development for Chinatown Community Development Center, says the focus for 2020, as in 2019, will be on the three Ps: production, preservation and protection. That means producing housing, preserving and refurbishing properties, and protecting tenants.Last year, California saw new eviction protections and legislation protecting renters from excessive rent increases, so Jones doesn't see that area to be as much of a focus for the year ahead.
What he does see is a focus on preservation and rezoning efforts, on targeting more "acquisition rehabs," on producing more housing and on targeting prevailing homelessness.
"Homelessness continues to be a significant challenge for everybody," he says. "Because the problem persists and hasn't been significantly shrinking, and because it's such a major political issue, I think we'll see some new, creative ideas."
Rice agrees. "We've always had poverty," she says. "But we didn't always see it right in front of us."
When homelessness becomes visible, she says, it leads to the feeling that we have to do something to fix the problem.
A focus on communities
Jones expects senior housing to be in the spotlight in 2020, especially in San Francisco. "It's part of preservation, but it also ties into production," he says. "We're trying to create ongoing, operating subsidies both for extremely low-income seniors and for low-income people whose rents are burdensome."Mark Lenn Johnson, president of Art Inc. Kentucky, a nonprofit business and marketing incubator supporting Kentucky artists and a part of Community Ventures, a NeighborWorks network member, is planning to move to a new community he helped create. Known as the Artists' Village, the project, located in Lexington's historic yet economically challenged East End, will include 14 artist-owned homes with attached studios, a nearby retail art gallery where Kentucky artists can sell their work, an "Art Park" green space for art festivals, poetry readings and musical events, and a cluster of small rental studio spaces for artists who want to be a part of the community but not necessarily live there. Frank X. Walker, Kentucky's first African-American poet laureate, is the village's first resident.
Artist communities are part of another community development trend that is expected to continue in the year — and decade — ahead.
"I am very excited to be returning here to continue my art making and to be a part of it all," says Johnson, who was born in the East End and spent his childhood there before becoming an award-winning glass artist and creative photographer. He researched and visited other artist support programs and villages both in and outside Kentucky as he was developing the concept for Lexington.
"We talked to artists in Kentucky to learn about what they wanted and what they needed," he says. The village came out of that research. Artists also wanted training to become better business people and opportunities like Art Inc.'s online art gallery to market and sell their work.
Johnson says he's especially glad to see these changes happening in the East End.
"Like many inner-city neighborhoods across the country, Lexington's East End community is a neighborhood that has some challenges, but a lot of exciting opportunities are happening here as well," he says. The hope is to make East End a destination to draw more people, more money and, eventually, more opportunities. Johnson says his team is working to preserve community's history and he's hoping, like others embarking on similar ventures, that the improvements will seep into the greater neighborhood.
"This is something I've seen across the country," he says.
With funding assistance from NeighborWorks America, Johnson was able to learn from and network with peers across the country that were working on similar projects. And they will be able to learn from him. "We've already had some inquiries into everything that we're doing to support our artists and our community," he says. "We're happy to pass along our lessons learned."
A holistic approach
Malik Ahmed, who has been at Better Family Life, a NeighborWorks organization based in St. Louis, Missouri, for nearly 37 years, says his organization has applied a holistic approach to managing community development. And he sees other organizations doing the same in the years ahead. "We had to prove that it was workable," he says. "I think we've done that."In St. Louis, Ahmed's key issues include keeping residents in their communities, de-escalating gun violence and youth and family services. "We provide a multiplicity of services," he says. "Housing to health care to workforce to youth to social etiquette to parenting and remedial education. We have to create viable economic opportunities in neighborhoods that are depressed. We have to bring those neighborhoods and people back."
Like Johnson, Ahmed, who published a book last fall called From Projects to Pyramids: In Search of a Better Family Life, says cultural arts and performances are important in community development. They bring people together, he says, "and help them celebrate themselves." Churches, which he says should be the center of the African-American community, also play a key role in redevelopment of neighborhoods.
"I think more and more agencies are making provisions for a holistic approach," he says, adding that the problems people have – violence, poverty and more – are often related. Dealing with them holistically, he says, "I think that's the wave of the future, of course."
Lindsay Duvall, manager of advocacy and community engagement at New York's Hudson River Housing, points to community and economic development programs that operate at the Poughkeepsie Underwear Factory. "Workforce training, youth employment, social enterprises, business incubators and other programs are providing skills to clients seeking stable housing and who face barriers to employment," she says. "This is one way we are creating pathways out of homelessness."
Other trends officials have cited:
- Disasters, including tornadoes and fires, have added to the housing crunch. Another culprit? Vacation rentals by owner, Rice says. "That takes a house off the normal rental market. In particular, in heavy tourism towns, we see apartments that would be affordable and on the market to be rented are moved to vacation rental status."
- Veteran homelessness, or, more specifically, dealing with veteran homelessness, is also a trend. "We have partnered with VetZero to build a national movement to end veteran homelessness," Duvall says.
- Inner cities are seeing a mix of populations that include both young people and aging baby boomers who want to be closer to what the city has to offer. "So you're seeing the convergence of two populations that both want to live downtown, and that's driving the housing costs up a bit," Rice says.
- More people seem to be embracing modular housing and tiny houses, Rice says. "People are downsizing for affordability and looking for less expensive ways to create quality housing." Jones confirms seeing that trend in California.
