One solution has been to build green infrastructure, such as parks, in these neighborhoods. It may seem as though the neighborhoods would benefit from this supposed step away from the historic inequity; however, once the green infrastructure is built, another equity issue can arise—gentrification and displacement. Those trees and parks can cause property values to rise, gentrifiers to move in, and low-income residents to be displaced. Displaced residents are more likely to experience negative mental health effects, food deserts, less walkable streets, less access to transportation, and more exposure to pollutants.
The same cycle happens with countless other “solutions” to historic inequities. Reducing crime leads to higher property values. Giving school vouchers to kids living in neighborhoods zoned for underfunded schools may encourage moderate-income parents to become gentrifiers and move into low-income neighborhoods. Increasing transit options and transit-oriented development can drive up rents and property values, resulting in displacement. Even addressing food deserts and swamps by attracting grocers, encouraging farmers’ markets, and incentivizing community gardens can result not only in food mirages but also in gentrification. The question thus becomes: how do we stop this cycle of (in)equity? Part of the answer could be leveraging the resources of gentrifiers and preventing displacement of low-income residents through land use solutions.
Part II of this paper discusses the benefits of focusing on mitigating and preventing displacement. The default solution to displacement is building more housing; however, housing development sometimes triggers gentrification. Part III explores land use powered displacement solutions beyond the default, focusing on examples that are innovative, promising, or applicable to a variety of municipalities, and offers a typology to help policy makers identify the solutions that will work for their flavor of gentrification. Part III categorizes strategies as ones that result in (A) affordable housing creation, (B) community resource creation and preservation,(C) affordable housing preservation, (D) the return or prioritization of displaced and displacement-vulnerable residents, and(E) displacement prevention. Finally, Part IV focuses on Providence, Rhode Island’s Anti-Displacement and Comprehensive Housing Strategy and discusses the need for an intersectional approach to addressing inequities at the local level.
II. Three Reasons to Focus on Displacement
Municipalities should focus on displacement for several reasons. First, as previously discussed, anti-displacement strategies would allow local governments to take bold action to rectify historical inequities. Next, gentrification is not always internally triggered. While internal neighborhood actions, like housing development or improvements, can trigger gentrification, external factors, not firmly reachable by local governments, also cause gentrification. Thus, gentrification cannot always be prevented, and anti-displacement may allow communities to benefit from the positives of gentrification, while mitigating the negatives. Finally, anti-displacement may provide an opportunity to partially address the rampant segregation in many municipalities.
While preventing gentrification entirely may not be possible, preventing, or at least mitigating, displacement of low-income residents is possible. Why focus on preventing displacement? Although many drivers of gentrification exist, displacement is a common factor that negatively impacts low-income residents. One study showed that residents displaced from gentrifying neighborhoods had higher rates of emergency department visits and hospitalizations, in comparison with residents remaining in gentrifying neighborhoods. Residents displaced by gentrification in China compared their un-homing to their experience of war. Several studies show that social integration of displaced households rarely succeeds when displaced people must move to communities far from their original neighborhoods. Further, displaced residents are more likely to experience negative mental health effects, food deserts, less walkable streets, less access to transportation, and more exposure to pollutants.
For every advantage that gentrification brings, it also brings a disadvantage. Gentrification brings population growth and residents with resources, but it can also displace current residents. Gentrification can increase the quality and quantity of housing; however, the result is often an increase in rents and property values. Commercial and residential development can come at a detriment to businesses that met the needs of the previous population. More high-skill jobs and labor often mean fewer low-skill jobs. Even an increase in amenities for all residents likely means the cost of amenities is above what low-income residents can afford. Thus, low-income residents are pushed out by gentrifiers who transform their neighborhood into a community with no affordable housing, no culturally relevant or affordable businesses, no low-skill jobs, and no affordable amenities. Anti-displacement land use strategies can do more than simply prevent displacement; they can be tailored to address the specific gentrification cons communities are facing to leverage the pros that benefit the community as a whole.
In addition to avoiding the harms of displacement while leveraging the benefits of gentrifiers, anti-displacement may offer another benefit. “Out of every metropolitan region in the United States with more than 200,000 residents, eighty-one percent (169 out of 209) were more segregated as of 2019 than they were in 1990.” Some researchers have suggested that gentrification, when displacement is prevented, offers the opportunity to increase socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic integration. “Land use is a particularly appropriate strategy for reversing racial inequity because land use practices played an active role in segregating America.” Focusing on anti-displacement land use strategies can help keep low-income residents in their neighborhoods, even as they gentrify.
III. What Can Be Done Beyond the Default? Local Governments Can Use Their Land Use Authority to Mitigate and Prevent Displacement.
The rental vacancy rate in the United States is lower than it has been since 1984, and a study by the Pew Research Center showed that almost half of Americans (forty-nine percent) think that the availability of affordable housing in their local community is a major problem. The country needs more affordable housing, and communities know it. One approach to the issue has been to build as much housing as possible; however, researchers and policymakers seriously debate whether building market-rate housing helps lower housing prices overall and whether it typically triggers gentrification and/or displacement. Thus, even the default solution of building more housing may lead back to the cycle of (in)equity.
This section explores land use powered displacement solutions beyond the default, offering a typology to help policymakers identify solutions that will work for their flavor of gentrification. This section particularly focuses on examples that are innovative, promising, or applicable to a variety of municipalities. The diversity in political will, legal authority, size, and resources of municipalities across the United States complicates the land use law and policy field. Thus, to increase the utility of this paper for on-the-ground implementers, this section also considers these diversity factors in the discussion of each solution.
A. Affordable Housing Creation
This article notes that any attempt to provide a typology for anti-displacement techniques would be incomplete without an affordable housing creation category; however, countless articles have been written on land use strategies for affordable housing creation (e.g., inclusionary zoning, mandatory affordable housing, infill development, adaptive reuse, and accessory dwelling units). Thus, this section functions solely as an acknowledgment of the category and includes a footnote to relevant reading. As noted, Part IV of this paper discusses the affordable housing creation land use strategies in Providence’s Anti-Displacement and Comprehensive Housing Strategy.
1. Community resource creation and preservation through impact fees
To prevent displacement, many municipalities are utilizing land use strategies to fund more affordable housing, but some are taking it a step further by using gentrification to fund programs like job training. Impact fees are payments that local governments require new developments to pay to fund new or expanded public facilities. Over half of U.S. states have impact-fee enabling acts. Typically, there must be a rational nexus between the amount and use of the funds required and the regulated activity’s contribution to displacement. Municipalities can use these fees to fund capital improvements, the costs of retaining legacy businesses, affordable housing, as well as job training and childcare for needed workers.
Policymakers may find impact fees, where the authority exists to do so, particularly useful in cases of gentrification involving new developments and large businesses. For example, when Facebook moved its headquarters to East Palo Alto, the neighborhood, a mainly Latinx and Black community, began to experience gentrification and displacement. To help mitigate displacement, the city council created an affordable housing linkage fee. In October 2021, the Palo Alto, California city council voted to raise their affordable housing impact fees for commercial and research-and-development projects from $39.50 per square foot to $68.50 per square foot. The city council believed that tech companies had benefited from the area and should thus contribute to the affordable housing fund to ensure the area’s long-term prosperity. The city council’s decision to increase the linkage fee in response to increased displacement highlights the importance of reviewing impact fees frequently. The American Planning Association suggests every two years.
In addition to affordable housing funds, municipalities can also use impact fees to fund job training. Fees paid by commercial developers for projects greater than 100,000 square feet fund the Neighborhood Jobs Trust in Boston, Massachusetts. Boston’s zoning law requires these developers obtain a zoning variance, and, to get the variance, the developers must pay a linkage fee, based on square footage, to the Neighborhood Jobs Trust. The Trust supports job training for low- and moderate-income residents. By creating this trust, Boston is using its land use authority to mitigate a con of gentrification—the loss of low-skill jobs.
2. Affordable Housing Preservation
To mitigate displacement, municipalities can use land use techniques that preserve the current affordable housing stock, including remediating distressed properties, creating neighborhood stabilization overlays, and bolstering climate resiliency. Preserving existing affordable housing is usually more cost-effective than subsidizing the construction of new affordable housing in a gentrifying neighborhood. Further, by making existing affordable housing stock safe, municipalities can keep current residents in place and prevent distressed properties from being renovated for gentrifiers.
a. Remediating Distressed Properties
Distressed properties include substandard, unsafe, vacant, abandoned, and blighted properties. Bad health and poor-quality housing are inextricably linked. Distressed properties can leave communities more susceptible to gentrification that displaces current residents, which is traumatic and adversely affects social well-being and overall health, because the property values in neighborhoods with vacant and blighted properties are typically low and appealing to developers. Additionally, distressed properties are often the least energy-efficient because, proportionally, they require more fuel to heat and cool. By enacting and enforcing local laws that remediate distressed properties, local governments can improve equity, boost health, decrease housing insecurity, lower utility costs, reduce fossil fuel emissions, and support climate equity.
Local governments may use their state delegated legal authority to address vacant and problem properties by enforcing codes, requiring the licensing of vacant and problem rental properties, destroying or ordering repairs to the properties, or transfering the properties to nonprofits. For example, Greensboro, North Carolina adopted the Repairing Buildings for Human Habitation Ordinance. The ordinance combines a “repair or destroy” strategy with a code enforcement strategy. The city inspector can serve complaints on homeowners who violate minimum standards in Greensboro’s housing code. If the inspector finds conditions rendering a building unfit for human habitation, such as a lack of ventilation or unsanitary conditions, the inspector issues a complaint to the property owner. After a public meeting, the inspector determines whether the dwelling is unfit for human habitation and issues an order requiring repair by the owner. If repair is impossible, the inspector may require demolition. Of course, this approach puts more pressure on the city to provide replacement housing affordable to the displaced occupants.
Cincinnati, Ohio enacted the Vacant Building Maintenance Licensing Program that utilizes code enforcement and registration strategies. Cincinnati’s program requires vacant-building owners who do not have a satisfactory development plan and proof of financing to apply for a vacant building license. Oakland, California’s Code Enforcement Relocation Ordinance takes displacement prevention a step further by requiring a property owner to pay relocation benefits to a residential tenant who must move due to enforcement of housing and building codes. If the owner refuses to make the payment, Oakland can choose to pay the displaced tenant and then place a lien on the property to recover the costs. By charging registration and licensing fees, local governments can recover the costs of protecting public health, safety, and welfare in communities impacted by vacant and problem properties.
b. Neighborhood Stabilization Overlays
Overlay zones are placed over one or more existing zoning districts, creating a new area subject to two sets of regulations and stipulations, those in the underlying zoning district and those in the overlay. Neighborhood stabilization overlays (NSO), also called neighborhood conservation districts, are implemented at a neighborhood level. The overlays require developers to meet standards more stringent than those in the underlying zone, including setbacks, building height, and floor area ratio.
Some municipalities, like Dallas, Texas and Portland, Oregon, have used NSOs to slow displacement of low-income residents in gentrifying neighborhoods. In Dallas, residents in the low-income La Bajada neighborhood voted to adopt an overlay restricting building heights through Dallas’s NSO ordinance to preserve affordable single-family homes. In 2020, the Portland City Council adopted the Residential Infill Project, a variation of a neighborhood overlay zone, that changed the types of housing allowed in single-dwelling residential neighborhoods. The Residential Infill Project provides affordable housing bonuses, increases the number of units allowed on residential lots, increases possible accessory dwelling unit (ADU) configurations in many zones, limits the amount of floor area allowed on a single lot, and provides a new way to measure height and create consistency in narrow lot standards.
Portland’s projection predicts 1,200 net additional homes per year, increasing Portland’s housing production by twenty percent. An outside analysis, done by economists, estimates that the median Portland rent will be twelve percent lower than it would have been without the Residential Infill Project. That amount is equivalent to an annual savings of $3,000 for the average tenant. While neighborhood stabilization overlays and residential infill projects are not widely used, they can preserve and generate affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods.
c. Bolstering Climate Resiliency
Climate gentrification can occur when a neighborhood lacking climate resiliency is made uninhabitable or less attractive to current and potential residents and developers, prompting them to move to higher ground. As a result of climate change, rising sea levels could, within thirty years, push chronic floods to land that is home to 300 million people. Miami-Dade, Florida, for example, is a low-lying county on the Atlantic coast where many residents live less than four feet above a rising sea level. In Miami, Florida, as the sea level rises and the risk of floods increases, developers are purchasing property at higher-elevation locations, which are often lower-income neighborhoods. Thus, climate change is resulting in increased property values in these locations, drawing in more affluent residents and the businesses that serve them. Communities like Liberty City and Little Haiti, which are more climate-resilient than current high-income areas, are experiencing, or are at risk of, climate gentrification and displacement.
Climate gentrification is unique compared to other forms of gentrification, as gentrifiers are often pushed out of neighborhoods that they otherwise liked. Instead of residents being attracted to low-income communities by lower housing costs and recent improvements, like new parks or improved transportation, climate change can drive residents out of neighborhoods in which they would otherwise have stayed. High-income residents are pushed into nearby low-income neighborhoods that have better natural or planned climate resiliency. Miami is facing serious issues due to sea level rise, and Liberty City is on some of Miami-Dade’s highest ground–—making it naturally more climate resilient than historically affluent coastal communities.
Additionally, in mixed-income climate-vulnerable areas, low-income residents with fewer resources are often forced to leave, while more affluent residents may utilize their resources to adapt and stay. Without widespread climate-resilience planning and action, low-income residents will continue to be displaced. Many land use tools for climate resiliency exist to address the variety of changes that the climate crisis will bring. Climate action plans can help municipalities assess climate vulnerabilities and plan for them. In 2016, for example, Boston, Massachusetts released its 2016 Climate Ready Boston plan and set one of its primary goals as adapting buildings to limit damage and displacement related to the impacts of a changing climate. To do this, the plan listed “update zoning and building regulations to support climate readiness” as a strategy. Since coastal flooding is one of the biggest risks that Boston faces as a result of climate change, in 2019 the Boston Planning & Development Agency developed and adopted Coastal Flood Resilience Design Guidelines for new construction and building retrofits, as well as recommendations for a Flood Resiliency Zoning Overlay District. Ultimately, in 2021, Boston adopted the Coastal Flood Resilience Overlay District (CFROD). The overlay restricts climate-risky development and subjects certain types of development to resiliency review. These strategies prevent development that would house potential climate gentrifiers.
B. The Return or Prioritization of Displaced and Displacement-Vulnerable Residents
To keep people in, or return them to, their communities, municipalities can use right-to-purchase ordinances and community preference policies. Right-to-purchase ordinances offer cities, tenants, or community groups like land trusts advanced notice and the right to purchase a multifamily rental property “when the owner decides to sell the property, exit the affordable housing program, or convert the rents to market rate.” These ordinances not only mitigate displacement, but they also create low-income home ownership opportunities for residents in gentrifying neighborhoods.
The possibility for home ownership is especially important given that building equity in property is a critical equity issue. Homeownership is an established route to building generational wealth, yet Black Americans have a homeownership rate of 46.4% compared to 75.8% for white families. The homeownership and racial wealth gap are the legacy of slavery, segregation, redlining, and other anti-Black policies. Tenant opportunity-to-purchase ordinances, especially, can help in this regard and avoid the paternalistic pitfalls of not placing ownership with possessors. While right-to-purchase ordinances do not typically produce radical results in terms of the number of units preserved, they are important in the context of the homeownership and racial wealth gap and can make a tangible- cost-effective difference with proper support.
Washington, D.C. runs the oldest right-to-purchase programs in the United States via the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) and District Opportunity to Purchase Act (DOPA). TOPA gives tenants the opportunity to purchase a building when the owner decides to sell, and DOPA gives D.C. the right to purchase if the tenants do not. Tenant ownership is typically structured through the creation of a limited equity cooperative, where residents collectively own their building with resale restrictions that preserve the long-term affordability of the units. The D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) encourages tenants to exercise their right to purchase to stabilize neighborhoods and prevent displacement. The DHCD provides tenants with financial assistance (seed money, earnest money deposits, acquisition funding, etc.), technical assistance, and “specialized organizational and development services [that] include structuring the tenant association, preparing legal documents, and helping with loan applications.”
The D.C. right-to-purchase programs have had success at cost-effectively preserving affordable housing. A report done by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute found that the programs preserved over 1,400 affordable housing units from 2003–2013 at lower costs than affordable housing development. More recently, in the past three years, 1,200 units have been TOPA properties. Successful implementation depends on the continued support of DHCD. TOPA and DOPA do not just allow time for tenants or D.C. to beat developers to the sale; DHCD backs up the right to purchase with support for tenants to follow through on that right.
San Francisco, California has a similar program called the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) that gives first priority to tenants or organizations that will preserve affordability and prevent displacement. When sellers are getting ready to market their buildings, they are legally required to provide a five-day notice to qualified nonprofits. If a nonprofit expresses interest, it then has twenty-five days to provide an offer. If that offer is accepted, the building goes into contract for purchase; conversely, if the offer is not accepted, the nonprofit has the right of countering any future offers, provided that they can match terms. Buildings with three or more residential units or vacant land that could be developed into three or more residential units fall under COPA. Other cities, like Denver, Colorado, have similar right-to-purchase programs, and many states and municipalities are currently considering creating right-to-purchase programs.
While right-to-purchase ordinances typically require a lot of political support, once they are passed, they are mostly self-enforcing. If real estate investors do not follow the laws, these ordinances can cloud the title, so companies will not provide title insurance and services if investors do not follow the laws. Additionally, these laws create a right that municipalities, tenants, or community groups do not have to exercise unless they have the money and interest.
Community preference policies, in conjunction with affordable housing programs, can help redress racial injustices, decrease displacement, and prevent affordable housing units from being occupied by gentrifiers. These policies usually provide priority placement in affordable units to low-income applicants who have been displaced from their neighborhood, are current residents at risk of displacement, or are descendants of displaced residents. For example, in 2015, San Francisco, California created an affordable housing preference program that notes displacement in its findings and purpose section. From July 2016 to November 2019, the city marketed 629 affordable housing units through the preference program. Unfortunately, “[n]eighborhood-level anti-displacement residency preferences likely suffer from the same legal defects as intercity preferences used to exclude minority applicants, and may even be at heightened risk because they are more likely to be expressly race-conscious.” Thus, these preferences should be used cautiously.
C. Displacement Prevention
Affordable housing, environmental, health, and racial impact statements and assessments are used at the local level to review actions—such as development, rezoning, and comprehensive planning—and determine whether the consequences of such actions should or must be mitigated. These impact statements and assessments can all be used to identify potential triggers of gentrification and displacement, as displacement has human, health, and racial aspects.
For example, in New York State, the State Environmental Quality Review Act requires municipalities to complete an environmental review of certain actions. Recently, in Port Chester, New York, the municipality planned to adopt a form-based code, which triggered New York State’s Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and the need for a Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS). Port Chester’s Department of Planning & Economic Development declared itself the lead agency and completed the GEIS. In preparing the GEIS, the municipality realized that adopting the code could trigger gentrification, which can be considered a negative environmental impact, as “environment” is broadly defined by SEQRA and includes “community character.” The Final GEIS states:
The new development permitted and encouraged by the implementation of the Proposed Action may result in the displacement of existing businesses in the Village’s commercial neighborhoods. This can happen directly when commercial tenants occupy buildings that are to be demolished or substantially rehabilitated and it can happen indirectly by the cumulative impact of development projects that improve economic conditions, resulting in higher commercial rents and the costs of doing business. These effects, in the aggregate, can cause a change in community character due to the disappearance of existing businesses and the cultural and economic benefits they provide. Such an impact is an adverse environmental impact under SEQRA regulations. As individual projects are proposed, the relevant Decision-Making Authority, serving as Lead Agency, must evaluate that impact and impose conditions on the projects that mitigate this negative environmental impact. It could be anticipated that there would be a greater percentage of this commercial displacement impacting people of color, lower-income populations, and environmental justice populations . . . .
Since SEQRA’s provisions are substantively, as well as procedurally, binding, SEQRA required Port Chester to mitigate gentrification. As a result, Port Chester adopted commercial anti-displacement strategies.
Municipalities with neighborhoods vulnerable to gentrification and displacement can use environmental, health, and racial impact statements or assessments to think about displacement mitigation before displacement begins. Some municipalities require, specifically, affordable housing impact statements. According to Austin, Texas’s S.M.A.R.T. Housing™ ordinance, “a city department cannot propose a change to an ordinance, rule, or process that impacts housing affordability unless the City’s Neighborhood Housing and Community Development Department has prepared an affordability impact statement for the proposed regulation before the initiation of external stakeholder discussions.” If there are negative impacts, only the city manager can approve continuation. In Atlanta, Georgia, an ordinance requires the city’s Office of Housing to produce an Affordable Housing Impact Statement when any Councilmember or Department submits a draft of “Housing Stock Impact Legislation.”
Other local governments are addressing the intersectionality of issues with assessments that analyze multiple factors, in addition to possible displacement. In 2016, Seattle, Washington addressed displacement on a city-wide scale with a “growth and equity” assessment that analyzed the “impacts on displacement and opportunity related to Seattle’s growth strategy.” Using a Displacement Risk Index and an Access to Opportunity Index, Seattle identified potential impacts of their proposed growth strategy and identified public mitigation strategies and opportunities to leverage private development. Pointing to Seattle’s Equitable Development Implementation Plan, which contains anti-displacement strategies, the assessment concludes that “[w]ith sufficient public resources, neighborhoods with the highest risk of displacement could experience significant private-sector housing development without displacement, provided that appropriate public investment in the associated mitigation strategies accompany or, ideally, precede that growth.”
While impact assessments are a great option, small amendments to comprehensive plans that add anti-displacement goals and strategies may offer a more efficient route to preventing displacement, a strategy that may be especially useful to municipalities that do not have the resources to prepare an impact assessment for every action. By including displacement considerations in the comprehensive plan, this alternative allows displacement to get the time, breadth, and community feedback that it deserves. Many impact assessments are relatively short and rushed as part of a long development process. Doing a thorough assessment on a case-by-case basis could slow the development of much needed affordable housing. The comprehensive plan approach is more efficient, balancing the need for development with the desire for equity. Unfortunately, this alternative may require a better understanding of what kind of development (and which circumstances) triggers displacement.
IV. Taking a Comprehensive and Intersectional Approach to Displacement—Providence, Rhode Island
Since displacement is an intersectional issue and the aforementioned strategies work often synergistically, municipalities should take a comprehensive and intersectional approach to the issue. In the National League of Cities’ State of the Cities Report, the group identified top mayoral priorities. Such priorities included housing, specifically affordable housing, and infrastructure, including infrastructure related to climate change. The report also highlighted public health, in the context of COVID-19, and equity. These issues inherently overlap and, to be addressed effectively, must be addressed together. Municipalities overlooking the significance of intersectionality results in the cycle of (in)equity. Further, gentrification is complex, generalizations are inept, and displacement should not be addressed in a disjointed or half-hearted way. Municipalities should consider displacement intersectionally and comprehensively. Providence, Rhode Island did just that.
According to a report by Fay Strogin, in 2018, Providence, Rhode Islandfailed to do enough to prevent displacement. Like many municipalities across the country, Providence faced high rates of vacancy, increased blight, and housing affordability issues in many of its neighborhoods due to a period of depopulation, deindustrialization, and the foreclosure crisis. With a projected twenty-nine percent growth in population by 2025, local stakeholders realized that, without an anti-displacement strategy, many neighborhoods in Providence would face gentrification and displacement.
In February 2021, Providence, Rhode Island released its Anti-Displacement and Comprehensive Housing Strategy. The strategy is a solid case study of how a municipality can address displacement and housing insecurity in the context of climate change, COVID-19, and racial equity. These issues adversely affect public health interconnectedly. Therefore, addressing them effectively means addressing them together.
Providence’s strategy acknowledged the connection between housing insecurity and racial equity by recounting the history of racial zoning and redlining and then connecting those actions to present effects. Providence’s strategy also addressed how COVID-19 and other viral diseases, like HIV, worsen housing insecurity. Tyler Macmillan, Esq., the city’s Associate Director of Division of Housing & Community Development, oversees implementation of the plan. Macmillan noted that since the plan’s release, displacement increased due to an influx of higher-income residents wishing to leave the Boston area and move to Providence because of COVID-19. In addition to the Anti-Displacement and Comprehensive Housing Strategy, Providence considers anti-displacement in its Climate Justice Plan and Comprehensive Plan as well. The Climate Justice Plan features an entire section on housing and considers green gentrification. Green gentrification occurs when investments in sustainable infrastructure and initiatives in a municipality increase property values and price out lower-income residents. By continuously exploring the intersectionality of these issues, Providence is more likely to avoid the cycle of (in)equity.
In addition to an intersectional approach, the strategy takes a comprehensive approach to anti-displacement and includes land use strategies intended to create more affordable housing, preserve the current affordable housing stock, and keep people in their communities. To create affordable housing, the Providence strategy recommends:
- Modifying zoning to allow more infill development (via pre-approved architectural designs that developers and property owners can use to build affordable housing on small lots).
- Creating a linkage fee for commercial development that is committed to the Housing Trust Fund.
- Improving ADU regulations.
- Allowing for greater use of row houses.
- Enabling cluster development on large residential lots.
- Providing density bonuses for land development projects.
- Creating a process to approve adaptive reuse administratively.
To preserve affordable housing, the Providence strategy recommends creating a mandatory rental housing registry to facilitate code compliance inspections and creating a certificate of habitability that requires inspections every three years. To keep people in their communities, the Providence strategy also recommends creating a Right of First Refusal Program to give the city an option to purchase existing income-controlled units. Providence’s actions demonstrate how municipalities can use land use solutions to address displacement in the context of other inequities.
V. Conclusion
In addressing historical inequities, local governments risk triggering further inequity via gentrification and displacement. Using strategies that result in (1) affordable housing creation, (2) community resource creation and preservation, (3) affordable housing preservation, (4) the return or prioritization of displaced and displacement-vulnerable residents, and (5) displacement prevention, local governments can prevent the cycle of (in)equity. Ideally, local governments would do so intersectionally and comprehensively. While this paper focused on land use strategies for local governments, there is work to be done analyzing the anti-displacement potential of scoring systems, as well as other strategies, such as tax incentives.
