Senior Sequence

Housing Policy Debate

Call for Abstracts: Housing Policy Debate

Special Issue on Environment and Equity and Local Housing Policy

guest edited by Frederick Steiner and Elizabeth Mueller

Abstracts are invited for a special issue on the connections and/or tensions between green local planning and building policies and housing affordability.

In recent years, evidence and awareness of the connection between the built environment and climate change has increased among planners, architects and other urban professionals and policy makers. In federal, state and local planning and policy circles, discussion has focused on strategies for fostering more compact forms of development, meant to minimize transportation-related pollution and congestion. The primary policy tools under discussion have been (comprehensive) land use planning and public investment in regional transportation infrastructure. Among architects, attention has focused on "greening" building design, materials and site design standards, often through use of USGBC's LEED standards or US EPA's Energy Star standards. Organizations ranging from the US Conference of Mayors to the American Institute of Architects to the Society of Interior Designers have signed on to ambitious climate change goals put forward by Architecture 2030, aimed at dramatically reducing the fossil-fuel consumption and/or greenhouse gas emissions associated with building construction and operation. Arguably, one consequence of denser development will be higher land and housing prices. Similarly, meeting energy efficiency standards for homes or apartments may also bring higher costs for owners.

Policies aimed at addressing housing affordability have historically relied overwhelmingly on federal funds, with program parameters set in Washington for the use of such funds. Generally, localities and private affordable housing producers have been encouraged to minimize the costs of meeting affordable housing needs by choosing lower cost locations and producers. In addition, affordable housing policies have not historically been connected to local plans, in the absence of state legislation linking the two. Yet connections are beginning to be made, even in areas lacking such planning mandates, as housing advocates look to localities for funds and tools to encourage production of affordable housing as federal support for such programs continues to decline.

This issue has the goal of bringing together recent research on how state and local plans and policies are doing at working toward both sustainability and equity goals. We are interested in papers that focus on particular local solutions or case studies as well as more global discussions of policy strategies or aims. Topics might range from something as local as the work of a single nonprofit to develop a new approach to their work to a regional planning effort to distribute housing opportunities across desired growth corridors to the work of an international agency to address housing needs for the poor in a sustainable manner.

Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) by December 1, 2008. Authors invited to submit manuscripts will be notified by February 1, 2009, with full drafts due June 1, 2009. Abstracts should include description of research methodology and main findings.

Katrin B. Anacker, Ph.D.

Research Assistant Professor Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech

Co-Editor Housing Policy Debate

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