Affordable Housing and the OZ Policy

08/19/19 • 71 min

Affordable Housing and the OZ policy, Lauren Harper ’20, and Christian Rodriguez ’19 examine the roots of the affordable housing crisis in the United States and explore the challenges and opportunities for addressing it with CitySCOPE podcast guests: Karen Dubois Walton, President of Elm City Communities in New Haven and Brandon Weiss, Visiting Professor at Yale Law School. We ask our guests their perspectives on the potential of the OZ policy for addressing the need for affordable housing. Topics covered include: the history of public housing and redlining, current regional dynamics inherited from redlining era, key issues of how to boost supply of affordable housing and where to build it, current trends in providing affordable housing such as mixed-income, mixed-use models, inclusionary zoning, community land trusts, and rent control.

Previous Episode

What are Opportunity Zones? What is at Stake?

What are Opportunity Zones? What is at stake? Allie Yee, MBA (SOM) and Professor Kate Cooney introduce the opportunity zone policy passed as part of the Jobs and Tax Cuts Act of 2017, the problems it is trying to solve and the incentives it creates to solve them. Dramatic explication of the mechanisms of the OZ incentives performed by guest hosts Sarah Harrari, graduate of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and SOM and Dan Bitner, MBA (SOM). To explore what is at stake for the OZ program, podcast hosts Allie Yee and Professor Kate Cooney present audio snippets from a selection of the guests interviewed for the eight episodes of CitySCOPE podcast, Season 1.

Next Episode

Community Land Trusts, Gentrification and the OZ

Community Land Trusts, Gentrification and the OZ, Dan Bitner, MBA speaks with Julius Kimbrough from the Crescent City Community Land Trust in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Val Orseli from Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association in NYC’s Lower East Side. In this episode, we explore gentrification pressures and how CLTs can act as a bulwark for affordability in rapidly changing neighborhoods. Dan Bitner leads listeners through the basics of how CLTs operate and learns about innovations on the CLT model from our guests. These innovations include: the scattered site CLT in the Lower East Side which now encompasses over 20 buildings, and the use of predial servitude and deed restrictions in mixed income, mixed use buildings such as the newly restored Pythian building in New Orleans. We end by asking our guests for their insights into the current opportunities and challenges for the CLT model.