PolicyLink works in partnership with community leaders and organizations in metropolitan regions throughout the nation. Many of these partnerships are coalitions engaged in campaigns to achieve equitable development and regional equity in low income communities that are experiencing disinvestment or gentrification. To support community efforts, PolicyLink brings skills in advocacy, capacity building, communications, research, and leadership development. The work in communities is as diverse as the regions themselves.
Current Projects
While the unprecedented economic boom of the 1990s revitalized the economy of the Greater Boston area and reestablished the city as one of the nation's destination metropolitan regions, it also exacerbated longstanding inequities. In seeking ways to address these inequities, a group of the area's leading advocacy organizations engaged PolicyLink to help establish Action for Regional Equity (Action!), a coalition that promotes an aggressive policy platform for advancing regional equity in Massachusetts. Action! includes organizations focused on affordable housing, economic development, environmental justice, transportation, and community development.
From its onset, the work of Action! has integrated the issues, constituencies, and strategic tactics necessary to improve equity outcomes in the development process. In 2003, PolicyLink worked with Action! members to develop Promise and Challenge: Achieving Regional Equity in Greater Boston, a report that identifies key trends and lays out policy reform proposals aimed at advancing regional equity in the Boston region.
Action! has hosted more than a dozen resident and community forums since November 2002 that have drawn several hundred representatives from local government, community based organizations, and advocacy groups. The working sessions have sharpened strategies for re-aligning public policy in the arenas of transportation investment and affordable housing. The most recent of these, in Fall 2007, set the policy priorities for a multiyear effort to infuse housing affordability into transit investment, particularly near MBTA station areas.
Going forward, Action for Regional Equity has identified three principal areas of work:
Launch a sustained campaign that focuses on transportation investment, improved public transit, and job access for low- and moderate-income workers.
Address the affordable housing crisis by advocating for subsidies for affordable housing production and preservation by state and private developers.
Promote civic engagement through public education and building the will of residents, agency representatives, and elected officials to address key issues of transportation, housing, and environmental justice.
See the Action for Regional Equity section for more details.
PolicyLink is providing research support to Housing California, the statewide nonprofit organization representing a coalition of advocates for affordable housing. Research focuses on identifying and advancing efforts to secure a statewide housing trust fund to support affordable housing throughout the state.
Economic renaissance has brought a surge of both public and private investment to the DC area. In response to rising housing prices and gentrification pressures across the city, PolicyLink is partnered with DC ACORN, DC Agenda, the Coalition of Nonprofit Housing, Washington Innercity Self Help, and the DC Metro Labor Council to mandate inclusionary zoning (IZ) in the District. A 2003 PolicyLink report, Expanding Housing Opportunity in Washington DC, laid the groundwork for the campaign. We will continue to work with the campaign committee, and the more than 100 organizations it represents, to pass inclusionary zoning policy change. The progress of this ongoing effort to train resident leaders, work on a communications strategy that builds public and political will, and research additional policy questions as they emerge can be monitored by visiting the campaign website for the mandatory inclusionary zoning effort at dciz.org.
In 2006, a three-year campaign in Washington, D.C. co-led by PolicyLink culminated in the adoption of city-wide inclusionary zoning policies. The success of the campaign, which relied on inserting the voices of a large and diverse coalition into the policy making process is becoming a model for coalition building and has garnered national attention. The Spring 2007 issue of the National Housing Institute publication Shelterforce features an article on the campaign, and outlines strategies to employ coalition building strategies.
Past Projects
Atlanta has many of the attendant problems that come with sprawl, such as high rates of concentrated poverty and an extreme housing/jobs imbalance that has created a need for affordable housing throughout the region. The Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP), a regional community development intermediary, is working with PolicyLink to address the housing/jobs imbalance issue through a region-wide campaign focused on building support for affordable housing and mixed-income communities.
ANDP's Mixed Income Communities Initiative (MICI), launched in November 2002, makes the case for the equitable distribution of affordable housing in the Atlanta region. MICI develops civic leadership for expanding affordable housing, and supports policy strategies to implement affordable and mixed-income housing throughout the region.
PolicyLink partners with ANDP to assist in building the policy capacity of local organizations and build media visibility on the problem and potential solutions.
Over the last three years, PolicyLink served as a technical advisor to community organizations in the forefront of advancing equity through the urban renewal process in the Interstate neighborhood, Portland 's most racially diverse neighborhood. PolicyLink helped community representatives to codify the principles of equitable development into the guiding documents for the renewal area, slated to receive $550 million for housing and transportation. In 2005, working with the Coalition for a Livable Future (CLF), and its 40 member organizations-representing civil rights, affordable housing, environmental and transportation organizations- PolicyLink co-produced a Regional Equity Atlas (REA) that mapped Portland's regional equity status and reflected the distribution of affordable housing, access to jobs, transportation and open space.
Two dozen neighborhoods in New York City are in the midst of dramatic changes as the administration of Mayor Michael C. Bloomberg undertakes substantial redevelopment plans that could alter the pattern of growth for generations to come. At the same time, the city's housing costs have marched upward, making it increasingly difficult for many New Yorkers to afford housing. The proposed changes will either deepen the challenges of affordability or set a new course toward ensuring a diverse, stable housing stock that serves the needs of a spectrum of New Yorkers. The mayor's initiative provides an opportune moment for residents, housing advocates, and community leaders to push for a policy to insure affordable housing. PolicyLink and the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development co-authored Increasing Housing Opportunity in New York City: The Case for Inclusionary Zoning, which examines the options for achieving more affordable housing through the rezonings that are part of the mayor's plan. Since its release in the fall of 2004, the report has been used extensively by a broad coalition of over 80 organizations to build its case for inclusionary zoning in every neighborhood where zoning changes are proposed. PolicyLink is part of the media advisory group that is working with the coalition to build the case for inclusionary zoning.