Action Steps for Affordable Housing

Action Steps for Affordable Housing

Now that you have some tools to prepare you and others in the fundamentals of affordable housing, there are specific steps you can take to address unsatisfied needs in your community.

If there is no official housing organization in your community:

• Obtain a list of people in your community who are on the affordable housing mailing list from the County Planning Department or the Community Housing Resource Center.

• Identify and contact neighbors, friends, acquaintances and persons on the County’s mailing list who support affordable housing development in your community.

• Request technical assistance from the county in setting up an organizational meeting.

• Request a speaker from the County (at no cost) to meet with your group to discuss affordable housing needs and how to organize support in your community.

• Meet with local businesses, community leaders, community groups and religious organizations to help establish the need for and a constituency for affordable housing.

• Request technical assistance from the County on the formation of an official Community Housing Board or Housing Development Corporation.

• Meet with your local government to request an advocate for the creation of a Community Housing Board or Community Development Corporation.

If there IS an official housing organization in your community:

Identify and Mobilize Housing Advocates in Your Community

• Ask your core group to identify friends, neighbors, community leaders and others who support affordable housing and add them to your mailing list

• Develop a “speakers bureau” of individuals from the community and from the County to address various community groups on the subject of affordable housing.

• Identify and contact local community organizations, service clubs and religious groups to arrange for a speaker to attend one of their meetings to discuss the need for affordable housing in your community.

Work with Local Officials

• Ask the members of your group to send letters to local elected officials to let them know there is a constituency in your community who support affordable housing

• Attend public meetings and speak out for affordable housing

• Encourage your municipality to conduct housing needs studies (see below)

• Write letters to the editor of publications that circulate in your community

Contact the Community Housing Resource Center to Conduct a Local Housing Needs Study to Define:

• How affordable housing impacts local businesses

• How the lack of affordable housing impacts traffic patterns in the community

• How the lack of affordable housing affects volunteer services in the community

• Who needs affordable housing in your community

• What sites are available for affordable housing in your community

• What kind of housing is most needed in your community

If affordable housing is proposed in your community:

• Learn more about the developer, the site, the local neighborhood and the people who are targeted to live in the housing

• Help develop a briefing kit about the proposed plan for local residents and community advocates

• Assist the developer in setting up meetings with small groups of neighbors to discuss the proposed development

• Be certain supporters of the project are aware of hearings and plan to attend

• Identify local businesses, community organizations, religious groups and service clubs whose employees or membership may benefit from the proposed housing, provide information on the proposed development and request their support at the hearing.

• Plan to attend the public hearings and express your views

Increase the Community’s Access to Information on Affordable Housing

• Visit your local library and request they create a section on housing

• Assist with the addition of reading materials by sending for studies and books to add to the new section (being certain to check the website of the County Planning Department)

• Hold educational forums on various aspects of affordable housing development

• Keep updated information about your organization on the County’s housing web site

• Ask your local government access station to air the League of Women Voter’s video on Affordable Housing.