Ensuring access to and development of communities of opportunity
Check out our interactive map to see areas where local and state Habitat organizations have successfully changed housing policies to ensure access to and development of communities of opportunity.
When homes are affordable and well-located, families can have reasonable commutes to employment or educational opportunities, resulting in lower transportation costs and more time to invest in home and family. That investment creates greater stability for them and the neighborhood.
Ways to expand and preserve access to community opportunities:
- Expanding resources for home repair, home modification and weatherization assistance.
- Funding lead and asbestos remediation.
- Establishing property tax relief programs to mitigate displacement.
- Preventing evictions with the help of affordable legal assistance and “just-cause” eviction laws.
- Supporting local decision-making processes to ensure that residents have a meaningful voice in community development.
- Adopting local hiring and contracting policies.
- Increasing the mobility of housing voucher holders.
- Improve the quality of existing housing stock through the enforcement of housing and building codes.
At Habitat for Humanity, we know that home isn’t just a building; it includes the community and resources in which you live, work and grow.
Affordable homes must:
- be built in environmentally sound areas.
- have access to economic and social opportunities and viable transportation.
- have systems in place to preserve affordability and prevent the displacement of current residents, many of whom have lower incomes, as communities experience increasingly new development and investment.
- be well-constructed and mitigated against disasters to control the health, maintenance, sustainability and energy costs of the home.
Everyone deserves to live in a stronger and healthier community — and to contribute to how that community is shaped over time. That belief is what drives the Cost of Home campaign to support advocacy for policies that protect and strengthen neighborhoods and enable communities to thrive.
Our impact
With still one more year of the campaign to go, check out our solutions in action:
- Policy successes mapped by policy focus area and geographies.
- A typology or searchable database of policy changes achieved by Cost of Home.
- Urban Institute brief on searchable database.
- Strategies for advocates to influence home affordability policies.
- Urban Institute policy assessment report.
Join us
Find out how you can add your voice to be a part of this important work.