As the country continues to face a profound shortage of affordable rental homes, developers, policymakers, and advocates continue to explore innovative strategies to expand the supply of affordable homes and contain the cost of affordable housing development. One promising approach is leveraging underutilized publicly owned properties – buildings or parcels owned by a governmental or government-chartered entity, such as units of federal, state, or local government, transit agencies, and school districts – for affordable housing development.
In a constrained financial environment, offering underutilized publicly owned properties at a discounted price or no cost is an effective and proven strategy that helps contain the cost of affordable housing development and expands the supply of affordable homes. However, there are significant challenges associated with leveraging publicly owned property for affordable housing development, including regulatory issues that can add time, cost, and complexity to the development process.
In a new issue brief — Making it Happen: Leveraging Federally Owned Property to Create Affordable Homes – the fourth in a series focused on opportunities to scale affordable housing innovations — we discuss considerations, strategies, and attainable outcomes for repurposing underutilized federally owned property to create affordable multifamily homes.
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