The harms exacted by the eviction process expand well beyond America’s families. Eviction has exceedingly destabilized the affordable housing industry at large, exacting a financial toll on the very developers and owners needed to preserve and expand the limited supply of subsidized, affordable housing.

Accessing capital is the most significant hurdle facing emerging small-scale Black, Indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC) real estate developers, and much of that challenge is rooted in the legacies of systemic racism.

Through extensive literature review and qualitative data, this brief draws from the community development sector’s experience to identify best practices, interventions and key common-sense reforms to make land contracts a safer and more effective homeownership tool.

Cities are not homogeneous by race and ethnicity, however, with some neighborhoods still majority non-Hispanic white. Nor are changes within these neighborhoods consistent; for example, those that have experienced gentrification – or the in-migration of higher-income households into traditionally low-income communities – likely have different patterns of racial change than non-gentrified neighborhoods, given inequalities in income distributions across households by race and ethnicity.

This paper is the first in a series that looks at gentrification and its implications for policymaking. It highlights the importance of measurement to framing our perceptions about gentrification and its consequences. Subsequent papers will demonstrate the extent of overlap between different measures, and the intersections of gentrification and education policy decisions.

Explore the potential positive outcomes of allowing low-density multifamily (LDMF) development in areas previously reserved for single-family development, as well as prominent regulatory and financing challenges to creating LDMF housing.