Anatomy of a Preservation Deal: Innovations in Preserving Affordable Housing from around the United States
To better understand how affordable housing preservation happens, this report from the Urban Institute highlights cases from around the country where developers have navigated complex policy and financing environments to preserve affordable housing. These case studies represent a range of contexts but offer wider lessons for people working to preserve affordable housing.
Economic factors and demographic trends, coupled with a complex policy and funding environment, mean that affordable housing preservation faces significant headwinds. As such, lessons can be learned from digging into actual cases where housing affordability has been preserved. Here we present findings based on six case studies that reflect varied housing market types, policy contexts, and development types. While these cases represent a diversity of stakeholders, residents, local policy environments, and economic contexts, they present a number of important lessons for other efforts to preserve affordable housing. We highlight five:
- local and state resources to match federal funds;
- developer capacity to coordinate multiple funding streams and put together complex deals;
- collaborative relationships between buyers and sellers;
- local policy context that allows for innovations in the field;
- and policy networks that allow for transfer of knowledge, techniques, and interventions from one place to another.
