Have you seen the new Nexus Housing Policy Guide section on NHC’s website? We streamlined material from several old NHC’s sites into one readable and easy to navigate guide. So far, we have policy guides under the umbrella topics of funding tools and inclusive communities. Regulatory strategies material will be coming later this month and material under stable neighborhoods and sustainable developments will be available early next year.
Over the last year, NHC staff streamlined and updated the policy guides with the goal of making them more up-to-date and user friendly. Our guides provide basic overviews of key affordable housing policies and programs, in-depth descriptions and profiles of policy at work, all from a practical perspective that can be useful to new housers and seasoned professionals alike. We’ve distilled the most important information about federal, state and local housing policies and programs and linked them to the resources and organizations that can help you expand your knowledge.
We hope that these guides can be a starting point, whether you’re someone who is looking to learn about a topic for the first time or someone who is looking to implement a policy in a community. And we hope that program or policy profiles are both illustrative and practical; users can get a sense of the big picture needed to implement the policy or program and get the name of an organization or municipality that went through the implementation process to reach out to for more specific questions.
These guides will continue to evolve as programs and policies at the local, state and federal levels shift. As an example, an earlier version of the inclusionary housing guide stated that there were fewer than 200 inclusionary zoning ordinances across the country; there are now over 500 such ordinances and that number will likely continue to grow. We hope you’ll join us in both implementing this work across the country and helping us keep our guides up to date. If you have a suggestion for a new guide or a program profile or you notice something that’s no longer up to date, please reach out to me at ksnyder@nhc.org.