Partners in New York and Chicago Use Expertise from Local Work to Develop National Housing Tools
Across the US, housing costs are becoming increasingly unaffordable. Rents are rising while housing shortages are becoming more acute, and low to moderate-income renters and homebuyers are being left with fewer options that they can afford.
Amidst this ongoing housing affordability crisis, two NNIP partners have drawn on years of research expertise to develop tools to assist policymakers, researchers, and practitioners across the country to better understand their respective housing markets and policy environments while learning about nationwide housing data and trends. The New York University (NYU) Furman Center created a database of all land use reform legislation passed at the state level, while the Institute for Housing Studies (IHS) at DePaul University in Chicago contributed data to tools and resources that highlight strategies for preserving unsubsidized affordable housing.
Together, these two partners offer examples of the ways in which nationwide housing tools that leverage local experience can offer valuable insights to housing stakeholders at the state and local levels.
Land Use Reform Tracker
The NYU Furman Center regularly publishes research on land use and housing in New York City at the neighborhood and city levels, as well as nationally. Recent briefs include analysis of the implications of City Charter changes to housing production and research on the potential for development on city-owned land. This detailed and nuanced analysis gives NYU Furman Center policy experts a deep understanding of the ways local housing policies affect the supply of housing.
As Vicki Been, Faculty Director of the NYU Furman Center recently noted, an increasing number of state-level reforms to the land use and zoning process are also being adopted across the country in an effort to spur housing production: "for decades, zoning was almost exclusively a local affair, but we are seeing a historic shift as states take a more active role in addressing the housing crisis.” The NYU Furman Center has published several briefs in recent years looking at the potential roles that the New York State legislature could play in New York’s housing shortage, including promoting more transit-oriented development through state legislation or state-level interventions to address how restrictive zoning limits the supply of housing.
The NYU Furman Center’s Land Use Reform Tracker builds on this work by allowing policymakers, researchers, and media to see how similar legislative reforms are playing out across the country. The Tracker consists of a public database of state-level land use reforms across 40 states that are aimed at lowering barriers to new housing construction, such as by reforming building codes, expediting review procedures, or offering tax incentives for localities that allow denser housing. Materials about these reforms include texts of enacted bills, analysis of how legislation compares to other states, and information on the different types of land use reforms. The Tracker also includes updated collections of research about individual reforms, including information on how the reforms are being implemented and on litigation and other reactions to them.
Going forward, NYU Furman Center researchers will produce policy briefs and trend reports to help stakeholders understand how states are approaching various reforms. This research will analyze nationwide patterns, identify differences in state approaches, and evaluate the potential impacts of new legislation.
PreserveNOAH
IHS has provided research to multiple local partners in efforts to preserve unsubsidized affordable housing in Chicago. Quantifying losses of over 10,000 two-to-four-unit residential buildings in Chicago from 2013 to 2019, IHS found that the decline in this key source of housing increased affordability pressures and displacement risk, especially in neighborhoods facing gentrification and disinvestment. Elevated Chicago, a coalition of organizations focused on equitable transit-oriented development, combined this data with powerful narratives from local residents to inform the Connected Communities Ordinance, a two-year engagement with over 80 community and civic stakeholders. The Ordinance successfully passed in 2022 and is the foundation of Chicago’s approach to equitable, transit-oriented development.
In addition to this work, IHS and policy collaborative the Preservation Compact have partnered on a number of projects to develop policies and strategies for preserving the existing stock of unsubsidized affordable housing in Chicago and across the country. In response to the decline in Chicago’s small unsubsidized affordable housing and its corresponding effects on Chicago’s housing affordability, IHS and the Preservation Compact formed the Preservation Lab, with the goal of investigating strategies to preserve this crucial stock of housing and inform the decisions Chicago-area affordable housing partners. In 2021, the Preservation Lab released findings showing the decline of unsubsidized affordable housing in Chicago and detailing principles for practitioners and policymakers to tailor preservation strategies to local conditions.
In 2024, IHS and the Preservation Compact continued this preservation work with PreserveNOAH, a collaboration aimed at filling critical information gaps on the diverse market conditions in which unsubsidized affordable housing – otherwise known as naturally occurring affordable housing, or NOAH – exists and to compile effective strategies in preserving this housing stock.
As part of this effort, IHS developed an analysis that identified rental housing market typologies for submarkets in the 50 largest metropolitan Statistical Areas in the US. Using these typologies and their own interviews with various stakeholders, the Preservation Compact created an interactive mapping tool that provides detailed data analysis to classify rental market types across the US.
PreserveNOAH also includes the NOAH Clearinghouse, a curated resource featuring tested preservation approaches from 20 cities across the country. The resource includes case studies, financing mechanisms, and policy frameworks designed to enable practitioners to adapt preservation approaches to their local contexts.
Both the Land Use Reform Tracker and PreserveNOAH build on the deep knowledge that the NYU Furman Center and IHS have accumulated about their respective local housing contexts while providing insights and strategies that a variety of housing actors can use to combat the housing crisis. By covering cases from across the country but also providing context and analysis to specific local conditions, these resources enable policymakers, researchers, and practitioners to better understand their own local housing markets and policy environments while learning from comparable examples from across the country.