Inclusionary Zoning: A Pathway to Affordable Housing
Inclusionary zoning is the special type of the municipal approach which aims to solve the problem of the lack of the affordable housing stock by conditioning/requiring the provision of some specific number or percentage of the affordable housing units within new residential development projects.
Housing integration works for making policies in which low e or poor people, middle-class, and high-revenue earners live these policies in the housing unit.
In this blog, I will explain what inclusionary zoning is, in a nutshell, how it is implemented, and the advantages that come out of this practice for the community.
1. What is Inclusionary Zoning?
Inclusionary zoning policy is a regulatory tool in which a certain number of residential units in a new development are set aside for low or moderate income households.
The policy can be used for rental and ownership units, the purpose of which is to stop the concentration of affordable housing in a particular city into a particular area.
The criteria for inclusionary zoning are mostly flexible in nature depending on the context of the local environment.
It is sometimes referred to as an ‘affordable housing policy,’ which simply means that certain developers have to include affordable housing provision when seeking approval of their projects.
In other cases it’s voluntary because usually there are incentives like density bonuses, tax credit or fast track permits to this encouragement to developers to include several units of affordable homes.
The amount of affordable housing; the income level to be served; and the years during which a given amount of the units must remain affordable are set by local governments in light of needs and local conditions.
2. What Is Inclusionary Zoning And How Does It Function?
The particulars of inclusionary zoning can be carried out in diverse ways, but the overall principle entails threshold which developers have to meet by including specific proportion of affordable housing units in new projects.
For example, a city may prescribe that 10-20% of the units in a new housing development must be occupied by very low income earners or households who earn a certain percentage or less than the area median income.
Developers can fulfill this requirement in several ways:
On-Site Inclusion:
Some of the units are developed as low-cost units, and are integrated within the complex of the market-rate units so as to encourage integration of low and moderate income persons.
Off-Site Development:
Sometimes, developers can be allowed to provide the affordable units in another part of the project, although this doesn’t necessarily mean that the units will be as well integrated into the live/work project as the method of inclusion on-site suggests.
In-Lieu Fees:
To avoid constructing such units, some states give developers an option whereby they can contribute a sum of money towards meeting the goal of creating units for the needy.
Such fees are then utilized by the city in financing other affordable housing projects in the city.
Local governments discharge may also offer subsidy to developers to cover the expense of offering cheap houses.
Such incentives could be in form of authorization to develop higher densities (more units per acre), fewer parking space and no development fees.
Crowned with the need to make the development financially sustainable while serving the intended community’s purpose of affordable houses.
3. Benefits of Inclusionary Zoning
Inclusionary zoning offers several advantages for communities, making it a valuable tool for promoting housing affordability and social equity:
Increased Affordable Housing Supply:
Actively tying new residential construction to affordable housing commitments ensures higher production of affordable housing to meet people’s needs.
This is especially crucial today in areas where population density is growing or where white middle-class people are moving into ‘neighbourhoods of colour,’ thus pushing out the low- and moderate-income people through skyrocketing rents.
Promotes Social Integration:
Inclusionary Zoning also helps in providing improvement of realistic integration of middle income persons and families into low income neighborhoods.
Integrated communities of people from diverse income levels also promote unity of one another thus the issue of stigmatization of low-income earners households may not arise.
This integration can also afford lower income families opportunity to have easy access to amenities and schools and even jobs thus increasing their standard of living.
Reduces Concentrated Poverty:
Izmir does not allow the worst affected poor neighborhoods to become even worse, as inclusionary zoning spreads affordable housing across a city or region.
This could assist in alleviating the social problems which are in high poverty zones, pulling their standard down in such aspects as education and the rising crime rates, and foster a fair and harmonized spatial growth in cities.
However, like all planning policies, inclusionary zoning is not without its problems, and can suffer from resistance from developers who perceive the requirements as a nuisance or a profit-eating regulation.
But this appears to be feasible when incentives are placed in the right places as well as when it is implemented in a flexible manner so that both the developers and consumers can be satisfied as well as the ’the need for affordable houses’.
When well planned, inclusionary zoning is an effective weapon for promoting arts integration, increasing housing opportunities, and encouraging environmentally friendly urban development.
Conclusion
Therefore, the inclusionary zoning policy is a relevant policy for managing the affordability of housing.
Thus, when a city force or encourages developers to set aside or devote certain number of units for affordable housing, it means that such city will always be within the reach of every income earners.
The approach makes not only more available housing but also more available housing for people of lower income, it also addresses issues of concentrated poverty and fosters integration and development of healthy communities.
In light of the fact that a growing number of cities face a severe shortage of affordable homes, inclusionary zoning is apt to remain one of the most influential tools of urban design in the future.