We believe new market rate, subsidized, public, and cooperative housing, coupled with anti-displacement and tenant protections, are all essential for addressing the urban housing shortage. Decades of rigid, inequitable housing policy has focused resources toward low-density development, creating a deep shortage of homes in urban communities with access to jobs and services. The result is soaring home prices and rents, waitlists for subsidized affordable housing, rising numbers of people suffering from displacement or homelessness, and workers suffering longer and longer commutes. We favor inclusionary zoning policies which increase the supply of affordable housing, such as density bonuses for affordable units. We support policy innovation to encourage equitable funding and ownership mechanisms, including community land trusts, limited equity cooperative housing, and land value taxes. This policy innovation can occur simultaneously with expanding the supply of all infill housing categories: solving the housing shortage requires an all-of-the-above strategy.
We support transportation planning and funding that prioritizes the most accessible, affordable, safe, and healthy options to serve large numbers of people: these include public transportation, biking, and walking. Compact, integrated communities are the best solution to traffic, not extending sprawl and building neighborhoods that require driving for all the activities of daily life. Our society has not sufficiently prioritized or invested in transit for decades, and this has disproportionately harmed people who need access to transit most. Well-funded, integrated, and effective transit should be welcoming and accessible for all people irrespective of their age, race, ability, economic status, and gender. We prioritize building homes for people over space for cars; we support ending parking minimums for new housing as well as building more homes near high-quality transit. We support the creation of “complete” streets that are safe for all people to stroll, bike, or wheel through their neighborhood. We support emerging mobility technologies that complement transit to promote pollution-free, human-scale, equitable mobility. In particular, ebikes show immense promise to make bicycling accessible for more and longer trips and for more people.
We oppose exclusionary, low density, single-use zoning that drives car-centric sprawl. We strongly support infill housing, and we oppose using environmental laws to block or delay infill housing construction. We support mixed-use zoning that allows people to live near jobs and services, with streamlined approval for multifamily housing and pedestrian-centered retail. We prioritize building new housing in historically exclusive communities, in combination with anti-displacement measures, to expand access to opportunity and achieve neighborhood integration. Relatedly, we believe the desires of residents in historically disadvantaged communities at risk of displacement deserve high consideration; planning decisions and reforms should prioritize improving equity, evaluated both for individuals and for communities.
