As community debates around affordable housing become increasingly contentious and time-consuming, it’s crucial for affordable housing developers to leverage new approaches to build support for much-needed projects. Often approvals come down to receiving letters of support or testimonies from community members, making them increasingly like political campaigns.
Research has shown that the people who attend public meetings are older, wealthier, and more opposed to development than the communities they represent. And, as development leaders know all too well, online forums like Nextdoor and Facebook allow NIMBY misinformation to spread like wildfire.
Fortunately, we’re seeing a trend of forward-thinking developers—like Mission First Housing Group, McCormack Baron Salazar, and BRIDGE Housing—embracing new strategies to reach beyond the usual meeting attendees and build broad community support, including from the people who will benefit from the new housing.
Take a Page From the Political Campaign Playbook
Political campaign managers know their candidate won’t win the hearts and minds of everyone. That’s why they focus on reaching and activating the people who will be receptive to their message. Affordable housing developers can use the same strategy to make the most of their time and budget for community engagement.
For its Patuxent Commons apartment development in suburban Columbia, Maryland, Mission First Housing knew it would be confronted with density and traffic arguments, despite the proposed development allocating 40% of units for seniors and 25% for individuals with disabilities.
With a higher-than-average rate of adults with disabilities living in the county, project leaders wanted to ensure disability advocates and family members knew about the project and could easily support it. Using mailers, door-to-door conversations, and their connections with local advocacy groups, they directed people to their project website on coUrbanize.
On the project website, they shared about the years of conceptual planning that had gone into the project and addressed concerns about traffic and density with real facts. Additionally, they collected hundreds of comments from community members, on topics like how to integrate the new community with the surrounding neighborhood.
When it came time for public hearings to take place, the team gathered digital letters of support from website followers and encouraged supporters to come testify in person. Elizabeth Everhart, senior development manager at Mission First Housing, tells us, “At every meeting people came out of the woodwork with personal stories about how they were connected to the project.”
In addition to the letters of support and feedback they had collected, the in-person testimonies swayed the city council to vote unanimously in support of the project.
Build Trust by Showing That You’re Listening
Another trend we’re seeing is how the redevelopment of aging public housing faces its own challenges—namely, the absence of trust among residents and the surrounding community because of poor existing building conditions. Before development teams can ask residents to participate in the redevelopment process, they need to show they’re listening to concerns.
McCormack Baron Salazar knew that residents would have questions about the length of the redevelopment process and supply chain delays for Winston-Salem Choice Communities, a five-phase plan to revitalize a public housing community in Northeast Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
When the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person meetings impossible, project leaders moved community engagement online and found that “technology wasn’t a barrier at all,” says vice president of development Sandra Seals. On the contrary, “residents gave really thoughtful and heartfelt responses.”
As initial phases of the project progressed, the McCormack Baron team also used its coUrbanize project website to share information about job opportunities, allow residents to submit job applications, and provide photos of the first apartments’ completion.
The developer has had more than 1,300 community members leave comments on its website, with an average of 90% positive or neutral comment sentiment. Seals says the efforts have strengthened her team’s relationship with the housing authority and the city council, who saw the engagement as essential to building broad community support.
Lower the Barriers to Democratize the Process
For by-right developments and other projects that don’t require community engagement as part of the entitlements process, we’re seeing more developers deploy online engagement to be good neighbors and smooth relationships with city officials to ensure funding. And while some abutters and NIMBYs may never change their minds about affordable housing in their neighborhoods, bringing more people into the process means public officials hear from more than just the naysayers.
One example is BRIDGE Housing’s affordable and supportive housing development at 440 Arden Way in Sacramento, California. Although the nonprofit didn’t need approval for entitlements, the BRIDGE Housing team knew that organized NIMBY opposition could jeopardize city council approval for funding.
Because the proposed development was located within a wealthy, mostly white, area of what is largely a Latino and Black neighborhood supportive of development, project leaders strategized to reach beyond direct abutters with a moderated online forum where NIMBY voices wouldn’t control the conversation.
By responding to opponents with real facts and activating supporters to comment on the project website, the BRIDGE Housing team garnered hundreds of comments, with 77% positive or neutral sentiment. Jonathan Stern, former director of acquisitions and planning at BRIDGE Housing, tells us the online support they received “completely changed the political calculus” for one city councilor who had been publicly against the project.
“We created a positive narrative that showed who the rational actors were in the discussion,” Stern says. In the end, the anonymous council vote to approve their application was unanimous.
Reduce Staff Time and Increase Efficiency
We’ve seen from hundreds of affordable housing developments and public housing redevelopments that activating more voices results in better projects and better neighborhoods. But beyond democratizing participation, the developers that prioritize digital engagement see that it also impacts their bottom line. Activating more positive community conversations gets more affordable housing developments approved more quickly, and, in our current housing crisis, that’s everyone’s priority.
