If Transit is so Important, Why Aren't We Doing More about It?

The story of James Robertson recently made its way through social media and news outlets after a viral GoFundMe campaign created on his behalf raised $350,000 toward his purchase of a car. Robertson lives in Detroit, but works 23 miles away in a suburban community known as Rochester Hills. Each day for more than 10 years, he has arrived on time for work at an injection-molding plant. This despite a daily 10.5 hour round-trip commute involving two buses and 21 miles on foot.

Robertson’s story garnered a great deal of sympathy and an outpouring of financial support when it hit the internet and, while Robertson must certainly be an outlier, his challenge is hardly unique. Poverty has quietly migrated to the suburbs where population densities are low and where transit access is poor. But just as importantly, jobs have migrated outward too, (although The Atlantic’s CityLab believes this tide may be turning[1]) and have favored car-dependent office and industrial parks and retail strips along busy, congested arterial highways. A 2012 report by the Brookings Institution studied transit and job access in the country’s 100 largest cities and found that 63% of all jobs in these metro areas were located in suburban settings, and 72 of the 100 cities studied had a larger share of jobs in their suburbs as compared to their primary cities. While more than three quarters of these cities’ jobs (suburban or not) were within 0.75 miles of a fixed-route transit stop, “the typical job is accessible to only about 27 percent of its metropolitan workforce by transit in 90 minutes or less.”[2] Clearly there are some inefficiencies built into these transit networks.

Earlier this year, I attended a forum hosted by the Atlanta Regional Commission on poverty and transportation access in Metro Atlanta. In that setting, the panelists focused a great deal on the increasingly suburban nature of poverty and transportation issues. One of the panelists, Atlanta Magazine’s Rebecca Burns, pointed out that 88% of Metro Atlanta’s poor live in suburbs, yet suburban residents can access only 18% of the region’s jobs by transit. This disconnect is a serious structural issue for Atlantans, but James Robertson in Detroit and the 100 cities in Brookings’ research all face some version of it.

As I work with community development practitioners across the country, nearly all of them can cite a handy anecdote or statistic to summarize the inadequacy of their own city’s public transit system: “On a Saturday, it takes six hours to commute by bus from the Eastside to downtown;” or “It would take two buses and a train just to get to the hospital five miles away;” or “Our buses are late, if they even come at all; no one could depend on them to get somewhere on time.”

While these anecdotes can become a kind of local folklore, I find that, as with most lore, there is a truth contained inside. So, as community development practitioners, what are we doing about it? If transit is as essential as we say it is, we need solutions. Transit projects are notoriously expensive and, for all but a handful of communities, are far out of reach given the dwindling amounts of most jurisdictions’ annual community development grants. But even if we can’t use CDBG funds to build a new rail line, there are intermediate investments we can be making to support existing transit networks and to make them work better for more people.

• Adopt a Transit-Oriented Investment Strategy: In evaluating local projects for potential grant funding, consider the proximity of the proposed project to transit. If a housing activity, will residents be able to access transit in order to commute to work? If a public service or economic development activity, will the project location be accessible to residents using public transit? Consider awarding bonus points to projects that are proximate to transit. Better yet, make funding conditional on a project’s alignment with transit.

• Monitor Regional Transportation Planning Proposals: Get involved in the planning processes of the transit agency in your community and look out for proposals that would expand transit access or availability. Is there data on the low- and moderate-income population you can offer to the transportation planners to bolster their case for the improvements? Can you join them before elected officials or in public meetings to lend your support to the proposals?

• Fund Sidewalk and Bike Lane Construction as Last Mile Connections: Rarely does someone step off the bus at their employer’s front door. Most commuters using public transit make what are known as last mile connections: the short distances traveled (usually on foot) between a transit stop and one’s final destination. Are there places where a simple stretch of sidewalk can connect a bus stop to a nearby job center or apartment complex to facilitate a safer, more accessible, and pleasant last mile connection? Consider where bike lanes, crosswalks, and upgraded pedestrian signaling systems can be implemented to similar effect.

• Upgrade Transit Stop Amenities For Increased Comfort and Safety: Commutes using public transit are safer and more comfortable when bus stops include shelters from the elements, informative signage, benches, lighting, and trash receptacles. These improved amenities may make long waits more tolerable and encourage greater transit use. Upgrades and repairs to train stations can have similar effects.

• Install Public Art to Enhance the User Experience: Murals, sculptures, and music at transit stops can work to engage riders, improving their experience and increasing ridership. Public art along heavily used last mile connection routes are helpful points of interest that reduce psychological barriers and entice riders toward bus stops and transit centers, especially when those routes traverse bleak, blighted landscapes.

• Employ Ambassadors to Ride the Network: Some populations may be intimidated by the complexity of a transit system, especially if connections and transfers are typically needed. Uniformed ambassadors riding along on trains and buses or stationed at high-traffic platforms and transfer points can answer questions for riders, assist with route planning, help riders choose the best station exit, or just confirm that a passenger is in the right place or headed in their intended direction. Where crime or the perception of crime is an issue, ambassadors provide an additional set of eyes in addition to transit police and can engender a greater level of riders’ confidence in their safety and security.

• Establish Vanpools to Fill Gaps in Current Transit Network: Rail lines are inherently inflexible, and even bus routes can be difficult to change due to political considerations. However, where there may be a retail strip or other job center with many lower-wage jobs in a location without transit connectivity, a vanpool program can be created to connect the location with the existing transportation network. Several scheduled van or mini-bus trips a day can make the center available to a much wider segment of the population. Employers can sometimes be interested in contributing funding to the operation of such a vanpool, particularly if it can offer them more qualified employees or expand their customer base.

• Create a Bike Recycling or Sharing Program: Many organizations have set up successful programs that take in, repair, and then loan or give away bicycles to people with transportation needs. Particularly if buses and trains in your city’s transit system are equipped to transport bikes, bike recycling programs such as this can help make last mile (or last five-mile) connections more feasible. Bike sharing programs can be helpful for facilitating transportation between job and housing nodes when neither is served by public transportation. Existing bike sharing programs such as Citi Bike and Capital Bikeshare are proving both private and public funding and operations models.

Smaller, CDBG-sized investments such as these can make a real difference in the effectiveness of a public transit system. Some of these are no-cost policy solutions that can improve future development and connectivity. Others, like the vanpool and bike share programs, physically extend and expand the transportation network in highly flexible and relatively low cost ways. But most of these potential solutions remove a variety of both physical and psychological barriers to people’s use of existing transit systems, making the system work better for a greater number of people. A 45-minute wait for a bus transfer at a stop with no bench and no shelter may be a physical impossibility for some riders, and yet the solution is simple and affordable.

Next time you are tempted to repeat a lament about the inadequacy of your city’s public transit system, stop to think about what solutions you, as a community development practitioner, may be able to contribute. If we put our money where our mouth is, we just may begin making a difference in a seemingly insurmountable problem.

 

[1] The Atlantic CityLab, “Young People are Pulling Jobs Back to City Centers,” Accessed March 10, 2015. http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/02/young-people-are-pulling-jobs-back-to-city-centers/385934/

[2] Tomer, Adie. “Where the Jobs Are: Employer Access to Labor by Transit,” Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings, July 2012. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/7/transit-labor-tomer/11-transit-labor-tomer-full-paper

Beyond Collaboration: What Communities Need from their Nonprofits

Community development practitioners will almost certainly agree that in recent years, collaboration has become one of the primary criteria used by funders to evaluate grant applications. In theory, the value placed on collaboration encourages organizations to work together cooperatively and avoid inefficiency and potential duplication of services. The need for true collaboration among nonprofits remains strong, but in many communities and for many social issues, an even stronger model of cooperation is needed.

During a housing forum I attended last year, one of the presenters referenced an outstanding article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Titled “Collective Impact,” the 2011 article by John Kania and Mark Kramer frames a role for something larger and more powerful than a group of individual collaborators. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, America has a total of about 1.5 million nonprofit organizations, many of which operate locally and independently, resulting in an isolated impact. In response, Kania and Kramer argue for a new (and quite rare) type of regional organization needed to connect the dots.

A politically powerful, well-funded, regionally-focused convener has been shown in several examples (discussed below) to have the power for real impact on complex social issues; impact on a scale that eludes most collaborations. The difference between the convener and the collaborator model is summarized by Kania and Kramer: “Unlike most collaborations, collective impact initiatives involve a centralized infrastructure, a dedicated staff, and a structured process that leads to a common agenda, shared measurement, continuous communication, and mutually reinforcing activities among all participants.”

The concept presented by Kania and Kramer in 2011 appears to be gaining traction. In 2012, a book of essays on community development titled Investing in What Works for America’s Communities was published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Low Income Investment Fund. Among the essays included a piece by David Erickson, Ian Galloway, and Naomi Cytron (all of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco) proposing a new approach to community development based on what they described as a “quarterback” model. Much as a Community Development Corporation does at the neighborhood scale, a regional quarterback “must articulate the vision it is managing to (the outcome of reduced poverty, for example) and then marshal the funding sources and manage multiple partners to execute on that vision.” The quarterback in this model, not unlike the collective impact initiative described by Kania and Kramer, exists to convene the partners and resources needed to implement a broad regional or community-wide vision.

Growing out of the essay by Erickson, Galloway, and Cytron, the Citi Foundation in partnership with the Low Income Investment Fund announced just this month an effort to deepen the “quarterbacking” efforts of thirteen organizations across the country by providing over $3 million in grant funds. These 13 “Partners in Progress” organizations will continue to pilot the quarterback concept, modeling it for others to follow as well. A video posted to the Partners in Progress site describes the quarterback approach quite succinctly: “On a football team, the quarterback helps the players work together by calling the plays for the game. What if instead of a touchdown, the goal was to make sure that every child has the opportunity to realize her full potential?”

Some practitioners in communities with strong nonprofits, supportive local governments, and generous for-profit partners may wonder why a shift in strategy is necessary. In these communities, there is likely to be a well-developed network of nonprofits, working side by side, each working adeptly at its piece of the community’s puzzle. But what has been the impact of this strategy on the community? Are rates of poverty and homelessness falling? Are education and income levels rising? Chances are, there’s no one tracking these metrics or they’re not being tracked in a way that is uniform. The need for uniform metrics used by all partners throughout the community to gauge progress is another role for which a convener is uniquely suited.

If a uniform set of metrics is employed, the story they tell is not likely to be one of broad community improvement. In their essay, Erickson, Galloway, and Cytron argue that “the most important reason why community development needs to evolve is that it is not solving the problem it was set up to fix – namely, reducing the number of people living in poverty. The percentage of Americans living in poverty when the War on Poverty was underway was about 15 percent, and it is about 15 percent today.”

Though there are dozens to choose from, the three examples of convener organizations described here illustrate the diversity of focus and structure that’s possible.

StriveTogether – Cincinnati, Ohio

StriveTogether is an education-focused initiative that facilitates development of the civic infrastructure needed to improve student outcomes in the Cincinnati region “from cradle to career.” Founded by the presidents of area universities and superintendents of local school systems, the network now includes a broad spectrum of cross-sector partners who have signed onto a common vision and framework for achieving it.

StriveTogether’s evidence-based approach identifies and measures 53 specific outcomes. In its first five years, StriveTogether boasts improvements in 40 of them, including a 9% increase in kindergarten readiness, an 11% increase in high school graduation, and a 10% increase in college enrollment.

 Elizabeth River Project – Virginia

A tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, the Elizabeth River is a valuable economic and recreational resource for the Norfolk and Virginia Beach region. The Elizabeth River Project was established in 1991 and has coordinated large-scale and grassroots efforts to restore the river’s environmental quality, making it swimmable and fishable while maintaining its economic viability. Convening and coordinating the interests and efforts of big industry, sportsmen, conservationists, property owners, and multiple government jurisdictions, the organization has restored many wetlands, conducted extensive education and outreach, and created programs to reduce river pollution. Bacteria levels in the river have fallen to historic lows, cancer rates in fish have dropped six-fold, and the first branch of the river will become swimmable in 2014.

Shape up Somerville – Somerville, Massachusetts

From 2002 to 2005 the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition conducted a study of youth nutrition and obesity in Somerville, Massachusetts. Since the time of the study, the City of Somerville has taken ownership of a “city-wide strategy to build and sustain a healthy community, in collaboration with our partners, for everyone that lives, works, and visits the city.” The city’s health department and other partners are implementing strategies from school food service improvements to educational outreach and mobile farmers markets. Children in Somerville have shown statistically significant declines in average BMI percentiles.

Might the persistent, pervasive, cross-sector social issues in your community require more than a collaborative, but decentralized approach? Perhaps your community needs a new type of nonprofit, one with the resources to assemble and orchestrate a community-wide response. Perhaps you need a convener, not just a collaborator.

Improving Citizen Participation: 8 Lessons from the Charrette Model

For most housing and community development practitioners, the citizen participation process has become a rote routine of box-checking. In order to meet grant requirements and program regulations, we advertise public notices that few will ever read, hold public hearings that few will attend, and file away copies of nearly empty sign-in sheets as a record of our compliance. While these types of citizen participation approaches do technically meet requirements that there be opportunity for participation by the public, they are a far cry from approaches that actually engage the public in the planning process.

Most of the current innovation in the science of public engagement comes from the planning field. One tenet of professional planning, and a mark of a good planner, is the ability to identify and give structure to the plan a community has for itself, no matter how vague or divergent it may seem. Such a responsibility necessarily requires active participation from members of the public. In the course of implementing varied approaches to active public engagement, the Charrette Model has emerged as a current best practice within the planning profession – and it holds promise for community development practitioners as well.

A charrette is a multi-day, collaborative planning event that engages all affected parties to create and support a feasible plan that represents transformative community change. While most often used by planners in scenarios involving community master plans, tax allocation district plans, or comprehensive plans, the Charrette Model is a valuable tool that can be adapted for any plan-making that requires input and feedback from various affected parties and community stakeholders.

Numerous resources are available to those wanting to learn more about charrettes in general (The National Charrette Institute is an excellent start).  The following eight principles, distilled from the Charrette Model, are lessons for the community development practitioner. As you set out on your next citizen participation exercise, consider incorporating some or all of these principles into your process.

1.      Stakeholder Identification

Begin the citizen participation process by identifying each of the viewpoints to be included and then develop a plan to incorporate them. For example, if you determine on the front end that it is important to include people with disabilities, you can then identify organizations that represent this point of view and actively plan to include them in the process. Other points of view for consideration could include low- and moderate-income neighborhood associations, affordable housing developers, people speaking English as a second language, or transit authority officials.

2.      Cross-Functional Work

Planners understand that good planning requires the work and input of people across multiple disciplines.  In the same way, CD professionals should identify the areas of functional expertise required and plan to consult professionals within those disciplines in the development of their plans. Will your planning document refer to zoning or construction standards or transportation access? It is better to seek early input from people who know these areas best, rather than have them point out flaws in your research after the plan is complete.

3.      Multiple Feedback Loops

Citizen participation should be a process, not an event. Participants engaged early in the process should be specifically invited back at later points to review and provide feedback on the plans as they develop. Each of these opportunities to provide initial input, and then subsequent feedback on the interpretation of that input, is known as a feedback loop.  This approach is an important departure from the typical citizen participation process where there is just one opportunity for feedback.  Typically, input is received at a needs assessment workshop at the outset of the process and then, after draft plans are complete, the public comment period provides an opportunity for feedback. By creating more opportunities at intermediate points for review and feedback, there is a greater ability to refine the content.

4.      Public Kickoff Meeting

A public kickoff meeting convenes all identified stakeholders for the purpose of introducing the plans and documents to be developed, laying out the citizen participation process (highlighting each opportunity for review and feedback), and soliciting initial input.  Publicly “kicking off” the plan development process raises the community’s awareness of the issues and concepts to be studied in preparation of the final document.  Whether because of stakeholders passing word along to their colleagues or mentions in the local press, the public nature of the project kickoff can lead to greater participation.

5.      Neighborhood Meetings

In addition to a kickoff meeting, the Charrette Model emphasizes public meetings located in the areas most affected by the proposed plans. Whether held for needs assessment or for public hearing purposes, meetings in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods most likely to be impacted by the plans in development can remove barriers for participation of residents. A meeting at City Hall may be convenient for you, but a neighborhood meeting is likely to be more convenient for members of the public you hope to engage.

6.      Community Tours

Often in conjunction with the neighborhood meetings, the Charrette Model advocates tours of the affected communities. For our purposes, these are most often the low- and moderate-income neighborhoods where your HUD resources are most likely to be invested. Certainly if your plan will identify specific geographic priorities or a Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Area, a tour could be even more important. The tour, whether with professional stakeholders or with residents of the community, gives you an opportunity to observe actual neighborhood conditions and may open participants’ eyes to issues of which they were previously unaware. For example, if a focus on demolition of abandoned, blighted properties is contemplated, a tour highlighting those properties can help others see the importance of the issue. It could also motivate participating nonprofits or community foundations to consider supporting the issue as well.

7.      Stakeholder Interviews

It is imperative that the stakeholders identified in the first step of a typical charrette process be involved and have an opportunity to contribute their input. If they have not been able to participate in the various meetings held, consider inviting them for an interview. Where possible, it is advantageous for the interview to be conducted by an impartial third party so the subject can share more freely. If a consultant is not being used to conduct the citizen participation process, perhaps a local university can assist with the stakeholder interviews.

8.      Background Education

The most productive discussions will take place when the participants are well informed regarding the issues they are asked for input or comment on. Therefore, before kicking off the citizen participation process, it is important to assemble a coherent approach that can be used in multiple forums to guide the public’s understanding of the plans being developed. The kickoff meeting, the neighborhood meetings, and the interviews should all begin with an educational presentation covering the purpose of the plans, the process and timetable for their development, a description of the steps that will be taken after they are complete, and an exploration of the types of assistance and activities eligible for funding under the plans.

These eight lessons from the Charrette Model exceed and improve upon HUD’s current baseline standards for citizen participation. However, there are indications that HUD is interested in heightening its standards. Staff in HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities have previously held conversations with the National Charrette Institute regarding the Charrette Model for public engagement and Section 5.158 of HUD’s proposed Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule (Federal Register, Vol. 78; No. 139; Friday, July 19, 2013; Page 43709) contemplates “meaningful community participation.”  A review of your Citizen Participation Plan will likely reveal room for improvement; the eight Charrette Model principles described here should be a helpful starting point.

Building the "Beloved Community"

I do not think of political power as an end. Neither do I think of economic power as an end. They are ingredients in the objective that we seek in life. And I think that end of that objective is a truly brotherly society, the creation of the beloved community.

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a July 13, 1966 article in Christian Century Magazine

The King Center, the nonprofit organization dedicated to Dr. King’s legacy and to continuing his unfinished work, has developed Six Steps of Nonviolent Social Change based on Dr. King’s teachings. Whether as a personal way of life or as a method of conflict resolution and social change applied to neighborhoods and other communities, The King Center encourages their study and adoption.

Strong Communities are Safer Places to Confront Disaster

This week’s issue of The New Yorker features “Adaptation“, an article by Eric Klinenberg discussing “climate-proofing” strategies that will help our cities be better adapted for the array of possible climate-related disasters. Among the costly, highly engineered solutions such as seawalls and resilient power grids are social infrastructure strategies.

Klinenberg uses as an example a 1995 heat wave that caused 700 deaths in Chicago. Two adjacent Chicago neighborhoods with comparable demographics fared very differently. His research found that those living in a socially connected neighborhod where residents knew and interacted with one another were far more likely to survive the crisis than those living in a neighborhood with weaker social infrastructure. Here, an excerpt from Klinenberg’s interview with Steve Inskeep for NPR:

INSKEEP: OK. So you’re telling me that if I were to live in an old-style urban neighborhood, where there’s a coffee shop down the street, where there’s a corner store, where there’s a corner dry cleaner, where people walk around and they may know the neighbors, and kids play on the street, that I am more likely to survive in a disaster because of the kind of community that I’m in?

KLINENBERG: For many disasters, that is absolutely true.

Social strategies are increasingly being taken seriously by planners and municipal officials and Klinenberg’s work is likely to spur even wider acceptance. Resiliance in the face of crisis is yet another argument to support the design and development of places that are socially coherent.

What's Next for Nextdoor?

When Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone in 2000, he brought to light a trend of increasing disconnection between people, whether family, friends, or neighbors. Since then, social networking sites have exploded onto the scene, connecting or reconnecting us to friends, colleagues, and family members like never before. But Facebook and the others have never done much to connect us to the people who live around us. Nextdoor is changing that.

Nextdoor is a local-scale social network designed to connect people with their neighbors. A neighborhood’s Nextdoor network can only be joined by people who reside in that neighborhood. Users must use their real names and real addresses (which are validated by Nextdoor). There’s no anonymity on Nextdoor – and that’s the idea. I can’t anonymously chastise my neighbor’s early morning leaf blower routine when we meet on the sidewalk; neither can I do it on Nextdoor. Nextdoor’s mission is to “bring back a sense of community to the neighborhood, one of the most important communities in each of our lives.”

On my own neighborhood’s Nextdoor site, my neighbors share information on the street sweeping schedule, pass on invitations to community events, and circulate public safety alerts. Of the 7,000 or so households in my neighborhood, 130 of them (about 2%) are represented on Nextdoor, a small but not insignificant number.

Community development practitioners have been slowly embracing social media as a way of organizing neighbors and communicating with residents. Nextdoor may be the next frontier for your social media strategy, but there will be an important caveat. Nextdoor won’t let you simply blast your meeting announcement or survey link out to your target neighborhood; you’ll first have to win over a resident in the neighborhood who believes enough in what you’re doing to circulate it herself, under her real name. But when neighbors hear about your news from other neighbors who thought your announcement was important enough to share, their response will be greater. As Nextdoor membership grows, community development practitioners may find it a valuable tool, but only if they’re sharing information that those affected believe is valuable.

Read more commentary on Nextdoor in this article from Slate: Won’t You Be My Neighbor

Is the Definition of "Community Development" Expanding?

Writing recently for the Urban Institute’s MetroTrends Blog, Margery Turner, UI’s Vice President for Research, described an expanding understanding of “community development” to include citywide or even regional objectives. Initially, Turner’s perspective gave me pause. I have always believed strongly that community development is rooted in place, a discrete physical environment. To the extent that broad structural and systemic features may impede development in a specific, geographically-defined place, I agree that community development does sometimes overflow the boundaries of an individual neighborhood. In this sense, community development can involve work on such larger scale issues as fair housing, employment discrimination, predatory lending, public safety, school quality, and access to healthcare.

But is the definition of community development morphing to include work on overarching social policy issues apart from a tie to a particular place? To truly constitute community development, I think these larger issues of social welfare must be grounded in their impact on actual communities. In her post, Turner references a quote from Elizabeth Duke of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors regarding place-centric versus people-centric approaches to community development. The quote, repeated here with slightly fuller context, comes from Duke’s forward to the book previously discussed on this blog, Investing in What Works for America’s Communities.

At one time, policy discussions revolved around whether community development was about people or places. I would argue that the debate is over and both sides won. Successful community development is based on attention to both the physical infrastructure, whether housing or commercial spaces, and the health and welfare of the residents therein.

Separate the social policy from the places it impacts, and you’re left with something short of community development. It’s a both/and proposition. Good community development strategies are about both the housing stock and lending practices, both playgrounds and public education, both community gardens and access to healthcare. Community development is simultaneously about physical places and the people who inhabit them.

Does Rental Housing Have a Role to Play?

Convention used to hold that the stabilizing influence of homeownership was one of the greatest keys to a community’s success. The more neighborhood residents taking out a mortgage and owning a stake in the community, the better. As these homeowners put down roots, they would begin to build a reputation among their neighbors. They were known. They become interested in property values and would strive to keep them on the rise, by keeping their own home in good repair and perhaps by gently encouraging the neighbor next door to do the same.

But now we know that there is an important caveat to this line of thinking. Mortgages made to borrowers who couldn’t afford them have been the demise of neighborhoods nationwide. An entirely new federal program (HUD’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program) sprang up in 2008 to save neighborhoods from the de-stabilizing influence of homeowners who couldn’t afford their homes but were trapped, unable to unload them.

Perhaps the lesson here is that a single-minded focus on homeownership is misguided. The most stable neighborhoods these days seem to be those with a mixture of homeowners and renters. The availability of rental housing provides an alternative to homeownership for those who wouldn’t be stable homeowners anyway, whether by choice (those who are risk-averse or prefer the freedom to move) or circumstance (those with unsteady or low-paying jobs). When the renter next door loses his job, he moves out and is replaced with another tenant. But when the homeowner across the street falls on hard times and finds herself stuck in a house she can no longer afford, her house begins to deteriorate and ends up foreclosed, vacant, and boarded-up.

When integrated into neighborhoods of homeowners, rental housing can provide a degree of community flexibility – a flexibility that paradoxically makes neighborhoods stronger and more stable.