Anti-displacement planning tool
The city council of Louisville, Kentucky, have voted to adopt an Anti-Displacement Assessment Tool to ensure the risk of displacement is considered in planning, and protect low-income and marginalised groups from displacement. This was based on their 2019 Housing Needs Assessment, which undertook an analysis of displacement and gentrification – and which groups were most at risk. Will you explore how a similar tool might work in London, by a) meeting with academics who devised this tool in Louisville, and b) looking at how the upcoming Strategic Housing Market Assessment (SHMA) can consider the risks of displacement faced by marginalised communities?
Is the new anti-gentrification legislation in Louisville a model for global cities?
The housing crisis is often framed as a straightforward shortage of housing of any type, meaning any new supply is seen as good. But in Louisville, Kentucky as in many other places, the picture is really more nuanced. Every type of development does not benefit every type of resident.
Urban Refuge Alumni Reunion Highlights Careers and Impact
On November 18, the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies hosted a career networking roundtable as part of Professor Dr. Noora Lori’s Urban Refuge Reunion Initiative, bringing together alumni from the 2016 Forced Migration and Human Trafficking class with the 2024 cohort. Six distinguished alumni—Meaghan Delaney, Sara Lopez Gonzalez, Ellie Hitt, Raina Kadavil, Victoria Kelberer, and Taylor Resteghini—shared how they transformed a classroom innovation into a lasting humanitarian initiative.
In Boston, map of opportunity for first-time homebuying has changed
Three years later, after more price increases and shrinking inventory, she is hailing a new source of help for first-time buyers, including many being priced out of Boston: the “One+ Mortgage” program announced on Nov. 26 by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP). The shift had been gradual, and now it was more formalized: the map of homebuying opportunity had changed.
Electric Bikes and Scooters Are Everywhere. Here’s How You Can Stay Safe
There are plenty of ways to get around Boston University’s unique campus layout, which spans both sides of Comm Ave for nearly two miles. Many BU community members opt for the MBTA Green Line, which runs straight through campus and into downtown Boston, while others walk, take the free BU Shuttle, or bike. But in recent years, many cities, including Boston, have seen a rise in electric bicycles and scooters on their roads. The majority of these vehicles are battery-powered micromobility devices and can include “bicycles, skateboards, scooters, and other small, wheeled conveyances designed for personal transport,” according to BU Transportation Services.
A new tool helps avoid displacing vulnerable residents
In the wake of the justice movement for Breonna Taylor – who police shot and killed in March 2020 – an activist and a newly elected Louisville Metro Council member decided it was time to protect the city’s Historically Black Neighborhoods. Four years later – on Nov. 21, 2024 — the Louisville Metro Council unanimously passed the Anti-Displacement Ordinance. The law enabled the creation of the Anti-Displacement Assessment Tool, the first grassroots-conceived, legislatively driven public dashboard to measure and limit the risk of displacement in areas where publicly funded residential developments are proposed.
Using tax dollars to block new housing is bad policy
Ashland and another dirty dozen Greater Boston communities were identified in a recent report published by the research arm of the Boston Foundation as places where “Public opposition to housing is so extreme. . . that public land has become weaponized as a tool to stop housing development, rather than an opportunity to subsidize affordable housing.”
How Louisville plans to keep residents from being priced out of their neighborhoods
A tool aimed at preventing public dollars from funding developments that could displace residents received unanimous support from the Louisville Metro Council on Thursday, to cheers of support in the crowd from members of the Louisville Tenants Union.
Louisville Advances the Country’s Strongest Planning Tool to Mitigate Displacement
Led by the Initiative on Cities at Boston University, Loretta Lees (Boston University), Kenton Card (University of Minnesota and Boston University) and Andre Comandon (University of Southern California) developed a new tool to be implemented by the Louisville Metro Government to guide decisions about residential investments. The tool is the result of a collaboration with a tenant union, government officials, and Councilmember Jecorey Arthur to implement the policy.
Greater Boston housing report card is ‘sobering’
When the Boston Foundation presented its 2024 annual Greater Boston housing report card at an event Nov. 12, the results weren’t particularly positive. “This year’s housing report is certainly sobering, it offers further evidence of the challenges we continue to face,” said M. Lee Pelton, president and CEO of the Boston Foundation. Housing costs have risen greatly since 2015, and while the report found that rent costs have plateaued, they had leveled off at historic highs. At the same time, despite some efforts to support new construction, high construction costs have slowed production. A modest increase in the number of permits issued in the 2010s has given way to another slowdown.