Unity Group Backs Anti-Displacement Procedure For New Projects; Asks City Council Return To 6 PM Meetings

In addition to Louisville’s legislative approach, Boston University’s Initiative on Cities (IOC) has developed an anti-displacement tool that offers another way to protect vulnerable communities. The tool is designed to assess the potential risks of displacement caused by new development. It works by gathering key details of a proposed project – such as the number of housing units, projected rent prices, and the characteristics of the surrounding area – and running them through a model that evaluates the likelihood of displacement. Based on the displacement risk, the tool helps determine whether a development project meets specific requirements, like including affordable housing units, to mitigate that risk.

BU’s Metrobridge Initiative on Cities Program Releases Gillette Site Existing Conditions Analysis

The Fort Point Neighborhood Association (FPNA) in collaboration with the West Broadway Neighborhood Association has partnered with Boston University first via their Metrobridge Initiative on Cities Program to support the community as we prepare to engage the City of Boston and Procter & Gamble in discussions about the redevelopment of the 31-acre Gillette manufacturing site in our neighborhood

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?

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.

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.”

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.