Marc Lane Roark, Housing Trusts and Resilient Cities: Hierarchy, Resources, and Resilience, Chapter in RECONCEIVING EQUALITY AND FREEDOM: VULNERABILITY, DEPENDENCY, AND THE RESPONSIVE STATE (Edward Elgar Publishing 2023). Abstract Below:
Cities, as a part of the state, are vulnerable human institutions that seek out their own self-serving needs for resilience while also doling out resilience to others. Housing is an area that presents multiple threats to cities. The failure to adequately address housing needs in the face of growing affordability challenges can manifest in political legitimacy challenges by social movements. Additionally, the link between housing precarity, poverty and criminal activity can spur critiques from property owners that the city isn’t doing enough to protect their values. Finally, cities always face legitimacy questions around city finance, access to resources for large-scale problems, impacts of taxation on local owners and residents.
In that context, the housing trust originated as a way for the city to address ongoing challenges around housing that emerged as the Federal Government withdrew funding for local housing programs – namely public housing. The housing trust emerged as a way for cities to fund important initiatives around affordable housing (such as homelessness services, maintenance of housing infrastructure, and local housing programs) while remaining revenue neutral in city budgets. The housing trust thus allowed cities to protect certain lines of revenue dedicated to housing initiatives, while tapping resources that facially did not amount to increased tax burdens on local citizens. This chapter unpacks how the housing trust was born under these constraints, responding to the resilience needs of the city in the wake of threats to its political legitimacy around housing.
Poverty Law 