Affordable Cities: The Role of Community Action in Cost-Effective Living
Quick: what’s the biggest cost for almost everyone except the uber-wealthy?
Right: housing. In California, affordable housing has reached a crisis point, particularly for young people who may also be saddled with college loan debt. Yet they keep surrendering the bulk of their income to landlords.
It’s frustrating not being able to save a dime, especially for those with a strong social conscience who may have opted for less lucrative mainstream careers in favor of pursuing a deeply meaningful calling with a non-profit or other organization, rather than chasing the dollar sign.
How Community Action Creates Cost-Effective Living
This is where community initiatives are playing a crucial role: creating affordable living spaces within cities. Community-led approaches such as cooperatives, community land trusts, and shared housing projects all offer cost-effective housing alternatives.
California YIMBY and Abundant Housing LA are taking important steps toward solving the state’s housing crisis through education, advocacy and innovation. California YIMBY stands for “yes, in my backyard,” a pro-development, pre-housing movement that is the antithesis of the acronym NIMBY (“not in my backyard”), a more narrow-minded mentality that means, let someone else handle the problem.
Abundant Housing LA is a grassroots nonprofit representing a group of over 2500 civic-minded, pro-housing residents of Los Angeles who support the livability and sustainability benefits of more affordable housing.
What Makes a Community Livable?
This is the crux of the issue: defining the often-subjective attributes of livable cities. The key attributes necessary to cultivate a livable community include:
· Diverse leadership
· Civic engagement
· A sense of belonging
· Connecting people and resources
· Ongoing dialogue
· A willingness to foster diversity, equity and inclusion
· Innovation.
Community Action in Practice
Here’s what community action for cost-effective living looks like in some of the forward-thinking U.S. cities that are taking the lead in this movement:
1. Washington, D.C.: The Office of the Tenant Advocate educates, supports and advocates on behalf of the District’s extensive community of renters. The OTA is the only such office of its kind in the country, and provides tenants with legal representation and advice should they have a problem with the land owner. The OTA helped establish a Tenants Bill of Rights, and provides financial assistance for tenants who are temporarily without residence. Needless to say, this community is on the cutting edge of community action for cost-effective city living.
2. Seattle: The city’s Department of Neighborhoods developed a Get Engaged Toolbox, a digital collection of resources, programs and best practices designed to help educate, engage, and inspire action among a diverse community, catalyzing grassroots leadership and community-centered solutions.
3. Hartford, CT: In Hartford, a comparatively small city compared with LA, Washington, D.C. or Seattle, the library serves as the community action hub. Because the city is home to a growing number of immigrants and refugees, its program, The American Place (TAP), offers a space for people to gather and learn about how to adjust and succeed in their new home. In addition to English classes and assistance with job training, TAP facilitates connections between immigrants and their new community.
“Home” embodies the essence of who we are and how we move through the world, what we are able to contribute, and how this serves the greater good of the whole.
In creating and maintaining more affordable cities nationwide, we will make it possible for today’s and tomorrow’s young people, as well as those who move here from distant locales, to settle in and turn their energies and focus towards what matters most to them in their lives, rather than fixating on how they’re going to pay the rent. This is the goal and purpose of community action in creating city affordable living spaces.
