Especially in areas facing significant disinvestment, it’s important for local governments to create a buffer against more rapid decline by clearing vacant lots and demolishing dangerous vacant structures. Badly maintained blighted properties often have a disparate impact on Black and Brown communities. 

Local Housing Solutions: Demolition of neglected properties

National Fair Housing Alliance: REO Lawsuits and Complaints

An ideal healthy homes programs would require landlords to register their rental properties with the local government, set a basic standard of health and safety for all rental units, ensure all rental units are inspected at least every three years, offer assistance to cooperative small landlords to make repairs in exchange for holding their units affordable for a period of time, protect renters against retaliation when they request repairs, and put funds or policies in place to ensure renters have resources or a place to go if their unit is found to be uninhabitable. Substandard rental housing disproportionately impacts Black and Brown renters in areas facing disinvestment. It also impacts neighboring homeowners in these majority-people of color areas because living next to badly maintained apartments drives down property values.  

ChangeLab Solutions: A Guide to Proactive Rental Inspections

Center for Community Progress: Communities aim to stabilize neighborhoods through effective rental registration and certification programs

City Health: Healthy Rental Housing

Newark, NJ Rental Property Registration

Local and state governments have a history of placing more affordable housing in areas where disinvestment and segregation is accelerating, while wealthier and whiter areas are more likely to receive infrastructure investments, like flood protection, pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly street improvements, parks, and public transit. The Fair Housing Act’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) clause calls for a reversal of this cycle. Targeting infrastructure investments in disinvested and majority-Black and Brown neighborhoods can improve the quality of life for residents, increase climate resilience, and prevent serious decreases in property values. 

Alliance for Housing Justice: Understanding AFFH: What Is "Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing" & How Does It Work?

Local Housing Solutions: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing

In most states and local jurisdictions, landlords can evict a tenant who has done nothing wrong, without providing a reason, as long as the tenant is at the end of their lease term. The practice creates incredible uncertainty for renters and creates a huge power imbalance between renters and landlords when a renter household has to worry that they may lose their home at the end of every month. Just cause eviction legislation protects tenants from arbitrary or retaliatory evictions and establishes a limited set of reasons why landlords can move for evictions when the tenant is not at fault, such as when a landlord seeks to move a direct relative into the unit. Strong legislation should limit these exceptions, assist tenants who may still be displaced, and ensure robust enforcement. 

Local Housing Solutions: Just cause eviction

PolicyLink: Just cause 

National Low Income Housing Coalition: Promoting Housing Stability Through Just Cause Eviction Legislation

Public housing authorities may choose to operate Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Homeownership programs, which allow qualified HCV (“Sec. 8”) renters to apply their voucher to mortgage payments instead. Public housing authorities can also opt into running a Family Self Sufficiency program, which helps residents create a savings plan, offers supportive resources, and then sets up an escrow account to hold the difference of the rent the family pays when entering the program and the increased rent that would be charged as the family’s earned income increased. At the end of five years, families can access the savings, and when paired with the homeownership program, use the savings toward a down payment. 

HUD: HCV Homeownership Program

HUD: HCV Family Self-Sufficiency Program

Housing Authority of New Orleans Homeownership Program

From the 1930s-1960s, real estate speculators used land contracts, also known as contracts for deed, to prey on African American home buyers who were locked out of the traditional mortgage market by redlining and other discriminatory practices. In a land contract, the buyer makes monthly payments to the seller for years, but does not have the full rights of ownership until the entire purchase price has been paid. In the meantime, the seller can cancel the contract, keep all payments, and evict the buyer if they miss or are late on any payments. Corporate actors have revived the practice after purchasing foreclosed homes in bulk and are once again using land contracts to disproportionately sell the homes to buyers of color. Land contract sales are a lose-lose for the buyer because they provide none of the protections of homeownership and none of the legal rights of tenants. The National Consumer Law Center recommends that state and local jurisdictions enact protections that ensure that “until the buyers have all of the rights of homeownership, they should have all of the protections provided to tenants.” 

National Consumer Law Center: Toxic Transactions: How Land Installment Contracts Once Again Threaten Communities of Color

National Consumer Law Center: Policy Recommendations for a Strong State Law on Land Contracts

The Pew Charitable Trusts: Less Than Half of States Have Laws Governing ‘Land Contracts’

Renter equity programs can help disproportionately Black and Brown renters living in affordable developments build wealth. Renter equity programs were first developed as a way to help renters in affordable housing developments build wealth in exchange for contributing to the upkeep and governance of the property. Renters received equity credits for paying rent on time, attending tenant meetings, or helping to clean common areas. Larger organizations and at least one state are bringing the model to scale by funding the construction or rehab of affordable rental developments and then requiring that any profit the building makes above a certain threshold needed to pay back debt and investors is shared with the tenants of the building. The equity is typically dispersed to tenants through monthly cash rebates. 

Building wealth and community for renters in Cincinnati, OH

Enterprise Renter Wealth Creation Fund

Colorado Affordable Housing Finance Fund and enabling legislation

Local nuisance or “crime free” ordinances often have a disparate impact on survivors of domestic violence and have the potential to be weaponized against apartment complexes by disapproving neighbors. The policies often penalize tenants or property owners for 911 calls, placing survivors of violence in the unacceptable position of choosing to call for help or facing eviction. Repealing these ordinances and focusing on functional health and safety regulations for rental housing can protect renters at risk of displacement. 

National Housing Law Project: Nuisance and Crime-Free Ordinances Initiative

Unlike criminal court, defendants in eviction court are not entitled to an attorney and nationwide only 3% of renters facing eviction have a lawyer compared to 81% of landlords. Evictions disproportionately impact Black and Brown families, and women-headed households with children, in particular, and they have cascading negative health, employment, and educational impacts on those families. However, in the past decade, a growing number of cities and counties, as well as some states have implemented Right to Counsel programs designed to ensure renters can access an attorney. The extensively evaluated programs show that when jurisdictions pay for attorneys, they reduce evictions and homelessness, and save money on other expenses like incarceration, healthcare, and foster care. 

National Coalition for a Civil Right to Counsel: Tenant Right to Counsel

ACLU: New Report Illustrates How Right to Counsel Prevents Evictions and their Discriminatory Impacts on Communities

Local Housing Solutions: Eviction prevention programs

In many low-income areas, the tremendous imbalance of power between landlords and renters means that most renters don’t expect to receive their security deposit back when they leave a unit. The result is regular theft from low-income renters that makes it all the more difficult for them when trying to secure their next apartment. State and local governments can take a number of steps to better regulate security deposits and ensure their return, including: requiring deposits to be held in a separate, interest bearing account; capping the amount of deposits at one month’s rent; clarifying in the law what counts as regular wear and tear; setting a significant penalty for failure to return the deposit of at least three times the monthly rent; funding legal aid attorneys to assist low-income tenants in filing small claims cases when their deposits are wrongly withheld; and conducting educational campaigns to inform renters about their rights regarding security deposits.

Seattle 2016 security deposit legislation

Louisiana 2018 security deposit legislation

Especially in areas where disinvestment is accelerating, badly maintained vacant properties can drive down property values for homeowners and often have a disparate impact on Black and Brown communities. Vacant property registries are a common tool local governments use to tack and manage these properties until they can be returned to use. 

Local Housing Solutions: Creating and managing vacant property inventories