What We Do: Public Policy

Community Initiatives

Community Builders is recognized as an industry leader in affordable housing development and comprehensive neighborhood revitalization. Our position provides us a voice in national policy discussions around urban revitalization, housing program design, mixed-income housing production, and housing-based resident service delivery.

Community Builders maintains an office in Washington D.C. to engage public policy issues relevant to our work. We are frequently invited to participate in forums, policy discussions, and advocacy coalitions addressing specific issues. Our practitioner's perspective on assisted housing preservation, HOPE VI development, and other large-scale revitalization projects has proven especially valuable to local and national policy makers.

Currently, we are developing strategies to preserve assisted housing at risk of being lost from the affordable inventory. At the invitation of Capitol Hill staff, we have reviewed various legislative proposals related to housing production and preservation, and offered ideas on how to improve and extend the HOPE VI program.

Based on our experience in refinancing one our larger 236 projects, we are preparing a case study highlighting the methods by which a nonprofit owner can recapitalize an assisted development, preserve affordability, and structure ongoing support for resident services.

We are also examining the impact of changing Fair Market Rent (FMR) calculation methodology on our existing portfolio and on prospects for preserving the existing assisted housing inventory.

Some examples of our policy work include:

HOPE VI: A Vital Tool for Comprehensive Neighborhood Revitalization (published in the Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy)
Managing Change (published in the Journal of Housing and Community Development)
Strategic Use of Project-Based Assistance
Future Challenges of Expanding Comprehensive Neighborhood Revitalization
Mixed-Finance Development (comment on regulations for syndicating 202/811 projects)

On May 23, 2006, TCB President & CEO Patrick E. Clancy testified before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census. The topic was Public Housing in the Competitive Market Place: Do Affordable and Public Housing Developments Benefit from Private Market and Other Financing Tools?

Download a PDF of the full testimony here.

For more information on our policy activities, please contact our Washington, DC Office.

	Comprehensive Neighborhood Revitalization




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