Unless you’ve been out of the country or stuck underground somewhere for the last couple of years, we’re all aware of the housing affordability issues and efforts to address those the last couple of years here, and around the country. Lots of things are being discussed and tried, with inconclusive results at this point.
So I was just reading about an initiative that has been taking place in south Florida for a few years now, to address climate change. It is a cooperative effort of four counties and 26 municipalities, called the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact. It is a voluntary partnership created by all those entities, and has achieved some modest successes.
The thought came to me, what if we tried to do something similar here along the Wasatch Front, but for housing affordability rather than climate change? Here are some sections I was reading about this, where I have substituted “housing affordability” for climate change.
The Wasatch Front Regional Affordable Housing Compact is structured so that participants can build general agreement on recommendations for local governments and others to inform legislation, policy and planning. This occurs through the steering committee – the principal decision-making body of the compact.
The compact’s steering committee consists of the chief officer of each participating entity. Once it reaches regional agreement on policy and products, such as for example an inclusionary zoning model, the relevant authorities in each county or municipality translate this into local action.
The compact works through steering committees. Steering committees bring professional staff and citizen officials together to build general agreements on recommendations about legislation policy and planning. The recommendations seek to inform comprehensive land-use plans, … zoning ordinances, building codes and transportation standards and are implemented through county and municipal decision processes, budgets, local public involvement, enforcement, monitoring and review, and politics.
The coordinated structure means the regional body is able to lobby and achieve outcomes at other levels of government. For example, in 2010 the Florida compact negotiated the creation of Adaptation Action Areas (AAAs) by the Florida Legislature, and in 2015 state statute Chapter 163 was amended to strengthen Florida’s Comprehensive Planning Law around flooding. Also, the Regional Climate Action Plan identifies priority areas for the region to lobby for federal resources, align state and local policy arrangements, and coordinate scientific data and new research. Such actions could be achieved by a housing affordability compact as well.
What’d’ya think? Or will the crisis be over before we could get something like this organized and working? It would certainly take some funding too, for the staffing and administration. Hmmm….