PolicyLink work is guided by recognition that meaningful community participation ensures that the benefits of local and regional development should accrue to everyone. Facilitating the participation of everyone—and most especially people of color and in low income communities—allows for the inclusion of broad ranges of opinion in planning and formulating development policies that address the central needs of diverse communities. Coalition building is central to this process. In Louisiana, PolicyLink provides assistance to a several networks and coalitions working for more equitable recovery.
Louisiana Housing Alliance
PolicyLink helped support the organization of the Louisiana Housing Alliance, a coalition of over 100 local and statewide organizations advancing affordable and equitable housing policy at the parish, state, and federal levels. Started as an informal network shortly after the storms and floods, the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations served as umbrella to the Alliance until May, 2007, year when the group incorporated as an independent 501c3 and elected a statewide, 17-member board that includes members from faith institutions, to organizing groups, to community development corporations, to fair housing, to housing counseling, first time homebuyers, disability rights, legal services, and homeless services organizations.
PolicyLink and Housing Alliance members worked with local and state agencies and elected officials to direct more resources to lower income residents in the shaping of Louisiana’s $10.4 billion Road Home Program. Housing advocates lobbied for a requirement that all new development on land assembled through The Road Home Corporation include housing affordable for lower-income residents and also called for permanent supportive housing to effectively serve Louisiana residents with special needs. This lobbying resulted in a number of policy gains.
PolicyLink and the Louisiana Housing Alliance pressed for equitable allocation of low-income housing funds to economically-integrated developments that would offer housing for low-income residents without furthering the concentration of poverty that had long isolated so many from opportunity. (See Policy Successes for Equitable Redevelopment.) PolicyLink has helped the LHA monitor uses of those funds—both rental and ownership(See Bringing Louisiana Renters Home)—and helped members build the case for more state and federal resources to address the persisting unmet housing needs of low and moderate income households.
With much remaining to be done to address Louisiana’s affordable housing crisis—a shortage that existed even before the hurricanes and flooding damaged or destroyed over 200,000 apartments and houses—PolicyLink began working with housing advocates in New Orleans to bring local policy proposals to the the City Council and key City agencies. The progressive measures advanced by our partners represent a vital and promising first step for ongoing advocacy and comprehensive affordable housing policy throughout the state.
The following essay by PolicyLink Senior Director Kalima Rose was commissioned by the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Authority—for its first annual commemorative event: Hurricanes Rita and Katrina: Remembrance, Recognition, Recovery—to highlight strategies for affordable housing policies: Restoring Housing in Louisiana: New Actors Emerge to Ensure More Equitable Development (pdf). Click on the link State Policy and Regional Planning and see Identifying Promising Policies and Building for Growth for other essays by PolicyLink staff and Louisiana-based consultants.