"Affordable Housing is far harder to develop than it is to protect....If it goes away, the community loses a valuable asset over time as residents disperse. Low-income tenants also face increased discrimination as they seek new housing....And this is exacerbated if there are not enough units in the neighborhood or the region. In hot real estate markets, there is double pressure on renters...."
Jim Grow, National Housing Law Project
There are many reasons why preserving expiring use housing can play a powerful role in equitable development. Keeping existing affordable housing affordable requires fewer resources - financial and time - per unit than developing new affordable housing. It also maintains the stability of a neighborhood by preventing displacement of current residents from their homes.
Preservation is a particularly important strategy for maintaining a mix of incomes in gentrifying neighborhoods. In these booming neighborhoods there is often little land for new housing, and when there is, the cost of building can be very high. They are, however, likely to have concentrations of existing subsidized housing. Preserving that existing subsidized housing can be a cost-effective way to prevent wholesale displacement before it happens. It is precisely in these neighborhoods, however, that the loss of these units is most pressing, because owners have a strong financial incentive to convert to market rate.
The numbers are big. The National Alliance of HUD Tenants, working with HUD data, estimates that up to 200,000 units have been lost to conversion nationally since 1996. According to the Section 8 Collaborative, a group of tenant and housing advocates working on preservation in Chicago, between 2000 and 2005 as many as 16,000 Chicago tenants will face the possibility of their landlords converting to market rate. Without stemming the tide of conversions, advocates for affordable housing and equitable development will be taking three steps back for every two steps forward.
