Versus -- Private Community Associations: Boon or Bane for Local Governance?

Thursday, June 30, 2011
9:00-10:00 a.m. ET

Participants:

• Evan McKenzie, political science and law professor, University of Illinois at Chicago; author, Beyond Privatopia: Rethinking Residential Private Government (Urban Institute Press, 2011)
• Robert Nelson, public policy professor, University of Maryland, College Park; author, Private Neighborhoods and the Transformation of Local Government (Urban Institute Press, 2005)

Moderator:

• Rolf Pendall, director, Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, Urban Institute

Do homeowners and condominium associations, whose membership numbers more than 60 million people (a fifth of the U.S. population), offer their residents control over their neighborhoods? Or do these associations undermine individual freedom?

Are these private governments a more efficient and responsible way than traditional governmental bodies to deliver local services? What are the fallout and remedies when homeowners associations and other private neighborhoods fail to meet their obligations? What impact will this form of collective private housing ownership have on the future of local government? How should the political and legal roles of private community associations change?

Join us as two scholars of private government go public with their contrasting analyses of how “community interest housingdevelopments” are remaking metropolitan America and of their philosophical, legal, and political underpinnings.

At the Urban Institute
2100 M Street N.W., 5th Floor, Washington, D.C.
Breakfast will be provided at 8:45 a.m. The forum begins promptly at 9:00 a.m.