Everyone deserves to live in a thriving neighborhood with safe, stable, and affordable housing that supports living a full life. But a large number of people across the US struggle to find the neighborhoods and housing that meet their needs. Lack of affordability and housing shortages are among a number of familiar issues that limit households’ choice and agency in finding a suitable place to live and grow. As neighborhoods change, challenges with affordability, shortages, and quality of housing can emerge. Such challenges can displace lower-income residents and residents of color from their communities or erase the qualities of a neighborhood that provided them stability and opportunity. 

Both neighborhood revitalization and decline can create drastic shifts for residents’ living conditions. On one hand, greater investment can lead to new amenities, such as bigger parks, new inviting buildings, more efficient and clean utilities, and a growing vibrancy that offers residents a better quality of life. These changes and increased demand create pressures to renovate housing and attract residents with higher incomes. In the process, residents with low incomes can be forced out of neighborhoods as a result of unaffordable increases in housing costs, hostile eviction practices, and discriminatory screenings for renting and buying homes. 

On the other hand, disinvestment in neighborhoods depletes a community of resources needed for residents to thrive. Neighborhoods experiencing disinvestment lose the people, businesses, and public resources that made them stable and livable and see higher rates of poverty, greater health risks, and disruption to children’s development and learning. Experiencing these cycles of insecurity comes with deep harms to people’s overall well-being and life outcomes. 

Advancing housing justice—a reality where everyone has access to safe, affordable, and quality housing—requires counteracting the risks and harms residents face as neighborhoods change. To do this, localities can implement interventions that promote inclusive community development, stabilize housing, and protect the rights and well-being of affected communities, especially Black, Latinx, and low-income households. 

This section provides a sample of community and household protections that localities, advocates, and organizers can consider to help advance housing justice in their jurisdictions: “just cause” eviction laws, anti-gouging rent regulations, strategic code enforcement, and community benefit agreements.

Next intervention: “Just Cause” Eviction Laws