New Toolkit Takes Anti-Displacement Policy Planning to the Next Level

Today, ANHD released a new tool in the fight against displacement – or rather, a toolkit of policy ideas from around the country. The Anti-Displacement Policy Toolkit provides all actors engaged in New York City planning and housing with a more comprehensive understanding of what policies could be employed in order to combat residential displacement.

Designed for a wide range of audiences, the new Anti-Displacement Toolkit surveys the national landscape and compiles both existing and proposed anti-displacement policy options in an easy-to-use, searchable format. The filtering system allows for selection based on neighborhood factors such as housing stock or target population, as well as criteria such as type of action that would be required. For elected officials, policy makers, community leaders, and advocates, the toolkit provides a starting point for finding creative policy approaches for the displacement issues they face at the neighborhood- as well as city-level.

Though New York City is unique in many ways, others in the country have approached challenges similar to our own with different perspectives that we might find applicable. For example, cities without rent stabilization have looked at alternate approaches to protecting tenants, such as Just Cause for Evictions in Oakland, and Notification of Non-Lease Renewal in Portland. While maintaining and strengthening rent regulation is vitally important to New York City, other approaches could make a substantial difference for tenants in the unregulated housing stock that dominates certain neighborhoods.

In addition to the policy scans, several in depth case studies provide background and insight into the approaches policy-making and organizing counterparts elsewhere in the country have taken, and some of the challenges they’ve encountered as they’ve moved ideas from proposal to reality.

“Neighborhoods First is excited to see the shared learning of New York City’s grassroots leaders embodied in the toolkit,” said Joan Byron, Neighborhoods First Fund for Community Based Planning Program Director. “We hope it will help residents, organizers, advocates, and policymakers to deploy the comprehensive array of anti-displacement strategies that New York and other cities across the U.S. urgently need.”

New York City made huge strides in 2017 with the creation of a wide range of new policies and programs designed to combat tenant displacement in our neighborhoods. This toolkit can help seed the ideas that come next.