Equitable Development, Opportunity Zones, and Community Land Trusts: Our Spring Events Will Touch on a Host of Housing-Related Topics
Fostering equitable development, maximizing the benefits of Opportunity Zones, and lessons from the nation’s largest community land trust are among the topics we will highlight in our upcoming Spring events series. We will also will release a new report, launch an interactive mapping tool, and will continue our lunchtime research seminars, which are livestreamed Fridays on Twitter.
Featured Events
Next Friday, February 1, our Spring series will kick off with the launch of the Boston Neighborhood Change Interactive Map, a new tool which allows users to visualize a variety of demographic, social, and economic changes in the Greater Boston area since 1990. Pre-registration is required to attend.
On February 19, Opportunity Zones, a new community investment tool established by Congress in 2017 will be the focus of Is Opportunity Knocking: Can Opportunity Zones Aid Distressed Neighborhoods? This event will feature Laurel Blatchford, President of Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., a national nonprofit focused on affordable housing that has commented extensively on draft regulations for the new policy. The event will also feature Maria Cabildo, President of Fireflower Partners, Co-founder, former President and former CEO of the East L.A. Community Corporation; and Jeana Dunlap, Director of Redevelopment Strategies for the Louisville Metro Government (both are current Loeb Fellows).
On March 12, we will release the 20th anniversary edition of our Improving America’s Housing report, which focuses on trends in the $400 billion US home improvement industry. This lunchtime release will also be livestreamed on Twitter.
On March 26, Kimberly Dowdell, a Detroit-based architect, developer, educator, and new president of the National Organization of Minority Architects, will deliver the 19th Annual John T. Dunlop Lecture. In her talk, Diverse City: How Equitable Design and Development Will Shape Urban Futures, she will discuss the steps needed to create neighborhoods in which all people feel safe and empowered to build a brighter urban future.
We are also hosting numerous Brown Bag events on campus this semester, with leading practitioners and scholars, including:
March 1: LocalHousingSolutions.org: A New Tool to Promote Housing Affordability with Jeffrey Lubell, Director, Housing and Community Initiatives, Abt Associates.
March 6: Shared Equity and Affordable Housing: Lessons from The Nation’s Largest Community Land Trust with Michael Monte, Chief Operations and Finance Officer, Champlain Housing Trust.
March 13: Housing and Sustainable Development: Lessons from Habitat for Humanity’s Efforts to Reduce Home Heating Costs in the Balkans with Steven Weir, Vice President, Global Housing Innovation Habitat for Humanity International, and Stephen Seidel, Habitat’s Senior Director of Global Design and Implementation.
April 3: Cycle of Segregation: Why American Neighborhoods Are Still Divided Along Racial Lines with Maria Krysan, a professor of sociology at the University of Illinois, Chicago and co-author of an award-winning book on the roots of residential segregation in the US.
Finally, our bi-weekly Housing Research Seminar Series will again feature presentations by our own researchers and fellows. These sessions, which are held at lunchtime on Fridays (and livestreamed on Twitter) will include presentations on a wide variety of topics including disaster management, defining suburbia, climate change, and the impact of Airbnb on local housing markets.
We hope to see you (in person or online!) at one of our Spring events. More information is available on our website.