From Los Angeles to Boston and Chicago to Miami, US cities are struggling to address the twin crises of high housing costs and household instability. Debates over the appropriate course of action have been defined by two poles: building more housing or enacting stronger tenant protections. These options are often treated as mutually exclusive, with support for one implying opposition to the other. Shane Phillips believes that effectively tackling the housing crisis requires that cities support both tenant protections and housing abundance. He offers readers more than 50 policy recommendations, beginning with a set of principles and general recommendations that should apply to all housing policy. The remaining recommendations are organized by what he calls the Three S’s of Supply, Stability, and Subsidy. Phillips makes a moral and economic case for why each is essential and recommendations for making them work together. There is no single solution to the housing crisis—it will require a comprehensive approach backed by strong, diverse coalitions. The Affordable City is an essential tool for professionals and advocates working to improve affordability and increase community resilience through local action.

With nearly 10 million low- and moderate-income working households paying more than half their income towards their rent or mortgage, cities are increasingly using their zoning authority to encourage the development of new workforce housing units. A study by the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing assesses and illustrates the economics of the most common approach: inclusionary zoning (IZ). Through IZ, cities require or encourage developers to create below-market rental apartments or for-sale homes in connection with the local zoning approval of a proposed market-rate development project. This study-based on in-depth analytic modeling, an extensive literature review, and interviews with developers and other land use experts-provides such advice on what incentives work best in which development scenarios. The study's purpose is to enable policy makers to better understand how an IZ policy affects real estate development and how to use the necessary development incentives for IZ to be most effective.