by Niles Anderegg, research and content development associate, ICMA  

The lack of affordable housing is a major challenge in many parts of the United States. Local governments tend to be the entities that fund these affordable housing programs. This means a lot of the innovations in this field come from the work communities across the country are doing to address the growing challenge. With this important work in mind, ICMA has compiled some of the best content from around the web on affordable housing.  

1. ‘Troubling’ Findings on Who Speaks Up About Housing Development. This Route Fifty article looks at research from Massachusetts that shows that people who attend housing meetings tend to be older and less diverse than the community as a whole and tend to oppose housing projects. This article serves as a reminder that communities must do more to reach out to those segments of the population not attending housing meetings.

2. Building Homes: County Funding for Affordable Housing. The National Association of Counties has put together an extensive report on county funding for affordable housing, which includes looking at both the national picture and the case studies on what individual counties are doing to address this issue.

3. One of Affordable Housing’s Biggest Problems: Poor Management. This Governing magazine column looks at an often under-reported problem, which is that many affordable housing programs are understaffed or do not have proper auditing checks to make sure the housing is up to code and going to the residents who need it.

4. What the Future of Affordable Housing Already Looks Like. This CityLab article looks at some innovative affordable housing projects from Europe that could be the future of affordable housing around the world.

5. Rural America's Silent Housing Crisis. An article published in The Atlantic magazine looks at rural affordable housing issues, including the unique challenge of dealing with the upkeep of the current housing stock that is often located in isolated areas.   

Related resources

Housing and Homelessness. This page offers resources on how to reduce homelessness among the veteran population.

How Local Governments Can Build an Effective Homelessness System. This 2017 blog post provides three tips that local government leaders can use to combat homelessness.

How One Local Government is Deploying Creative Housing Affordability Strategies. In this 2016 blog post, the focus was on one community, Miami, Florida, and what innovations the local government came up with to manage housing challenges in the community.