By Annie McAneny
Thriving Communities Intern

Talking about affordable housing can bring up conflicting perspectives in a community. In Vermont, local housing committees have been pioneers of affordable housing policy, building local support for initiatives like inclusionary zoning, accessory dwelling units, and Housing Trust Funds.

One key step to passing affordable housing changes is building community support. For housing advocates and housing committees, this requires a strong message and strategy. Dr. Tiffany Manuel of Enterprise Community Partners conducted research that explored common “Housing Message Backfires” and developed a list of solutions. Here, we show some of her fundamental building blocks for a successful affordable housing message in the context of local housing committees.

• Recommendation #1: Tell stories that balance the people, places and systems perspectives.

To avoid common arguments that individuals have total responsibility over housing conditions, try to use messaging that acknowledges how issues are systemic. Stories of individual hardships can certainly personalize the difficulty of unaffordable or substandard housing, but they should be balanced with with broader stories about housing affordability (and the organizations and institutions that impact housing) in your community specifically.

Housing committees can use this strategy by assembling a “community story” of local housing history and statistics. By taking a little time to assemble information about cost-burdened households, rates of homelessness, and housing stock over time, housing committees can reframe local conversations around patterns rather than around individual responsibility.

• Recommendation #2: Don’t directly contest the public assumptions about mobility, consumer choice and personal responsibility. Instead explain the role of systems in shaping outcomes for people and the communities in which they live.

Similarly, give people stories that show the limits of individual choice and the power of systemic factors over housing insecurity. Outright denying the impact of individual choices can cause the message to backfire with some people, so balancing individual choices with stories about public policy impacts can help ensure discussions don’t turn into arguments.

For housing committees, this can mean doing some research into specific policies that have been implemented in your area and investigating how these policies have impacted housing when they were applied to your region as well as to other places around the country. For example, by looking into the history of policies like residential zoning in Vermont, it is possible to track the exclusion of low-income residents and address the ways that a lack of affordable units further contributes to economic insecurity.

• Recommendation #3: Tell a “Story of Us” rather than a “Story of Them.”

Focus on how affordable housing can have collective benefits in order to draw the conversation away from individual people and issues. This focus on collective benefits can also help people move away from racialized perspectives on who uses affordable housing. We understand that affordable housing has value for individuals regardless of how it impacts a community as a whole, and we also know that entire communities benefit from affordable housing. Housing committees should incorporate the social, economical, environmental, cultural, and ethical benefits of affordable housing in their marketing strategies in order to increase community buy-in for local community initiatives — this can help to create not only immediate support, but also long-term advocacy for future initiatives.

• Recommendation #4: Bring the connection between housing and other issues into sharper focus.

Connecting housing to other issues including health, education, and employment can help broaden the audience for your messages and draw supporters in from multiple backgrounds. A unified community movement is a strong movement! Housing committees can find advocates by assisting social justice movements — look to the other successful change-makers in the community to find potential allies, and draw the ties between their issues and affordable housing if they are interested in collaboration.

• Recommendation #5: Help people connect the causes and effects of housing insecurity.

Dr. Manuel gives a example for an explanation of housing insecurity that could help to open up a conversation about affordable housing:

“Quality rental homes are incredibly scarce and breathtakingly expensive, yet wages are stuck in place. In recent years, tight standards for mortgage loans and high home prices have made it impossible for many people to buy homes, causing more people to become renters. Large numbers of renters and a scarce supply of rental housing have driven up rents. Rent has increased but wages for low- and middle-income households have not, forcing more families to spend large portions of their incomes on housing and leaving less money for other needs, like nutritious food, good health care and quality child care. To make sure people can get decent housing at reasonable costs, we need to take steps to fix these problems with the housing market.”

Rather than just explaining the problem in depth, housing committees can develop a short, understandable statement outlining why the problem exists and how it would change with the policy initiative being proposed. If the local policy initiative has more peripheral ties to the root causes of housing insecurity, it can be beneficial to still note how the new initiative addresses deeper systemic issues on a small, local scale.

• Recommendation #6: Make it clear that where you live affects you.

Vermonters know how much the place you live impacts your quality of life. Everything from water quality to the natural landscape to the quality of the roads and internet impact the day-to-day life of many Vermonters. These factors also depend greatly on the affordability of different locations in Vermont, and Dr. Manuel suggests that housing advocates — like housing committees — use place-based environmental evidence to show the power of affordable housing on quality of life. For example, this could mean talking about health impacts of conditions inside and outside the home — like nearby grocery stores and homes without lead paint and mold. For many people, having local context about the impacts of affordability on whether people are able to live in healthy, accessible environments will shift their opinion dramatically.

• Recommendation #7: It’s okay to raise challenges of the past, but focus on the kinds of change that lead to better outcomes.

We are well aware that historical discrimination based on race, national origin, and income has had a significant impact on patterns of housing inequality and insecurity. At the same time, possibilities for improvement serve as a stronger focal point for housing conversations. In other words, housing committees and advocates should frame conversations around “What we can do better” rather than “What we have done wrong.” Especially in the context of local policy discussions, this helps to avoid defensiveness and denial, and pursue solutions that benefit the entire community.  

• Recommendation #8: Use robust examples that show how new housing policies worked.

When presenting solutions, give examples that show how the new policy worked and what specific benefits it had for the community. Particularly for housing committees suggesting policy directions for local representatives, giving examples in context will help policymakers understand and accurately enact the initiatives your committee wants. This can also help to avoid claims that affordable housing is somehow impossible by showing specific strategies and examples of success.

• Recommendation #9: Avoid leading with or over-relying on the terms “housing” or “affordable housing.”

Moving beyond these words and phrases helps people to break out of stereotypical associations of “housing” and “affordable housing.” By moving towards language about homes and surroundings, advocates are able to more effectively draw connections between the safety and affordability of a home and other connected issues like health, education, and community.  Powerful images of the positive and negative impacts of a healthy, affordable home can draw people away from unproductive (and even harmful) stereotypes and associations with “affordable housing.”

An example of this messaging could be “No matter your income, you deserve a healthy home.”

• Recommendation #10: Widen the public’s view of who is responsible for taking action and resolving outcomes.

In your messaging, it can be more productive to include a range of actors in the housing field beyond the government. People often feel discouraged by government intervention, and helping them see beyond governmental policy gives them a wider perspective and gives you more credibility as someone working to involve the entire community in housing solutions. Dr. Manuel gives some examples of policy initiatives housing committees could pursue, including zoning, land trusts, co-operative housing, alternative models of development, and assisted housing.

Source: Manuel, T.  and Nat Kendall-Taylor (2016). You Don’t Have to Live Here:  Why Housing Messages are Backfiring and 10 Things We Can Do About it.  Enterprise Community Partners. https://www.enterprisecommunity.org/download?fid=7073&nid=4409.