A panel provided recommendations aiming to increase the supply of affordable housing in one of the District of Columbia’s most affluent areas.

This 2019 panel is part of a series of ULI panels that assist some of the nation’s most expensive cities with strategies to increase access to affordable and mixed-income housing.

The panel assignment stemmed from the mayor’s plan to provide 36,000 housing units across the city by 2025, with 12,000 of those being low-and moderate-income units. Panelists evaluated how to distribute the affordable housing units more equitably across the city, with a specific focus on the placement of units in the Rock Creek West area.

Invited to St. Thomas after hurricanes Maria and Irma, a panel provided strategic recommendations to the Virgin Islands Housing Authority and government leaders.

The 2019 panel considered strategies for:

• Integrating the existing affordable housing stock into the surrounding neighborhood;
• Helping new communities become more resilient and reduce consumption of natural resources;
• Creating an equitable economic development vision for the next five, 10, and 15 years; and
• Creating a cultural theme and design principles to tie the area together and brand it as a unique location.

The Board of County Commissioners invited the 2017 panel to help Collier County develop a strategic, community-side approach on addressing housing affordability issues.

The County contains a variety of different communities including the city of Naples, inland Immokalee, Marco Island, and Fort Myers as well as four large national protected environmental areas. Issues around affordable housing proliferate throughout the County in many different communities.