News

Preservation through Tenant Rights in Washington, DC (Working Paper)

 

By Kathryn Howell, Executive Director of the National Center for Smart Growth and Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland, Casey Dawkins, Faculty Affiliate with the National Center for Smart Growth and Professor of Urban Studies and Planning and Sophie McManus, Urban and Regional Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland PhD Candidate.

Read the working paper

Over the last two decades, there has been a shift in how we understand the geography of affordable housing. As the demand for walkable neighborhoods accessible to amenities increased for higher-income households, affordable housing units – both subsidized and unsubsidized – were lost, and their supply shrank. As a result, states and localities are looking for new tools for production and preservation of affordable housing. This may include a right of first refusal for a jurisdiction (Montgomery County, MDPrince George’s County, MD) or a tenant association (Washington, DC, Takoma Park, MD) to have the first chance to purchase a residential building going up for sale. In Washington, DC, the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA), passed in 1980, gives tenants the right of first refusal when their building is for sale. All multifamily tenants in DC have the right to collectively buy and convert it into a cooperative or condominium, assign their rights to a developer of their choice, or do nothing and allow the sale to go through without intervention.
In this working paper, we use a multinomial logit regression model and find that TOPA was highly effective at preserving affordable housing, particularly in areas where rents were rising. Further, in areas where there was limited affordable housing due to exclusionary zoning or earlier waves of gentrification, TOPA could do little to preserve affordability because little affordable housing existed. Similarly, TOPA was less effective close to transit where buildings were newer and typically not affordable. In short, while TOPA was effective in preserving affordability where it exists, it also points to the ongoing need to enable the production of new subsidized and unsubsidized housing across the city. These findings help to better understand on a large scale the ways that tenant rights of first refusal, and perhaps other rights can be used to provide critical access to the market to intervene and prevent the loss of affordable housing.

Read the working paper

Read More

An Analysis on Urban Development Decisions and the Role of Community Resistance in Navy Hill

 

By Meghan Z. Gough, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Studies and Planning at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Kathryn Howell, Executive Director of the National Center for Smart Growth and Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland

Read the full journal article

Before becoming the name of a controversial redevelopment project in 2017, Navy Hill was a thriving Black neighborhood just outside of downtown Richmond, Virginia (USA) into the early twentieth century. The focal point of the neighborhood after the Civil War was the Navy Hill School, a primary school and the first public school in Richmond to employ Black teachers (Richardson, 2007). A symbol of social advancement, in a neighborhood with growing visibility as a center for Black civil society, the Navy Hill School was known for its high caliber students. However, like many of Richmond’s Black neighborhoods Navy Hill was destroyed by government-funded renewal programs and interstate highway construction that made way for the Richmond Coliseum, government buildings and an expansion of the VCU Medical School, displacing families and making invisible the place history of Navy Hill.

 

Richmond Coliseum under construction, looking east at what was Navy Hill, 1970s. (Source: Valentine Museum)

Between 2017 and 2020, a fight over the redevelopment of Navy Hill, driven by a mix of community organizers, smart growth advocates, school board members and affordable housing advocates, would illuminate both the erasure and violence of the neighborhood’s destruction, as well as the city’s desperation for development. In this paper, we use Marcuse’s (2009) “exposing, proposing and politicizing” framework for critical reimagining the future of cities. We argue that organizers exposed the roots of the problem, including the neighborhood’s critical legacy of Black self-determination, as well as the racist destruction in the 1960s and 1970s. They used this to start a conversation about what is needed, and in doing so help to propose the necessary action, which included a community-based planning process and meaningful reparative action. Finally, they were able to effectively politicize the work using the history and proposed futures using direct action, political process and bureaucracy. 

In the case of Navy Hill, mid-twentieth century history did not repeat itself; communities of resistance united to demand that city leaders pause and demonstrate how public-private, taxpayer subsidized redevelopment supports liberated reform that begins to reconcile racist planning history and promise more equitable services. Indeed, in 2020 just before the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown public spaces around the world, the Richmond City Council voted to not approve the deal, setting the stage for a new way of thinking about development and the city’s history. 

Read the full journal article

Read More

2025 State Housing Need Assessment Released

Read the full DHCD press release and the 2025 Housing Needs Assessment

On July 24, 2025, the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) announced the release of the 2025 State Housing Needs Assessment. This update to the 2020 Maryland Housing Needs Assessment explains how the lack of affordable housing in all geographic regions of the state is placing an increasing burden on both renters and owners. Research and analysis for both the 2020 and the 2025 State Housing Needs Assessments were conducted by the National Center for Smart Growth  Research and Education (NCSG) at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Kate Howell, Director of NCSG, issued the following statement:

“The report brings together a range of federal, state and local data sources, methodologies and subject matter expertise to expose the multi-sector challenges facing Maryland’s affordable housing supply. While the challenges may look different across different regions, age groups and communities, this report underscores the need for creative policy solutions and new partnerships.”

The 2025 Maryland Housing Needs Assessment consists of three studies and an executive summary.

  • The Housing Production and Zoning Capacity study analyzes Maryland’s regulatory landscape, recent trends in housing production, and zoning capacity related to the state’s projected housing growth through 2045.
  • The Housing Gaps study analyzes the challenge of housing affordability in Maryland for all residents, with a special focus on vulnerable populations.
  • The Housing Needs of Older Adults study analyzes housing needs and trends for Maryland’s older adult population.
  • The Assessment’s Executive Summary presents several recommendations to address Maryland’s housing needs.

NCSG is thankful to the many faculty members and graduate students who helped produce the 2025 Assessment.

  • Nicholas Finio, Ph.D.
  • Casey Dawkins, Ph.D.
  • Kathryn Howell, Ph.D.
  • Wideleine Desir
  • Sophie McManus
  • Rebecca Garman
  • Caila Prendergast
  • Cole Shultz
  • Alex McRoberts
  • Sarah Kamei Hoffman

For more information about this study contact Nicholas Finio, Ph.D. at nfinio@umd.edu.

Read the full DHCD press release and the 2025 Housing Needs Assessment

Read More