Climate and Housing Crisis Research Structuring: Final Report

The Climate Housing Crisis Research Structuring project has its roots in an effort by the Sustainable Solutions Lasb to move beyond researching social investments in physical infrastructure to policy interventions in urban communities. Supported in part by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the research team has collected and analyzed data related to policy instruments. Using an equity-informed and community-engaged problem structuring research design, we use data from mostly primary sources and used mostly qualitative analytic methods to provide specific guidance and support to those on the front lines of these crises. Our findings are based on key informant interviews, a housing and climate crisis town hall, and a housing and climate crisis convening. We have identified multiple thematic areas in which current research does not provide adequate guidance, including: community capacity, community engagement, financing, framing, political organizing, and analytic methods. These thematic areas inspire a range of research directions which are summarized in three research questions: (1) What community characteristics support successful implementation of residential development projects that are affordable and sustainable? (2) How can a social cost-benefit analysis quantify social and environmental impacts so that projects that are not financially feasible using conventional metrics can be attractive? (3) How can analytic methods be used to yield insights into designing policy instruments? These questions can be the basis of an extended research project