From Framework to Front Line Advancing Housing Resilience and Affordability

RPA, Enterprise, & NYCHPD explore using policy & partnerships to protect affordable homes, accelerate recovery & strengthen communities.
About this Event

Climate-driven disasters are placing growing pressure on an already constrained housing supply, threatening existing homes, increasing costs for residents and housing providers, and making it more difficult for communities to meet urgent affordability needs. As municipalities grapple with the need to build more resilient communities able to withstand extreme weather events, the critical question is how policymakers, planners, and housing experts can translate ambitious blueprints into effective, local action.

This panel will bring together Regional Plan Association (RPA), Enterprise Community Partners, and New York City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) to examine the policies, planning decisions, and implementation strategies needed to protect existing housing and accelerate recovery. Drawing from national standards and regional planning frameworks, panelists will examine the challenges communities and housing providers face, and highlight the resources and partnerships needed to address the intersecting climate and housing crisis.

• Enterprise Community Partners will draw on insights from its Climate Resilience Academies to highlight the challenges affordable housing owners, operators, and developers face in preparing their portfolios for climate risks while safeguarding residents. Through its work with more than 150 participants across U.S. regions, Enterprise has seen that housing providers increasingly understand the urgency of resilience but often lack the staff capacity, funding, technical expertise, and region-specific guidance needed to act. Enterprise will discuss opportunities to close these gaps to further help housing providers move from awareness to implementation.
• Regional Plan Association will draw from its Averting Crisis report and subsequent work with communities in the New York metropolitan region to examine how housing growth and climate resilience can be advanced together. RPA will share real-time lessons being learned about effective ways to move from high-altitude planning to on-the-ground implementation, highlighting its work with local governments, community organizations, and neighborhood stakeholders in seven communities across Queens, Westchester, and Long Island. The work will result in local actions that affect zoning changes, land-use reform, investments and complementary policies to align housing growth with climate risk and capacity.
• A representative from the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) will provide a local implementation perspective, showcasing how public agencies are incorporating resilience into affordable housing policies, capital programs, and neighborhood planning efforts.

These organizations will offer expertise on climate readiness and disaster response, connecting federal and local policy to on-the-ground implementation to make communities more resilient amid the growing housing affordability crisis.

Agenda

🕑: 02:00 PM
Doors Open
🕑: 02:30 PM
Program Begins
🕑: 03:45 PM
Program Ends