Learners Welcome: PT. 1

Part 1 of a Training Series for Sustainable Growth at the Local Level: The Economics of Developing More Homes.
About this Event

Neighbors Welcome RI, in partnership with national experts, is offering a series of trainings that will dig into how housing impacts local communities. These trainings are open to all, but will be most valuable to Rhode Island public servants serving as elected or appointed leaders at the local level.

Part 1: The Economics of Developing More Homes

*If this event is cost-prohibitive, please reach out to [email protected] for scholarship information.

Planners seldom have direct experience with the economics of land use planning, particularly as it relates to what actually gets built. Planning boards adopt regulations with the laudable intent of creating more housing choice and attainability or encouraging a lively downtown or making sure the town’s finances are robust. Then, when none of those things happen, they are puzzled and disappointed, when the reality is that what was coded for in those regulations is not financially possible. Development math is real and relentless and often opaque to those outside the industry.

In this three hour workshop, participants will explore:

• Housing affordability, Area Median Income (AMI), and what homes cost for people in different occupations.
• The real cost of building a starter home, including an inclusionary zoning exercise.
• Hands-on site planning exercises using traditional zoning rules.
• The economics of small-scale housing development, including construction costs, rents, sale prices, and property tax implications.
• Interactive zoning "stress tests" to understand what can and cannot be built under zoning codes.
• An introduction to form-based codes, building typologies, and practical zoning reforms communities can adopt to expand housing opportunities.

Lunch will be included

Objectives

• Explain development math in the context of local regulations
• Explore relationship between development patterns and municipal finances
• Show how relatively small changes can improve outcomes

Ivy Vann of Ivy Vann Town Planning and Urban Design is a planner and designer with many years of experience in town planning both in New Hampshire and nationally. She works on charrettes, planning projects, code review, master planning, public engagement, and comprehensive planning. Ivy is certified as a planner by both the American Planning Association and the Congress for the New Urbanism, as well as the Form-Based Code Institute of Smart Growth America.

She is a 42-year resident of New Hampshire, and she served on her own town’s planning board for more than a dozen years, which provided her with an up-close look at the process for improving zoning regulations to make places both more attractive and more financially resilient. She particularly enjoys helping citizens articulate their vision for their place.

In her own life she is a small developer, having turned her house into a three-family, and the original carriage house into a duplex. She currently has a 14-unit project which just completed the entitlement process. She is also a faculty member of the Incremental Development Alliance, a non-profit which teaches people how to make their places better one underused building or one empty lot at a time.

Neighbors Welcome! RI is A Grassroots Network of Neighbors Advocating for More Homes. We imagine a future in which all of our friends, family, and neighbors can find the housing they need in the Ocean State.

Local Return builds community wealth in Rhode Island through ownership and investment, particularly in neighborhoods that have experienced historical disinvestment.

Strong Towns seeks to replace America’s postwar pattern of development, the Suburban Experiment, with a pattern of development that is financially strong and resilient. They advocate for cities of all sizes to be safe, livable and inviting, and work to elevate local government to be the highest level of collaboration for people working together in a place, not merely the lowest level in a hierarchy of governments.