(Contributed by Monica McCann
with the Conservation Fund’s
Resourceful Communities Program)
Both affordable housing and conservation
bring numerous benefits to the community. Affordable housing results in wealth creation for homeowners, provides housing for a diverse workforce, and ensures that economic benefits remain within a community. Similarly, land conservation brings benefits as well, including: higher
water quality, wildlife habitat protection and the preservation of working farms and forests.
Yet, issues of affordable housing and
conservation often seem unrelated.
Conservation planning for affordable housing can be used to create high-quality affordable neighborhoods that preserve open space and help lower the cost of development. Through a grant by the Clean Water Management Trust Fund, conservation planning for affordable housing is being done in seven sites located throughout the state.
Below: The two site plans illustrate the
difference between a traditional subdivision (left) and a conservation-based affordable housing subdivision (right), both with the same total number of lots. |
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At best, a disconnect exists between the
strategies used to promote greater
housing options for low- to moderate-income residents and strategies used
to preserve land. At worst, the goals of affordable housing and conservation can seem in direct opposition — unchecked development can consume large areas of land that could be preserved, while preservation can create scarcity in land availability, driving up the cost of development.
Conservation-based affordable housing (CBAH) is a strategy that merges the goals of affordable housing and land conservation to create high-quality neighborhoods for residents who might not otherwise be able to afford a home. CBAH preserves open space (including forests, streams, wetlands and other key amenities) by clustering the homes and allowing large swaths of open space to remain. This results in such benefits as: less impervious surface (and therefore, less pollutant runoff), more open space and natural areas preserved and higher aesthetic and recreational values.
If this type of development is coupled with affordable housing, the benefits are even greater. Clustering homes reduces the overall cost of development—infrastructure, landscaping and maintenance costs are all lessened. If applicable, conservation easements or other types of conservation |
funding can be used to preserve the remaining open space and lower the cost of development even further.
The illustration below demonstrates the difference between a traditional subdivision (left) and a conservation subdivision (right). Although both sites have the same number of lots, the conservation subdivision preserves much more open space.
In North Carolina, a grant by the Clean Water Management Trust Fund given to the Conservation Trust for North Carolina, the North Carolina Community Development Initiative, the Black Family Land Trust and The Conservation Fund has enabled seven
community development corporations (CDCs) to do conservation planning for their proposed affordable housing developments.
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The Initiative would like to thank Monica McCann and the Conservation Fund’s Resourceful Communities Program for their innovative work on conservation-based affordable housing as well as their unwavering support of underserved populations throughout North Carolina. |
