"In the emotion-charged atmosphere of "to build or not to build" the fundamental issue determining the future of housing has become obscured - building and maintaining neighborhood confidence. Paradoxically, federal assistance programs encouraged a negative bias in the general perception of urban neighborhoods. [In effect], neighborhood confidence was exchanged for limited federal assistance. Neighborhood confidence must be the cornerstone of any housing policy, [and] this priceless commodity [must not be] inadvertently sacrificed in the game to obtain federal assistance:" From Building Neighborhood Confidence, 1976 by Rolf Goetz

czb will periodically post efforts to change the status quo, and provide relevant commentary that may be useful. These will be the efforts czb has identified that we believe are leading by example.

We will provide examples of noteworthy efforts to tackle challenges like poverty, neighborhood distress, affordable housing shortages, and sprawl. In the process of providing insights into such efforts and commenting on what we think is useful and helpful, we hope to provoke thought and, with any luck, changes in approach when appropriate.

We will evaluate each example by using the following structure:

	What was the problem people were trying to solve?
	What approach was used?
	What succeeded?
	What did not succeed?
	What should have been done?

Example:

What was the problem people were trying to solve: The need for affordable housing for low and moderate income households in Washington, DC in the late 1980s

What was the real problem: Dozens of poor, crime-ridden, drug-infested neighborhoods with scores of abandoned properties

What approach was used: Community-based nonprofit housing development

What succeeded: Development of a modestly-sized pre-purchase homebuying assistance program coupled with small-scale acquisition-rehab

What did not succeed: Acquisition and rehab strategies never tied to the work of growing neighborhood confidence.

- Neighborhoods where development occurred did not increases their competitiveness in the regional housing market; in effect they remained, and remain slums.

Efforts to increase supply reacted locally to regionally supply shortages

- Production occurred on least costly land, which invariably was located in least healthy neighborhoods. These neighborhoods already had a supply of low income housing, to which the collective community-based response was to add more.

What should have been done: Production efforts to address regional shortages of affordable housing should have occurred regionally. Failing to do this, additional low-income housing was added to neighborhoods where there was already an over abundance of supply.

In those neighborhoods were supply was added, the effort instead should have been geared to growing demand. In two examples, the Marshall Heights and Anacostia Heights neighborhoods each should have been targets not for housing for low-income people but for the moderate and middle market households needed to spur additional investment.