Cost of Home Conversation 

Supply & Preservation

• Find ways to increase housing density to bring down housing costs.
• Tax preference for materials and labor used in the construction and/or repair of affordable housing.
• Zoning to allow duplexes, triplexes, and 4-plexes in all single-family neighborhoods, allow with education about the benefits of these changes.

Land Use

• Streamlining land use approvals.
• Unravel current land use policy that delays, impedes, or causes housing costs to rise with little significant benefit to the safety of the public and/or environment (Example: Hawaii SB 2417).
• Community land trusts to ensure permanent housing affordability.  
• Incent existing apartment property owners to provide 3-5% of existing units to renters below 80% area median income.

Access to Credit

• Expanding down payment assistance programs.
• Combat predatory lending.
• Financing can make the difference in whether someone is able to buy a home, but rules around FHA and VA loans hamper many buyers trying to complete in a hot market. Increasing access to – and the speed of – home appraisals could help buyers with special financing be competitive against other buyers in the market. 

Communities of Opportunity

• Find ways to increase the supply of trained workers going into the building trades. 
• Make sure that the people designing and implementing these programs have organic connection to the communities they serve- e.g. “nothing about us without us”.
• Expand home repair/modification.
• Property tax relief for lower-income homeowners.