We added several new pages in the last month in response to reader questions. See these:

How to get people interested in a neighborhood plan, in light of only six people attending the first public meeting.

Zoning ordinance has outdated Public category

Can we force contractors to keep down the dust?

Code enforcement and wood piles

Should the HOA board give notice of their meetings?

Does a CDC have to post public notices?

In this interview with Columbia University professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, he explains why we have not yet experienced all of the negative effects of the emptying out of office space in downtowns.

Especially concerning is the impact on municipal property taxes when today's long-term leases on office space run out. To pour cold water on a solution that I see a lot of urbanists talking about, he thinks only about 15 percent of office space is even physically capable of being converted into apartments or condos.

I conclude it's time to become highly inventive about new adaptive reuses for office buildings or new municipal revenue sources, or both.

A national survey of floodplain development between 2001 and 2019 shows that the U.S. actually has constructed less development on the floodplain than we would expect if development were distributed randomly. That's the good news. The bad news is that we are still doing some of it. This paper explains that routine municipal actions such as careful zoning review and routine permit review can limit floodplain development without the need to enact any Grand Scheme that would attract a loud opposition.

Problems remain though; Florida and Louisiana account for a large share of the floodplain development, but states with less exposure to gulf and ocean frontage may allow a higher percentage of their development in the floodplain. Further, the regulatory approach is usually based on FEMA maps, which are badly out of date in most areas, sometimes decades behind actual conditions.

On a related but quite different note, scientists in Germany have been working on restoring proper floodplain functioning along degraded rivers in the eastern part of the country. Read this interesting account.

In Minneapolis, the Metropolitan Council and Hennepin County worked in what seems to be a highly collaborative fashion with neighborhood residents who will be directly impacted by a planned transit line extension.

Together they crafted an anti-displacement strategy that has been awarded major funding from the state’s transportation budget. It features affordable housing for corridor residents, support for existing small businesses to prevent business displacement, new public spaces, and job training for corridor residents. Community members will serve on the board overseeing this program and will be compensated for their board service.

This program seems promising, but the question is how well resident input will hold up over the next ten years as the transit line is built. If interested, you can read what sponsoring organizations say.

The big federal housing enterprises, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, have a Duty to Serve rule imposed on them. There's a lot of fancy language and jargon in the Housing Assistance Council's official comment on the proposed Duty to Serve program for 2025. If this is too much for you but you are interested in rural housing, affordable housing preservation in general, or manufactured housing, learn about Duty to Serve in general. See the first paragraph for an overall description of Duty to Serve, and then the Q&A starting on p. 2.

The next regular issue of Good Community Plus will arrive on a Thursday in November. Reply to this email if you have a comment. For questions, remember to use the public-facing page to ask your question. I will answer them on a page that becomes viewable on our website, but your email address won't show. You can be anonymous if you wish.