Creating & Applying Community Principles

In creating a community land use principles document, the demands you arrive at can be as general or specific as works for you. The most important point is that they lay out a benchmark for the types of development and investment that would work for your community – making clear that you are looking to say yes to proposals that meet these criteria and accomplish community goals, while strengthening your hand to push back on those proposals that fail to do so. 

It’s important to keep in mind that community principles do not need to provide the technical answers as to how any specific project can match them; it is not the community’s responsibility to figure out how a specific project should be financed or whether it can support a profit while meeting community goals. Nor should you assume there is a specific formula or number where community principles would work in practice, and beyond which you’ve gone too far. The point of community principles is to lay out and ask for what the community needs, and then have a transparent process understanding how development and land use proposals can best reach them.

That said, the argument around what’s financially feasible will likely be one of the central points of pushback from both developers and the City. With this in mind, it is worth considering recent precedents of developments and plans that have provided strong public benefit, to hold up as examples and benchmarks to compare your land use principles to in these discussions. It’s also important to consider the difference in scale and location between different development proposals and understand that they may have different limitations in how they are best able to meet community needs. This does not mean you need to concede on your bottom lines, but simply to think how different projects might best be able to meet different aspects of them commensurate to their size.

With this in mind, you may want to begin your community land use principles document with the broader framing of the purpose you hope it to serve. Be explicit about the role you see it playing in setting the framework for future proposals and how it should put the onus on the City and developers to treat these principles with respect and as the starting point for any actions in the community. As part of this framing, you can be clear regarding what the community has taken on already in terms of new development, what it actually needs in terms of housing and investment, and if it is a high displacement risk area where special caution is needed. It is likely worth starting with some of the most relevant statistics you’ve gathered highlighting existing conditions, to establish how your community principles are responding to the need. For example:

• What are the income levels for your community?
  • How does that vary by race?
• How have racial and income demographics changed over the last 2 decades?
• Which types of households have the highest rent-burden based on income levels and race?
• What type of housing has been built in the community in recent years? Who is that serving? Based on income levels, what can we infer around who that is serving in terms of race?
• Where are there needs in terms of access to open space, transportation, and healthcare (as just a few examples)?

Once you’ve clearly outlined these needs you can lay out your community principles across your different issue areas. Again, there is not a specific way you need to lay these out, in terms of level of detail or the exact commitments you’re calling for – as long as they provide clear benchmarks to help guide future actions. Below we give some examples of different principles and ways of phrasing your demands. Throughout this it should be made clear that these principles are cumulative and intended to work in tandem – it’s not a matter of trading off one demand for another – to ensure that community needs are truly being met.

Once community principles are established, they can become your guiding document for all land use proposals and decisions. They can be shared publicly and widely, and it can be made clear that any land use proposals coming before the community must address and match these principles as a starting point for consideration. If they do not match the principles, you can clearly state, in a transparent and consistent manner, why you are opposed, holding up where the proposal differs from community principles and how it would need to be improved to gain your support.

It can be helpful to demonstrate visually the mismatch between your community principles and what a rezoning proposal is offering. For example, a crucial point of debate around many rezonings and development proposals is what (if any) affordability levels will be committed to. Establishing community principles around affordability, as outlined above, helps to set benchmarks to compare any proposal to. If a proposal does not provide the affordability the community needs, as clearly called for in your principles, you can demonstrate visually – through the use of charts and graphics – how far the proposed affordability is from what is needed. This same approach can work across multiple issue areas to clearly convey the disparity between what’s needed and what is being proposed.

For community groups and community boards, using community principles can give you more leverage in getting decision-makers – those with the power to approve, disapprove, or modify land use proposals – to support your vision. This is particularly true for your local Council Member. The community principles offer a transparent and consistent reference for them to draw from, providing support and cover for them to hold the line in advocating for capital investments that address existing and long-standing needs, outside of taking on new density, and in only advancing equitable development proposals that match community needs.

For Council Members, community principles can serve as your clear, explicit, benchmarks for what proposals you will and won’t consider. Using a public and consistent document builds your power and credibility in saying no when a project doesn’t match your principles and helps in shifting the narrative away from one that paints all communities as NIMBY to one that separates the good-faith, equitable arguments from the bad-faith, inequitable ones, and forces the City and developers to respond in kind. If an applicant still decides to move forward into ULURP even after you’ve indicated their proposal does not match the community principles, you’ve increased your power and credibility to hold firm. With that consistent stance there should be no need for negotiations or the typical game of ULURP poker, waiting to see what’s given away at the last minute or who folds first.

Lastly, for all three groups, developing community principles offers the opportunity to engage a broad cross-section of the community – both in creating the principles and in sharing them. This process can help grow consensus and build the power of the community to speak in a concerted voice.