February 26, 2026
Rising rents and home prices have prompted policymakers to consider innovative interventions that help spur the construction of new affordable housing. Recognizing that land costs account for a significant share of housing development costs — sometimes as much as 35 percent, according to research — local jurisdictions are leveraging publicly owned land as a valuable resource.
A new brief from the NYU Furman Center, produced in collaboration with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, outlines practical strategies for local policymakers to turn surplus publicly owned land into affordable housing, through both the development of suitable undeveloped sites and the adaptive reuse of vacant or underutilized municipal properties.
The brief focuses on four key areas: 1) inventorying public land and assessing parcels for housing suitability; 2) structuring development decisions across a range of dimensions, including organization and ownership models, affordable housing restrictions, housing tenure, and transfer mechanisms to determine how the land will be developed and what role the government or community will play in the short and long term; 3) implementing state-level incentives to facilitate the use of public land for affordable housing; and 4) securing financing for development.
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