Strategies

Support locally-based visual, media, and performing arts initiatives for children and adults; also called participatory arts programs

Provide space to promote socializing among community members and offer programs and services such as recreational or educational activities, counseling or support services

Provide funding for local community development activities such as affordable housing, anti-poverty programs, and infrastructure development

Purchase the land a home is on to lease to homeowners with low and middle incomes and require homeowners to sell the home back to the trust or to another resident with low income upon moving

Establish a non-share capital cooperative model in which fee-paying members can share the communal resources of a grocery, house, or utility cooperative

Provide grants to states and localities to fund activities that build, buy, or rehabilitate affordable housing for rent or homeownership, or provide direct rental assistance to households with low incomes

Support funds that help create or maintain affordable housing, subsidize rental housing, and assist homebuyers with low incomes and non-profit housing developers

Require developers to reserve a proportion of housing units for residents with low incomes via mandatory requirements or incentives, such as density bonuses

Acquire, hold, manage, and develop properties such as vacant lots, abandoned buildings, or foreclosures, and transition them to productive uses, often affordable housing developments

Return the rights to land, property, and resources to Native people as part of policies and initiatives that promote tribal sovereignty

Provide funds to households with low incomes to meet home energy needs, especially for households with children, older adults, or individuals with disabilities

Provide funding via tax credits at the state and local level to support development and rehabilitation costs of low income rental housing

Establish voluntary formal groups of residents who work together to create a unified voice, enhance living conditions in their neighborhood, and address neighborhood concerns

Allow community members to gather, socialize, walk, run, bike, skate, etc. on streets temporarily to closed to motorized traffic; also called Ciclovía programs

Engage community members to determine how public budgets are spent, ideally to improve neighborhood conditions and reduce inequality.

Bring people with diverse values and perspectives together to engage in facilitated, inclusive, and informed dialogues about a topic of public concern. Examples include Citizens’ Initiative Reviews, deliberative polling, citizen juries, and citizen’s assemblies.

Lend materials, offer gathering space, and provide educational, civic, and social programming; open to the community and publicly funded

Establish tenant protections via regulations to the housing rental market such as limits on rent increases and eviction protections for tenants with low incomes; typically via rent stabilization

Support individual and group use of internet-based tools to receive news, communicate or share information, collaborate on ideas, mobilize networks, and make collective decisions

Create designated tax districts that generate revenue to invest in affordable housing initiatives, blight remediation, and economic development efforts

Support and strengthen traumatized and distressed residents and communities and address effects of community trauma (e.g., poverty, violence, structural racism, etc.) via a comprehensive, multi-stakeholder, and multilevel approach

Increase the number of registered voters through initiatives that reduce barriers and expand accessibility, including automatic voter registration (AVR), voter registration drives, easing voter registration requirements, and expanding registration sites

Increase voter turnout through get-out-the-vote campaigns and initiatives to make voting more convenient such as allowing early in-person voting, vote-by-mail, or expanding polling locations and hours

Teach students attitudes, skills, knowledge, and behavior needed to participate in and contribute to a democracy