| dc.description.abstract | Housing plays a central role in connecting individuals, families, and society during human life. To support the goal of providing decent housing at an affordable price in a suitable living environment for all American families, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) creates a financial mechanism to support local jurisdictions through a variety of affordable housing and community development programs. To receive these grants, a local government submits a Consolidated Housing Plan (ConPlan) that analyzes the current conditions, highlights the goal and objectives, and proposes strategies for implementation. Given the importance of this planning document, yet little research undertakes an evaluation of plan quality for ConPlan, its characteristics and its impacts on local communities have never been assessed.
This dissertation develops an evaluation protocol by which ConPlan may be assessed. It then applies to more than 70 cities in the United States. Using an evaluation scorecard, the study assesses the quality of the ConPlan by revealing its characteristics and performances. Then, this dissertation examines external factors that might affect the quality of the ConPlan. Two major groups of external factors, with a total of eleven variables, include planning context and housing stock. These variables are added to three regression models to find significant elements affecting the quality score.
After that, two cities are randomly chosen for case study analysis. These jurisdictions represent high- and low-score in ConPlan’s quality. The dissertation analyzes two major issues include plan implementation and outcomes. The study performs three levels of spatial analysis to address the implementation process: city-level, neighborhood-level, and project-level. These approaches show the mismatch between the location of the needed population and where the public money went to. They shed light on the effectiveness of the planning implementation process in each case study. In addition, the dissertation explores the locational outcomes of the planning process by comparing the conditions before and after adopting ConPlan.
The findings highlight the quality of the plan preparation process and raise some serious questions about how we use public money and how to plan and implement planning documents effectively. Finally, the findings are expected to create guidelines for policymakers and local authorities, and researchers in supporting affordable housing and community development nationwide. | |
