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Dear friend,
This month, the Future of Land and Housing Program turns five years old.
We launched in January 2018 from a simple premise: no major think tank had a program on global property rights, and New America was positioned to use its expertise to fill that gap.
Five years later, some things have stayed the same, but much has changed. We expanded from focusing on new technologies that improve property rights in developing countries to also examining housing insecurity here in the United States.
Despite our youth, we’ve managed to have some impact. Our work has been featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and the Atlantic. Our research on eviction data was adapted in a HUD strategy to Congress on creating a national eviction database. And research by Ukrainian experts that our team supported, on post-war reconstruction in Ukraine, has been taken up by multiple donors and first responders including the World Bank, USAID, the Norwegian Refugee Council, GIZ, the UN FAO, and the IMF.
Most importantly though, we’ve built an amazing team of staff and fellows, a diverse set of funders and supporters, and an unmatched group of partners, without whose trust and expertise our work would have been impossible.
As we move into our school-age years in 2023 and beyond, we will maintain a dual focus on domestic and international land and housing rights, with an eye towards macro threats that will alter global housing security, from conflict to sea-level rise.
Domestically, we'll continue to shine a light on improving access to and analysis of housing loss data. Just as the United States has a national unemployment rate, it should maintain a national housing loss rate, and our leaders should be accountable for keeping that rate low.
We’ll also look at the ways that climate change will impact housing security across the country. What will managed retreat look like at scale, and how will we pay for it? How can we more fairly allocate the risks to housing security posed by climate change? These are some of the questions we’ll dig into this year.
Internationally, we’re excited to continue our work with USAID through the Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) activity. In particular, we look forward to expanding the Frontiers event series, which explores the interface of conflict, climate change, and the governance of land and natural resources.
Finally, we’ll advance our work in support of Ukraine, proposing new ways to efficiently, transparently, and equitably rebuild the country–and to make Russia pay for it.
Below are some of our proudest achievements from the last five years. Thank you for your readership and partnership, and here’s to the next five!
- Yuliya Panfil, FLH Program Director
FLH Through the Years
2018: Blockchain and Land Administration
In our first year, we focused on how new technologies could improve the process of mapping, recording, and defending property rights at scale. Our very first research paper, Blockchain and Property in 2018, outlined the prerequisites for introducing blockchain into land administration, as well as a conceptual framework for the tech’s integration into a property registry. We’ve continued our dive into land and technology, notably publishing our PropRightsTech Primers series on a few innovative tools for property rights.
2019: "The Credential Highway"
Billions of people globally lack property documents. At the same time, our lives are increasingly digitized: smartphone apps like Waze, Facebook, MPesa, and Uber generate evidence of where we go, what we purchase, and whom we interact with. What if people could use this data trail to prove and secure their property rights? Our 2019 paper The Credential Highway explores how individuals can use a tapestry of digital evidence to document their land and housing rights. We recently picked this work back up, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, proposing that Ukrainians might use their digital trails to help prove where they live and reclaim their homes.
2020: Analyzing Evictions and Foreclosures Across the U.S.
In 2020, we published our seminal housing loss report, Displaced in America. This study introduces a first-of-its-kind National Housing Loss Index—a county-level ranking of housing loss rates across the United States. Most importantly, however, the report details just how poor housing loss data is. Wide variations in access and quality stymie both local and national data collection efforts, preventing us from understanding where housing loss is most acute, when during the year it’s occurring, and who is most impacted.
2021: Our Eight Eviction Data Recommendations
To tackle the housing loss data gap, we convened a coalition of housing and data leaders to explore the challenges posed by poor eviction data. These discussions resulted in a report, Why is Eviction Data so Bad? that includes eight recommendations for improving local eviction data infrastructure. To build capacity, we and our partners at DataKind developed the Foreclosure and Eviction Analysis Tool (FEAT), an open source tool that allows local leaders to generate analysis on their own housing loss data.
2022: Housing, Climate, and Risk in the United States
Climate change poses an unprecedented risk to housing in the United States, both to the coasts and to inland regions like Appalachia and the American West. While some are relocating away from areas increasingly at risk of sea-level rise, more powerful and frequent storms, or wildfires, others are rethinking what it means to stay. Following up on our report, Coastal Risk is Rising: How We Will Respond?, we partnered with Future Tense at Slate to reimagine our climate future.
Thoughts on our work or where we're headed? Reach out to us at FLH@NewAmerica.org or tag us at @FLHatNewAmerica.
Until next month, the FLH Team.
About New America
New America is dedicated to renewing the promise of America, bringing us closer to our nation’s highest ideals. We’re a different kind of think tank: one dedicated to public problem solving. Our team of visionary researchers, changemakers, technologists, and storytellers study and seize the opportunities presented by dramatic social and technological change. We search for powerful ideas, wherever they are, and collaborate with civic innovators around the world to develop evidence-based solutions.
The Future of Land and Housing Program at New America aims to help solve today’s land and housing rights challenges, both in the United States and internationally. Through our research and writing, convening, and collaboration with civic innovators worldwide, we strive to connect new constituencies, shed light on underreported issues, and implement creative approaches in the property rights space.
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