Start here · Essential guide
How Urban Renewal Projects Are Paid For: A Plain Guide
A plain-language overview of the public, private and blended money sources behind urban renewal projects, and how they are layered together.
Land, Rules and Money
Development Finance
Plain explanations of how renewal projects are funded and financed.
Business Improvement Districts and Self-Taxing Downtowns
How business improvement districts let property owners pay extra for shared services such as cleaning and promotion, who benefits, and where the criticisms lie.
Community Development Finance and Local Lenders
How mission-driven community lenders fill financing gaps that conventional banks leave, what they typically offer, and the limits and risks of their work.
Development Impact Fees and Who Ends Up Paying
What impact fees on new construction are meant to do, how they are calculated, and why economists and builders disagree about who really bears the cost.
Land Value Capture: Sharing Gains From Public Investment
How governments try to recover part of the land value that public works create, the main tools used, a simple hypothetical example, and the limits of the idea.
Municipal Bonds and City Borrowing Basics
How cities borrow through municipal bonds for long-lived assets, the main bond types, what repayment commits a city to, and a simple hypothetical example.
Project Cash Flow: How Timing Shapes Renewal Budgets
Why when money arrives matters as much as how much, with a simple hypothetical example of reimbursement grants, carrying costs and a renewal project's budget.
Property Tax Abatements: Incentives and Their Costs
How temporary property tax breaks are meant to encourage development, what they cost the public, and practical questions for judging whether an abatement is worth it.
Reading a Development Pro Forma Without an Accounting Degree
A plain walkthrough of the main lines of a development pro forma, costs, sources, income and value, using a fully hypothetical 40-unit example with checked numbers.
Renewal Grants: How Funding Competitions Work
How competitive grant programs for renewal work: what applicants usually must show, how proposals are scored, and why a grant rarely covers the full cost.
Tax Increment Financing Explained With Trade-Offs
How tax increment financing uses future growth in property tax revenue to pay for present improvements, with a hypothetical example, the main criticisms and questions to ask.
The Funding Gap: Why Good Projects Do Not Pencil Out
Why a needed renewal project can cost more than it can earn, what the financing gap is, a hypothetical example, and the usual ways gaps are bridged.
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