What We Do
Latest Projects
San Francisco Inclusionary Housing Guidelines
Street Level Advisors led a year-long process to rewrite the policies and procedures for San Francisco’s 10 year old inclusionary housing program.
Public Life Evaluation
Street Level Advisors led a process for the John S. and James L. Knight foundation to evaluate a series of grants that the foundation has made to support the development of organizations focused on improving access to public space, and public life in American cities.
Berkeley Affordable Housing Videos
The City of Berkeley and BART are working together to plan for new housing at the North Berkeley and Ashby transit stations. We developed a series of short videos to provide neighborhood stakeholders with important background and context related to the economics of these projects.
Inclusionary Housing
San Francisco Inclusionary Housing Guidelines
Street Level Advisors led a year-long process to rewrite the policies and procedures for San Francisco’s 10 year old inclusionary housing program.
Inclusionary Housing Calculator
This interactive tool was designed to help policymakers and advocates better understand the real estate economics related to inclusionary housing. The tool incorporates a complete real estate project pro forma but simplifies the inputs and outputs to allow users to focus on the key variables that drive project feasibility.
Inclusionary Housing Book
We wrote the go-to guide for communities considering the adoption of inclusionary housing policies. This book collects hard won lessons from real programs and summarizes a wealth of published research to help local communities make better informed decisions.
Web Based Tools
Consultants are in the business of learning and sharing what we learn. In the past that meant writing reports. But, lets face it, people don’t read as much as they used to.
Today, we have to work harder to distill information and meet people where they are. And increasingly where they are is online.
Street Level has been pioneering the development of interactive online tools to engage policymakers in complex issues.
Social Impact Data.org
We spent a year researching how social enterprises and the foundations and impact investors who fund them measure the social impact of thier work. What we learned was surprising. Rather than publish a paper report we created this interactive microsite to share our research findings.
Inclusionary Housing Calculator
This interactive tool was designed to help policymakers and advocates better understand the real estate economics related to inclusionary housing. The tool incorporates a complete real estate project pro forma but simplifies the inputs and outputs to allow users to focus on the key variables that drive project feasibility.
Social Impact Dashboard
The Social Impact Dashboard provides a dynamic visualization of data collected through the HomeKeeper application. It enables near real time peer benchmarking of the social performance of affordable homeownership programs.
HomeKeeper
HomeKeeper is a Salesforce.com application designed to help managers of affordable homeownership programs to track key program data and monitor the social impact of their programs.
Understanding Subsidy Retention
We created this interactive tutorial on the economics of permanently affordable housing after trying to explain these concepts to small groups with static PowerPoint slides. We have found that this kind of dynamic visualization makes the underlying economics much easier for people to understand.
Shared Equity Homeownership
Shared Equity Homeownership programs provide support to help lower income families to buy homes but they structure this help as an investment rather than a grant so that limited public resources can grow along with the need.
Street Level Principal Rick Jacobus secured a $5 million investment from the Social Innovation Fund to help bring this new idea to scale.
Social Impact Dashboard
The Social Impact Dashboard provides a dynamic visualization of data collected through the HomeKeeper application. It enables near real time peer benchmarking of the social performance of affordable homeownership programs.
The City-CLT partnership
Based on interviews with dozens of practitioners from around the country, this guidebook is intended to help local government policymakers to develop stronger partnerships with local Community Land Trusts to develop and monitor permanently affordable homeownership units.
A Path to Homeownership
We worked with the Center for American Progress to craft an ambitious proposal for a dramatically different federal approach to supporting access to homeownership for lower income families.
The Asset Building Potential of Shared Equity Homeownership
Can lower income families build wealth in resale price restricted homes? This paper presents surprising findings from data collected by one mature program.
Asset Building and Affordable Homeownership
This 15 minute video presentation looks more closely at local affordable homeownership programs from the point of view of asset building. Can affordable ownership programs be seen as asset building strategies? How do they compare with traditional ownership?
Commercial Revitalization
Neighborhood Commercial Revitalization programs help bring life back to distressed neighborhoods by supporting the growth of locally serving businesses districts.
We have helped community organizations across the country to craft strategies that enhance their neighborhood’s existing identity to attract new retail development.
Public Life Evaluation
Street Level Advisors led a process for the John S. and James L. Knight foundation to evaluate a series of grants that the foundation has made to support the development of organizations focused on improving access to public space, and public life in American cities.
Grocery Store Attraction Strategies
This report provides an overview of the process that community activists have used to attract new fresh food retailers into disinvested urban communities.
Economic Development and Health Toolkit
Economic Development for Public Health Advocates Now Online at ChangeLab Solutions Download PDF File This toolkit developed for the Public Health Institute's Land Use and Health Program is designed to provide an overview of Economic [...]
Brookings: Retail Trade as a Path to Neighborhood Revitalization
Does retail development lead to residential change or the other way around? In this chapter we evaluate data on changing neighborhoods which suggests that retail revitalization can actually help prevent gentrification.
Commercial Revitalization Planning Guide
This hands on guidebook is filled with detailed direction that will provide practitioners with a starting point for organizing comprehensive commercial district revitalization efforts.