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Expanding choices in where we live and how we travel for all our residents, <br />across age, race and ethnicity, economic means, and ability <br />To advance racial and economic equity across the metropolitan area, the Council will work to <br />create and protect viable housing and transportation options for the region's residents, <br />regardless of race, ethnicity, income, immigrant status or disability. While different people will <br />make different choices reflecting their own needs and preferences, the Council's priority will be <br />expanding real choices for housing and transportation. <br />The region needs to offer housing options that give people in all life stages and of all economic <br />means viable choices for safe, stable and affordable homes. To help more households have <br />real housing choices, the Council will: <br />• Use its resources, including investments in transit, infrastructure and redevelopment, to <br />help create and preserve racially -integrated, mixed -income neighborhoods across the <br />region; <br />• Encourage preserving existing affordable housing across the region and encourage new <br />additions to the affordable housing stock in areas that have an inadequate supply of <br />existing affordable housing and are experiencing new housing construction —particularly <br />in areas that are well-connected to jobs and transit; <br />• Invest in affordable housing construction and preservation in higher -income areas of the <br />region; <br />• Provide competitive rent limits to enable Housing Choice Voucher holders to choose the <br />location that best meets their needs, including those opportunities in higher -cost <br />communities; <br />• Encourage increased resources for preserving existing and producing more affordable <br />housing opportunities at the federal, state, regional and local level to help close the gap <br />between the region's affordable housing need and the supply; <br />• Support research and testing related to fair housing, discriminatory lending practices, <br />and real estate steering to determine if these discriminatory practices are occurring and <br />limiting housing choices. <br />Transportation choices are as important to lower -income households as housing choices. The <br />Council will continue to strengthen transit connections between lower -income residents and <br />opportunities such as jobs and education. To expand the transportation choices available to all <br />households, including in some neighborhoods the choice to live without a car, the Council will: <br />• Include a measure of households who do not own private automobiles —also known as <br />"transit dependency" —as one of the elements driving the Council's Transit Market <br />Areas and defining the level of transit service neighborhoods expect to receive; <br />• Conduct Title VI service equity analyses —a federally prescribed process —to ensure that <br />major changes in transit service do not lead to disparate impacts on low-income <br />residents and communities of color; <br />• Prioritize transportation investments that connect lower -income areas to job <br />opportunities; <br />• Engage neighborhood residents in transit planning to understand how to most effectively <br />use transit service and investments to promote access to opportunity. <br />DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT <br />Last revised: February 21, 2014 22 <br />