2024 Spring Issue of Urban Land - 100

SOLUTION FILE
federal, state, or local governments-including
land of
the Department of Veterans
Affairs itself.
The advantage of EUL
to governments is that they
may use their surplus land
to promote important government
policies, such as
housing homeless veterans,
with no upfront expenditure
or issuance of bonds for
debt finance. Through the
" enhanced use " of the land
by a ground tenant-developer,
such as the Veterans Community
Project, the government
extracts more value from its
land than by leaving it fallow
and, thus, comes out ahead.
Furthermore, by ground
leasing the land through EUL
rather than selling it, a government
agency such as the
Department of Veterans Affairs
(VA) is much more attracted
to making deals with developers
like the Veterans Community
Project. The developer in
effect land-banks the land for
the government for its use in
the long-term future, so that
the government maintains permanent
ownership and control
of the land.
The advantage of EUL to
developers such as VCP is
that EUL releases more land
to develop, often on relatively
large VA campuses or other
government parcels. The
surplus land of the VA and
other government agencies
is relatively likely to be within
urban areas. EUL thus enables
a developer such as the Veterans
Community Project to
develop a larger number of
tiny house villages in urban
areas where most veterans are
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URBAN LAND
SPRING 202 4
located and non-EUL land is
prohibitively expensive.
Moreover, particularly on
federal and state land, EUL
substantially accelerates the
project's rollout of tiny house
villages in urban areas by
removing regulatory barriers.
Because federal and state
governments are superior
sovereigns to local municipalities,
development on federal
or state land follows federal
or state law, and generally
preempts local municipal land
use laws. Although negotiating
an EUL lease is a bureaucratic
task that does take
time, it almost certainly takes
less time than obtaining the
dozens of local zoning, planning,
and environmental permits
ordinarily required from a
municipality.
And finally, the advantage
to veterans themselves of
using EUL is that it enables a
greater number of tiny house
villages to be developed to
transition more veterans more
quickly into more permanent
housing.
Tiny houses + Enhanced
Use Leasing = housing
many veterans
The combat veterans who
devised and largely continue
to lead the Veterans Community
Project-in some cases
formerly homeless veterans
themselves-viscerally grasp
the plight of homeless veterans,
and they continue to act
forcefully upon that understanding.
On
the housing side, VCP
provides trauma-informed
design through tiny houses
that strike a balance between
community support and individual
dignity, and that enables
85 percent of its village resident
veterans to advance to
permanent housing.
On the social support side,
intensive focused support
services are what veterans
need most to transition to
permanent housing, and in
the end it both pays and
is more humane to provide
those intensive services sooner
rather than later.
Accelerating the development
of veteran villages
through Enhanced Use
Leasing would accelerate
the rollout of the promising
Veterans Community Project
homeless-to-housed model on
a cost-effective national basis.
Moreover, EUL can also save
time on land assembly, compliance
with local land use laws,
environmental matters, and
infrastructure.
The clear path that the
Veterans Community Project
establishes for each homeless
veteran to be housed could, in
microcosm, model a clear path
for the entire United States.
If each of the 50 states built
10 of these tiny home villages
with 50 veterans, that'd be
25,000 veterans potentially
served. Discounted for the 85
percent success rate, that's
21,250 formerly homeless
veterans saved from homelessness
by transitioning to
permanent housing. UL
CHARLES SCHILKE is a Washington,
D.C.-based real estate strategist, developer, financier,
lawyer, and real estate lecturer at Johns Hopkins
University. He served as Implementation member of
the RUSH SCAG ASP.
2024 Spring Issue of Urban Land

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