- Representative Delany (D-MD) and Others Recently Re-Intoroduced The Partnership to Strengthen Homeownership Act, originally introduced in July 2014, The Act Promises to Reform Housing Finance, Strengthen Affordable Housing and Reduce Taxpayer Risk
- Senator Charles Schumer and Others recently Sent a Letter Urging Congress to Allocate at Least $35 Million to Fund the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 4 Capacity Building and Affordable Housing Program
- The Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act, Recently Introduced Into the Senate, Would Invite Private Contractors to Upgrade HUDs Energy Efficiency, With Compensation Tied to Acually Realized Energy Savings
Tag Archives: affordable housing
Housing Affordability Across The Globe
The 11th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2015 has been released. The survey provides ratings for metropolitan markets in Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S. There are some interesting global trends:
Historically, the Median Multiple has been remarkably similar in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, with median house prices from 2.0 to 3.0 times median household incomes. However, in recent decades, house prices have been decoupled from this relationship in a number of markets, such as Vancouver, Sydney, San Francisco, London, Auckland and others. Without exception, these markets have severe land use restrictions (typically “urban containment” policies) that have been associated with higher land prices and in consequence higher house prices (as basic economics would indicate, other things being equal).
Virtually no government administering urban containment policy effectively monitors housing affordability. However, encouraging developments have been implemented at higher levels of government in New Zealand and Florida, and there are signs of potential reform elsewhere. (1-2)
These findings are consistent with Glaeser and Gyourko’s research on U.S. housing markets. Not too many local politicians seem to acknowledge the tension between land use policies that limit residential density on the one hand and housing affordability on the other. The de Blasio Administration in NYC is a refreshing exception to that general rule.
The explicit bias of the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey “is that domestic public policy should, first and foremost be focused on improving the standard of living and reducing poverty.” (2) Those who favor policies that create more affordable housing should take to heart the call for greater density and less restrictive zoning for residential uses. Otherwise, we are left with subsidy programs that can only help a small percentage of those in need of affordable housing and a lot of empty promises about affordable housing for all. Subsidies have a place in an affordable housing agenda, but so does density.
How Housing Matters
The Urban Law Institute, with support from the MacArthur Foundation, has launched a web portal devoted to housing, How Housing Matters. According to the website,
the Foundation selected the Urban Land Institute Terwilliger Center for Housing to create and curate a new online portal that would serve as the central source for the growing body of research on how housing matters to other pivotal drivers of individual and community success.
Through this portal and wide-ranging research, publications, convenings, awards, and technical assistance, the ULI Terwilliger Center facilitates the provision of a full spectrum of housing opportunities—including affordable and workforce housing—in communities across the country.
The How Housing Matters site is both a clearinghouse for crosscutting research and a platform for engaging practitioners, policymakers, and researchers across a range of fields. The resources on the site offer practical tools for those committed to using evidence and an interdisciplinary approach to create higher-quality housing.
Through How Housing Matters, the Foundation and the Institute hope to encourage practice and policy innovations that facilitate collaboration among leaders and policymakers in housing, education, health and economic development. The ultimate goal is to better and more cost-effectively help families lead healthy, successful lives.
I am not sure that I like how the website is organized — I don’t find it very intuitive — but I am sure that it will be populated with a lot of important research.
Friday’s Government Reports Round-up
- Budgetary Impact of Major Federal Programs that Guarantee Mortgages—Congressional Budget Office’s January 2015 Baseline
- California Assembly Democrat’s Proposal to Create More Affordable Housing in California
- Dr. Michael Stegman, Counselor to the Treasury Secretary for Housing Finance Policy, Remarks before the Third Annual Goldman Sachs’s Housing Finance Conference
- Fannie Mae: Housing Forecast February 2015
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-up
- ACLU: “Here We Go Again: Communities of Color, The Foreclosure Crisis, and Loan Servicing Failures”
- Federal Housing Finance Agency – HPI Calculator – projects what a given house purchased at a point in time would be worth today if it appreciated at the average appreciation rate of all homes in the area.
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York Interactive Home Price Index – Maps changes in home prices each month compared with prices one year earlier, by county, based on CoreLogic overall house price indexes.
- Joint Center for Housing Studies Harvard University: “Racialized Recovery: Post-Forclosure Pathways in Distressed Neighborhoods in Boston”
- National Association of Realtors – Realtors Confidence Index Reflects on Positive Trends in Home Sales for January
- Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Brief “The U.S. Treasury’s Credit Rating Agency Exercise: First Steps Out of the Private Label Securities Desert”
Tuesday’s Regulatory & Legislative Round-Up
- H.R. 1142 was introduced in Congress to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make permanent and expand the temporary minimum credit rate for the low-income housing tax credit program, an identical bill was introduced into last year’s Congress (text of H.R. 1142 is not yet available).
- HUD waives Rental Assistance Demonstration 20% Cap on Project Basing for the San Francisco Housing Authority
Airbnb and Profiteering
A NYC Housing Court judge issued a Decision/Order in 42nd and 10th Associates LLC v. Ikezi (No. 85736/2014 Feb. 17, 2015) that resulted in the eviction of a rent stabilized tenant who had rented his apartment through Airbnb at a rate much in excess of the rent approved by the NYC’s Rent Guidelines Board.
The Decision makes for a pretty good read in large part because of the incredible testimony of the tenant:
When questioned on Petitioner’s case whether Respondent charged anyone money to stay in the subject premises, Respondent first testified that he could not recall if he ever charged anyone money to stay in the subject premises for a tenancy, and then testified that he does not know if he ever charged anyone money to stay in the subject premises. Given that Respondent was being sued for eviction, that Respondent testified as such on January 21, 2015, and that Respondent’s tenancy commenced on October 10, 2014, three months and eleven days before his tenancy, Respondent’s inability to remember or know if he had charged anyone to sleep in the subject premises defies common sense. Such incredible testimony was of a piece with other testimony Respondent offered, such as his response to a question about how many nights he has slept in the subject premises with the answer that he does not keep a log of where he sleeps, Respondent’s inability to determine whether a photograph of a comforter on a bed in the ad was a comforter that he owned, Respondent’s lack of knowledge as to other addresses that might be his wife’s address, and Respondent’s testimony that he does not have an email address at the company that he is the president of. If Respondent was actually profiteering by renting out the subject premises as a hotel room, wanted to avoid testifying as such, and was trying to be clever about technically avoiding committing perjury, it is hard to imagine how Respondent would testify differently. (9-10)
The defendant’s testimony demonstrates what happens when the profit motive hits smack up against rent regulation’s policy goal of protecting tenants from large rent increases. Without defining it precisely, the Court refers to this as profiteering which it finds to be inconsistent with the goals of rent regulation and incurable to boot. Thus, the Court issued a warrant of eviction.
This seems like the right result on the law and as a matter of policy. Otherwise, more and more apartments would be informally removed from the regulated housing stock. Moreover, landlords and neighbors would be stuck with the costs of short-term stays while tenant scofflaws would get all the benefit.
