- Center for New York City Neighborhoods – Testimony Before the NYC Community Investment Advisory Board, finds affordable housing at risk on several fronts
- Fannie Mae: “Housing off to a Slow Start”
- Fannie Mae: Mortgage Lender Sentiment Survey: How Lenders Plan to Grow Their Mortgage Business in 2015
- Making Home Affordable.gov – Payment Reduction Calculator
- Shriver Center Paper, When Discretion Means Denial: A National Perspective on Criminal Records Barriers to Federally Subsidized Housing
Tag Archives: affordable housing
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-up
- Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco – Community Investments: California’s Solution to Veteran Homelessness May Lie in Supportive Housing
- National Association of Realtors Supports Federal Housing Authority’s Plan to Reduce Mortgage Insurance Premiums
Tuesday’s Regulatory & Legislative Round-Up
- HUD AWARDS $1.8 BILLION TO IMPROVE, PRESERVE NATION’S PUBLIC HOUSING Says Housing Authorities Will Use Funding to Maintain Housing for Families, Seniors
- Julián Castro: Secretary of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Positive About the FHA in Written Testimony before the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Friday’s Government Reports
- FHFA House Price Index up .08% in November 2014
- HUD’s Worst Case Housing Needs 2015 Report to Congress
- New York Comptroller’s Report Finds Empire State Development Corporation Lacking in Accountability and Transparency
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Releases Report On Reverse Mortgage Complaints
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-Up
- Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies Issues Optimistic Report on Emerging Trends in the Home Remodeling Market
- National Housing Preservation Data Base Incorporates all Available Data on Federally Subsidized Housing Properties
- NYU Furman Center, Research Brief Shows A (Very) Slight Improvement in Neighborhood Segregation in the 21st Century
- NYU Furman Center/Capital One Study “Renting in America’s Largest Cities” – Affordable Housing in Short Supply for Many
Wednesday’s Academic Roundup
- Banking Integration and House Price Comovement, by Augustin Landier, David Alexandre Sraer & David Thesmar, CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP10295.
- Second-Liens and the Leverage Option, by Adam J. Levitin & Susan M. Wachter, U of Penn. Inst. for Law & Econ Research Paper.
- Regulating Against Bubbles: How Mortgage Regulation Can Keep Main Street and Wall Street Safe – From Themselves, by Ryan Bubb & Prasad Krishnamurthy, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 163, Forthcoming NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 15-03.
- Who Wins Residential Property Tax Appeals?, by Randall K. Johnson, Columbia Journal of Tax Law, Forthcoming Mississippi College School of Law Research Paper No. 2015-01.
- The Theft of Affordable Housing: How Rent Stabilized Apartments are Disappearing from Fraudulent Individual Apartment Improvements and What Can Be Done to Save Them, by Justin R. La Mort, New York University Review of Law & Social Change, Forthcoming.
Here Comes The Housing Trust Fund
HUD has published an interim rule in the Federal Register to governing the Housing Trust Fund (HTF). The HTF could generate about a half a billion dollars a year for affordable housing initiatives, so this is a big deal. The purpose “of the HTF is to provide grants to State governments to increase and preserve the supply of rental housing for extremely low- and very low-income families, including homeless families, and to increase homeownership for extremely low- and very low-income families.” (80 F.R. 5200) HUD intends to “open this interim rule for public comment to solicit comments once funding is available and the grantees gain experience administering the HTF program.” (80 F.R. 5200)
The HTF’s main focus is rental housing, which often gets short shrift in federal housing policy
States and State-designated entities are eligible grantees for HTF. Annual formula grants will be made, of which at least 80 percent must be used for rental housing; up to 10 percent for homeownership; and up to 10 percent for the grantee’s reasonable administrative and planning costs. HTF funds may be used for the production or preservation of affordable housing through the acquisition, new construction, reconstruction, and/or rehabilitation of nonluxury housing with suitable amenities. (80 F.R. 5200)
Many aspects of federal housing policy are effectively redistributions of income to upper income households. The largest of these redistributions is the mortgage interest deduction. Households earning over $100,000 per year receive more than three quarters of the benefits of that deduction while those earning less than $50,000 receive close to none of them.
So, the HTF is a double win for a rational federal housing policy because it focuses on (i) rental housing for (ii) extremely low- and very low-income households.
While not wanting to be a downer about such a victory for affordable housing, I will note that Glaeser and Gyourko have demonstrated how local land use policies can run counter to federal affordable housing policy. Might be worth it for federal housing policy makers to pay more attention to that dynamic . . ..
