- Enterprise Community Partners issued a side by side comparison of the four housing finance reform bills currently in congress many of which seek to replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
- NYU’s Furman Center released its annual Report: State of New York City’s Housing and Neighborhoods in 2014, part I of which is a focus on density – notes that while the population has grown density is actually down.
- The Urban Institute recently released its Affordable Housing Needs Assessment for the District of Columbia in which it makes a neighborhood by neighborhood evaluation of housing need and concludes that on the whole housing costs exceed affordability for the majority of residents.
Tag Archives: Enterprise Community Partners
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-Up
- Enterprise Community Partners and the National Low Income Housing Coalition and 45 other affordable housing advocates signed a letter to the appropriations committees of the house and senate urging them to pride at least $1.2 billion for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME). a block grant that provides states and localities critical resources to help them respond to affordable housing challenges.
- A recent study by the National Association of Realtors finds that formerly distressed homeowners with restored credit are re-entering the housing market, nearly a million of these former owners have likely already purchased a home again, and an additional 1.5 million are likely to become eligible and purchase over the next five years, representing an additional source of buyer demand for the housing market.
- National Association of Realtors also released it’s March Realtor Confidence Index which finds gains in home sales and prices but noted concern over lender delays and tight inventory, especially for affordable units.
Tuesday’s Regulatory & Legislative Round-Up
- Enterprise Community Partners made comments to the Senate Finance Committee’s Community Development and Infrastructure Tax Reform Working Group, as part of a New Market Tax Credit Coalition, which is calling for preservation of the credit as it has been critical to the development of affordable housing.
- Federal Housing Finance Agency finds, after studying the matter, “no compelling economic reason” to change the guarantee fees charged by Fannie May and Freddie Mac. FHFA’s review focused on reaching an appropriate balance between FHFA’s statutory obligations to: 1) ensure the safety and soundness of the Enterprises, and 2) foster a liquid national housing finance market.
Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-Up
- American Bankers Association Urges CFPB to Take Down Mortgage Calculator
- Enterprise Community Partners: Enterprise’s Comprehensive Overview and Budget Chart of Affordable Housing and Community Development Proposals in the FY 2016 President’s Budget
- National Association of Realtors Pushing for Commercial Use of Drones
- National Low Income Housing Coalition: Housing Wage Calculator
- Urban Institute: FHFA’s Federal Home Loan Bank Members Proposal Overshoots the Mark
Welds on Eminent Domain for Underwater Mortgages
One of the great joys of being a professor is being able to brag about your students’ accomplishments. Brooklyn Law School just posted this about Leanne Welds on our website:
Leanne Welds ’14 has been awarded the 2014 Brown Award by The Judge John R. Brown Scholarship Foundation for her paper “Giving Local Municipalities the Power to Affect the National Securities Market.” The Brown Award recognizes excellence in legal writing in American law schools. This is the first time a BLS student has taken first place in the national competition, which awards a $10,000 stipend to the winner.
Welds is currently an associate at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP in its Real Estate Group. As a student, she served as Executive Articles Editor for the Brooklyn Law Review and was the recipient of the Lorraine Power Tharp Scholarship from the New York State Bar Real Property Section. She was a member of the Community Development Clinic taught by Professor David Reiss, and externed with Enterprise Community Partners, an affordable housing firm. She also served as secretary of the Black Law Students Association.
“It is truly gratifying to have my work recognized in this way,” Welds said. “I picked this topic for my Law Review Note because of my combined interests in both the real estate and social justice aspects of the issue, but I never once thought I could be writing an award-winning paper. I am especially thankful to Professor David Reiss for believing in my work and sponsoring me for this competition, as well as both Professor Brian Lee and Professor Reiss for their detailed and thoughtful comments throughout the drafting process.”
Welds’ winning paper evaluates the constitutionality and wisdom of plans by local governments to condemn underwater mortgages without also condemning the land that is attached to the mortgages. These plans are in response to the foreclosure crisis that has hit certain communities particularly hard. If successful, these plans would result in refinanced and smaller mortgages on homes that have seen their values drop dramatically since the start of the financial crisis. The financial industry opposes these plans because they would reduce the face value of the existing mortgages.
“Leanne is a perfect candidate for this prize,” said Professor David Reiss. “Her passion for the law is complemented by an excellent work ethic, good legal judgment, and serious intellectual firepower. Leanne is a rising star of the bar. I have no doubt she will not only be a valuable member of the bar, but that she will also play a leadership role in the community.”
Promoting Affordable Housing, and the Winner Is . . .
I had blogged about a competition to generate ideas to lower the cost of affordable housing, the Minnesota Challenge to Lower the Cost of Affordable Housing. I was pretty excited about this challenge and was happy to see that a winner has been chosen: the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA).
CURA’s winning proposal is here. Basically, they
propose a three-stage program for addressing the state and local regulatory cost driver. First, we will identify and summarize best practices at the state and local levels for reducing regulatory and permitting barriers to affordable housing. There is a significant national database of initiatives that can provide examples for possible implementation here, as well as the Affordable Housing Toolkit established by ULI Minnesota. Second, we will conduct an analysis of where a more complete adoption of best practices is likely to have the largest effect on the production of affordable housing, particularly those suburban cities with the largest future affordable housing goals. Finally, we will take advantage of the fact that the Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities is currently drafting a Regional Housing Policy plan, which is a vehicle that could implement regulatory reforms and create incentives for local governments to adopt practices and policies to reduce development costs. (1)
These are all valuable things to do, but I have to say that I am disappointed that this is as good as it gets when it comes to innovation regarding reducing the cost of affordable housing construction. Perhaps the takeaway lesson is that building affordable housing is expensive and that we can only cut costs a bit at the margins. I am hoping, however, that I am wrong about that and that some innovative ideas are still out there. Are there big ideas about inclusionary zoning? About modular construction? About public/private partnerships? We’ll have to wait and see.
A Challenge To Lower the Cost of Affordable Housing
Minnesota Housing, the McKnight Foundation, the Urban Land Institute of Minnesota (ULI-MN), the Regional Council of Mayors (RCM) and Enterprise Community Partners have thrown down the gauntlet with the MN Challenge to Lower the Cost of Affordable Housing. The challenge builds on recent research from Enterprise and the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing, Bending the Cost Curve: Solutions to Expand the Supply of Affordable Rentals.
The challenge is an idea competition intended to
support innovative problem solving from interdisciplinary teams of housing professionals resulting in a systematic concept that lowers the cost of developing affordable housing in Minnesota. Reducing both the hard and soft costs of rental housing will give the state and local communities additional options for providing a full range of housing choices for its low and moderate income residents.
The Challenge will
- Provide up to $100,000 for the development and implementation of ideas to lower the cost of affordable rental housing.
- Cultivate and collect innovative strategies and ideas for lowering the per unit cost of financing, developing, and building affordable multi-family housing (preserved or new).
By February 28, teams will submit short concept papers outlining their cost reduction ideas. Submissions will be reviewed by a selection panel made up of members from the sponsoring organizations and an inter-disciplinary team of stakeholders involved in the delivery of affordable housing. In March, the panel will select three proposals as finalists, and these teams will each be awarded up to $10,000 to do the research and development needed to demonstrate that their idea should be implemented. The finalists will present their work in May. In June, when the panel will select one idea and commit up to $70,000 for the winning team to implement their idea.
While this challenge obviously has a Minnesota focus, the ideas it generates will likely have wider applicability. Given Mayor De Blasio’s focus on affordable housing, I would assume that New York’s affordable housing professionals will follow this challenge carefully. And maybe they should come up with an affordable housing challenge of their own!
