Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-Up

  • The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has released a report Realizing the Housing Voucher Program’s Potential to Enable Families to Move to Better Neighborhoods in which it recommends key changes which would lead to long term upward mobility for families using housing vouchers – chief among their goals is encouraging recipients relocation to lower poverty neighborhoods.
  • Corelogic’s September 2015 National Foreclosure Report in which it finds the number of foreclosures down 1.3% since August, and foreclosure inventory is down 23.4% since September 2014.
  • The Mercatus Center at George Mason University’s How Land Use Regulation Undermines Affordable Housing concludes that most regulation lead to higher costs (over free market prices) which disproportionately accrues to lower income citizens.
  • Seeking Alpha blogger proposes that rather than a QE4 the Fed should arrange Student Loan Property Bond to restore growth.  This is how it would work: “The Fed would convert that loan into a Property Bond that pays off the $29,000 loan and advances an additional $29,000 to the student for the home deposit in return for taking a 10% stake in the acquired property. There would be no dividend attached to the Property Bond – the Fed’s return would come from the home price appreciation… The main owner of the property could later choose when the Fed realizes [sic] its return – it could be at the sale of the first home or rolled over onto subsequent purchases until, ultimately, the death of the main owner.”

Thursday’s Advocacy & Think Tank Round-Up

  • Affordable Rental Housing A.C.T.I.O.N. (A Call to Invest in Our Neighborhooods) has released both a National Fact Sheet and State specific Fact Sheets on the impact of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Impact (LIHTC), which it characterizes the LIHTC as “the most effective affordable housing production tool.”  The National Fact sheet indicates among other things that 2,798,776 units were developed or preserved via the LIHTC.  The New York State Fact Sheet, in particular, indicates that 2,357,234 New York households pay more than half of their income in rent (a data point which is included for all states).
  • The New York Federal Reserve’s interactive Home Price Index Tool maps overall changes in home prices across localities of the United States as compared to the previous month – the data is current from June 2007 through June 2015.
  • The Urban Institute has published, Charted: How Housing Policy Impacts Inequality in which it charted a correlation between housing benefits and income inequality.  Their findings indicate that when these benefits go to the well of in the form of the mortgage interest deduction and real estate tax deduction inequality increases.  On the other hand, federal housing benefits to the poor decrease inequality.