I interviewed Connor Blancato, an up-and-coming real estate lawyer, for the New York Real Property Law Journal. The interview emphasizes the importance of mentorship for new lawyers.
Click on the picture to read the interview.
Family living in a one-room tenement. New York, NY, USA (1890) by Jacob Riis. This version was colorized by Kelly Short.
The Urban Institute’s G. Thomas Kingsley has posted a brief, Trends in Housing Problems and Federal Housing Assistance. It opens,
In the 1930s, many American families lived in seriously deficient housing. To address that challenge, the federal government began building subsidized housing, and in the decades that followed, a complex array of federal programs evolved to tackle the continuing housing problems of low-income renters. Almost 10 years ago, the Urban Institute prepared a “primer”to assess this evolution. This brief is an update of major sections of that report, focusing on trends in national housing problems and federal housing assistance over the past decade. It shows that renter housing needs have grown substantially—almost totally because of unaffordably high rents rather than physical deficiencies—and federal housing assistance is not keeping up. The number of low-income renters that actually receive federal housing assistance has dropped notably as a fraction of the low-income households that need it. Evidence indicates that this gap will worsen.
. . . this brief explains the basics of US housing assistance to those unfamiliar with the field. After a summary, it (1) reviews recent changes in the number of US households by tenure and the nature of the housing problems renters face, (2) identifies the nation’s major federal housing assistance programs and explains how they work, (3) examines changes in the scale and spatial patterns of federal housing assistance and the characteristics of assisted households, and (4) identifies recent policy shifts and issues affecting future directions for these programs and pointing out literature offering fuller explanations. (1)
Its main findings include,
There’s a lot more in the brief for those who want an overview of where we are with housing in the early 21st century.
The most recent issue of Housing Spotlight from the National Low Income Housing Coalition is titled The Long Wait for a Home. The Executive Summary reads,
The Public Housing and Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) programs provide essential affordable housing to some of the nation’s most financially vulnerable households. Forty percent of new public housing admissions and 75% of new voucher holders each year are required to be extremely low income (ELI) households, who earn no more than 30% of their area’s median income (AMI) or the federal poverty guideline, whichever is higher. Seventy-one percent of the nearly 1.1 million public housing households and 74% of the 2.2 million HCV recipient households are ELI (HUD, 2015).
The housing resources available to ELI renters however are insufficient. The private and subsidized rental markets make available only 3.2 million affordable homes for the nation’s 10.4 million ELI renter households, resulting in a national shortage of 7.2 million rental homes (NLIHC, 2016). ELI households face a long wait for housing assistance. Unable to find affordable housing, 75% of ELI renter households are severely cost burdened, spending more than 50% of their income on housing costs and leaving little money for other necessities (NLIHC, 2016).
The last nationwide survey of Public Housing Agencies (PHAs) regarding their public housing and voucher waiting lists was conducted in 2012. Since then, rental affordability has worsened, squeezing ELI renters even further out of the private market. To document the current state of waiting lists, NLIHC surveyed PHAs in the Fall of 2015 and Winter of 2016. Three hundred twenty PHAs responded with complete surveys, representing a diversity of size, location, and metropolitan status.
Survey data paint a bleak picture of waiting lists closed to new applicants and long waits for housing assistance. Key findings include:
Closed waiting lists and long waits for housing assistance make clear that we must expand housing resources for our nation’s lowest income renters. Legislation introduced in the 114th Congress would increase investments in vouchers, public housing, and other housing programs.
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These policy changes, and others like them, could end housing poverty and homelessness once and for all by providing the resources necessary for every low income family to afford a home.
This report rightly brings attention to the big problems facing extremely low income households and federal affordable housing programs. Whether anything is done for them depends completely on the outcome of the election.
