- Regulation and Liability of Credit Rating Agencies – A More Efficient European Law?, by Thomas M.J. Mollers & Charis Niedorf, ECRF 2014, 333-363.
- How Federal Tax Expenditures that Support Housing Contribute to Economic Inequality, by Henry Rose, Loyola University Chicago School of Law Research Paper No. 2015-008.
- The Determinants of Subprime Mortgage Performance Following a Loan Modification, by Maximilian D. Schmeiser & Matthew B. Gross, FEDS Working Paper No. 2015-006.
- Housing Resource Bundles: Distributive Justice and Federal Low-Income Housing Policy, by John Infranca, University of Richmond Law Review, Vol. 49, 2015.
Tag Archives: low-income housing
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
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
Housing Subsidies For Those Who Need Them
The National Low Income Housing Coalition has posted Aligning Federal Low Income Housing Programs with Housing Need. The Executive Summary goes right to the heart of the matter:
The number of renters in the United States has steadily increased since 2006 and will continue to rise as new households form in the post-recession economy. In 2012, one out of four renter households had incomes at or below 30% of the area median income (AMI) for a total of 10.3 million households categorized as extremely low income (ELI). In the same year there were just 3.2 million units affordable and available to ELI households, creating a shortage of 7.1 million rental units affordable to these households.
Despite this evidence of a substantial need for deeply affordable rental housing, the low income housing resources that are provided by the federal government are only able to reach 23% of the eligible population. (iii)
This study looks at the extent to which the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the HOME program and the Federal Home Loan Banks’ Affordable Housing Program (AHP) serve ELI households. It finds that in general, “these three programs do not serve ELI households on their own. Their ability to serve ELI households depends on the addition of one or more forms of subsidy, usually housing choice vouchers (HCV).” (iii)
The study identifies common themes from its research on this topic:
- Developers layer multiple funding sources while adapting to rapidly changing political and fiscal environments. Many also rely on non-traditional resources, such as private donations, to fill funding gaps.
- Reducing or eliminating mortgage debt is critical to be able to serve ELI households.
- Cultivating strong local partnerships is a key factor affecting developers’ ability to serve ELI households. Often, local jurisdictions that have prioritized affordable housing are willing to donate land or property at a low cost.
- Cross-subsidization is an important strategy used by many developers committed to inclusive properties that serve ELI households. This strategy incorporates units affordable to ELI households into projects containing other units occupied by households with a broader mix of incomes. The rents paid by higher income households supplement the overall operating expenses of the project, compensating for the lower rents that ELI households can afford.
- While the case studies highlighted some very effective strategies for serving ELI households without the use of vouchers, there is not one model that can be easily replicated. (iii-iv)
None of this is particularly earth shattering, but it is useful to to look into this topic in a systematic way. The Coalition hopes that this report “will contribute to the broader conversation about simplifying the process of financing affordable housing developments, refining existing programs so that they incentivize developers to serve ELI households, and finding ways to fund the ongoing operating costs of units that do serve ELI renters.” (iv)
As an off-the-cuff response, I wonder if the nation’s affordable housing agenda is benefited from such a complex funding environment for housing for extremely low income households. Can it just be funded more comprehensively, acknowledging the reality that it requires deep subsidies from the get-go? What is the opportunity cost of requiring developers to devote so much time to creating such complicated deal structures? In the current political environment, I doubt that affordable housing advocates have the stomach to raise these questions, lest Congress decides to cut back affordable housing subsidies even further. But in the long term, these are questions worth asking.
Reiss and Lederman on Affordable Housing Goals
Jeff Lederman and I have posted our comment to the FHFA’s proposed housing goals for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for 2015 through 2017. We argue,
As the FHFA sets the housing goals for 2015-2017, it should focus on maximizing the creation and preservation of affordable housing. Less efficient proposed subgoals should be rejected unless the FHFA has explicitly identified a compelling rationale to adopt them. The FHFA has not identified one in the case of the proposed small multifamily subgoal. Thus, it should be withdrawn.
Housing Vouchers for Landlords
Collinson and Ganong have posted The Incidence of Housing Voucher Generosity to SSRN. The abstract of this important paper is a little technical for non-economists. It reads:
What is the incidence of housing vouchers? Housing voucher recipients in the US typically pay their landlord a fixed amount based on their income and the government pays the rest of the rent, up to a rent ceiling. We consider a policy that raises the generosity of the rent ceiling everywhere, which is equivalent to an income effect, and a policy which links generosity to local unit quality, which is equivalent to a substitution effect.
Using data on the universe of housing vouchers and quasi-experimental variation from HUD policy changes, we analyze the incidence of these policies. Raising the generosity of the rent ceiling everywhere appears to primarily benefit landlords, who receive higher rents with very little evidence of medium-run quality improvements. Setting ZIP code-level rent ceilings causes rent increases in expensive neighborhoods and decreases in low-cost neighborhoods, with little change in aggregate rents. The ZIP code policy improves neighborhood quality as much as other, far more costly, voucher interventions.
The eye-catching part is that raising “the generosity of the rent ceiling everywhere appears to primarily benefit landlords, who receive higher rents with very little evidence of medium-run quality improvements.” The paper itself fleshes this out more: “a $1 increase in the rent ceiling raises rents by 41 cents; consistent with this policy change acting like an income effect, we find very small quality increases of around 5 cents, meaning that as much as 89% of the increase in government expenditure accrues to landlords.” (20-21)
Given the inelasticity of the supply in many housing markets, this is not such a surprising result. That is, if demand increases because of an increase in income but supply does not, the producer (landlords) can capture more of that income just by raising prices. This finding should give policymakers pause as they design and implement voucher programs. The question that drives them.should be — how can they maximize the portion of the subsidy that goes to the voucher recipient?
The Other GSE Conservatorship Lawsuit
While there has been a lot of attention over Judge Lamberth’s ruling on the shareholders’ cases regarding Fannie and Freddie’s conservatorships, much less has been given to Judge Cooke’s dismissal of Samuels v. FHFA (No. 13-22399 S.D. Fla. ) (Sept. 29, 2014 ). The low-income and organizational plaintiffs in Samuels challenged the FHFA’s decision to suspend Fannie and Freddie’s obligation to fund the Housing Trust Fund after they entered into conservatorship. The Housing Trust Fund was to be funded by contributions by that were based on Fannie and Freddie’s annual purchases. The FHFA took the position that they GSEs need not pay into the fund while they themselves were in such a precarious financial position. Judge Cooke held that “The Individual and Organizational Plaintiffs lack Article III standing because their alleged injuries are too remote from and not fairly traceable to the Defendants’ allegedly unlawful conduct.” (13)
I found the dicta in the case to be the most interesting. The court found that the relevant provision from the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008
provides no meaningful standards for determining when “an enterprise” is financially instable, undercapitalized, or in jeopardy of unsuccessfully completing a capital restoration plan. Considering the history of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; the government’s placing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship; the Treasury Department providing liquidity to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac through preferred stock purchase agreements, the mortgage backed securities purchase program, and an emergency credit facility; it is not for this Court to judicially review Defendants’ statutorily mandated suspension of payments into the Housing Trust Fund. (13)
My takeaway from this opinion is that we now have another federal judge finding that the federal government is to be given great deference in its handling of the financial crisis. And this deference derives not just from the text of the relevant statute but also from the particular historical events that led to its adoption and that followed it. This seems like an important trend, as far as I am concerned.
