Comment on William M. Rohe and Rachel G. Bratt's “failures,downsizings, and mergers among community development corporations”: Defending community development corporations or defending communities?

Abstract

An overemphasis on preserving community development corporations (CDCs) may confuse the ends with the means. The end is empowered, self‐sustaining communities of place and identity. CDCs are one means of trying to get there, and there are many communities in which CDCs are helpful, and, indeed, empowering. However, the trends we are seeing—failures, downsizings, and mergers—may tell us that it is time to look for alternatives to CDCs.

If we truly care about poor communities, those of us with the resources to find the best community development models should be searching for them. We do not have good data to show whether community organizing is a better strategy than CDCs for achieving community development, but it is a strategy that merits exploration.     

Comment on William G. Grigsby and Steven C. Bourassa's “Section 8: The time for fundamental program change?”

Abstract

Grigsby and Bourassa claim that the major problems with the housing voucher program are that most families with affordability problems are not served and that housing assistance is not part of the federal safety net. They propose replacing the program with a housing entitlement for most very low‐income renters, with eligibility linked to receipt of safety‐net benefits. Resources to serve additional families would be generated in part by changes like those found in the Department of Housing and Urban Development's recent block grant proposals.

The Grigsby‐Bourassa proposal lacks a clear assessment of likely costs. Also, there is a risk that the means the authors propose will be heard, but that their call for expansion will not. Finally, their proposal does not intersect with other ideas to modify a basically successful program to better achieve its goals, and questions about rental markets and family and landlord behavior also must be answered.     

Comment on Steven C. Bourassa and William G. Grigsby's “income tax concessions for owner‐occupied housing”

Abstract

Federal income tax deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes are defensible on grounds of both economic efficiency and the social benefits of homeownership. Homeowners should be treated as landlords renting to themselves; as such, they benefit because they do not pay a tax on the imputed rental income they receive, while rental property owners do. Both receive deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes, and both should.

The mortgage interest deduction generates symmetry between debt and equity financing of a home; if interest were not deductible, those whose income derives largely from property would have an advantage over those whose income comes from labor. Because workers would be disadvantaged, repeal is unlikely to generate the revenues Bourassa and Grigsby expect or modify the distribution of the tax burden in the way they favor. Finally, the deductions promote homeownership, which is socially desirable.     

Comment on Kerry D. Vandell's “FHA restructuring proposals: Alternatives and implications”

Abstract

New Orleans, a highly segregated city with low homeownership, experienced a tremendous number of housing foreclosures between 1985 and 1990. This study highlights the process and impact of foreclosure in the urban housing market, which contributes to an understanding of their impact on the spatial structure of the city. Two aspects of foreclosure are examined: the differential impacts of foreclosure on low‐income and African‐American householders and changes in socioeconomic conditions (neighborhood change and the spatial structure of the city) resulting from foreclosure.

Conventional wisdom holds that urban neighborhood transformation is driven largely by white flight. The data presented in this article suggest a counterhypoth‐esis. Middle‐income professional whites employed in businesses impacted by recession who had recently bought housing with high loan‐to‐value ratios were forced to sell or have their houses foreclosed upon. The depressed market, in turn, made such housing affordable to middle‐class blacks interested in homeownership. Thus, black economic opportunity, rather than white flight, dramatically transformed the racial composition of many New Orleans East neighborhoods.     

Comment on Sandra J. Newman and Ann B. Schnare's “'… And a suitable living environment’: The failure of housing programs to deliver on neighborhood quality”

Abstract

Newman and Schnare provide a useful portrait of where housing assistance ends up geographically. The evidence that certificate and voucher holders are less likely than public housing residents to live in the poorest neighborhoods is encouraging, as well as important for policy decisions. Unresolved in the article, and unresolvable with the data, as the authors themselves note, is the matter of how neighborhood quality is affected by housing assistance. The least popular housing developments have long been relegated to neighborhoods of least political resistance, a fact that constrains most local efforts to deconcentrate poverty. Futhermore, through the tax code, America spends about three times as much on housing assistance for middle‐ and upper‐income households as it does on assistance to low‐ and moderate‐income households. Thus far, we have not applied “fair share” principles either to the location of housing assistance or to its allocation across the income spectrum.     

Comment on Robert E. Lang,Katrin B. Anacker,and Steven Hornburg's “the new politics of affordable housing”

Abstract

In his thoughtful analysis, Joseph realistically points to what a mixed‐income housing development can and cannot offer its low‐income residents. Observed benefits include greater informal social controls over the development, likely proximal modeling opportunities for youth, and participation in a political‐economic subgroup that can demand more responsive public services. Yet without offering more comprehensive, structured supports to its residents, no form of housing alone can be an antidote to poverty.

However, if we expand Joseph's analysis to include the impact of large‐scale developments on distressed urban neighborhoods, we can see mixed‐income housing catalyzing other benefits for low‐income residents. These benefits include a reduced housing cost burden; more structured supportive services; dramatically improved surroundings; high‐quality housing and community design; faster‐paced complementary investments in public systems and amenities; and strategically restored market functioning that offers more choices, lower prices, new jobs, and additional tax revenues to support service delivery.     

Comment on Roberto G. Quercia and George C. Galster's “The challenges facing public housing authorities in a brave new world”

Abstract

We find Quercia and Galster's article on reforming public housing an intriguing academic exercise that contains some key insights useful to practitioners. However, the article fails to consider several key elements in the provision of assisted housing that make their “constrained quadrilemma” much less problematic than they assume.

The article ignores the tenant‐based certificate/voucher approach to meeting the housing needs of low‐income and very low income persons and households. This is a significant oversight, in that many public housing authorities (PHAs) manage a larger portfolio of certificates than of PHA‐owned housing. If the litmus test of the success of public housing's “reinvention” is the extent to which it is able to maximize both the number of low‐income households served and their social and geographic integration, then public housing's extensive use of certificate/voucher programs demonstrates a road out of the quadrilemma.     

Comment on James E. Rosenbaum,Linda K. Stroh,and Cathy A. Flynn's “Lake Parc Place: A study of mixed‐income housing”

Abstract

Rosenbaum, Stroh, and Flynn confirm existing community leader perceptions that this model mixed‐income development in the predominantly low‐income South Side of Chicago has produced a positive residential environment. Increased tenant voice, not role modeling, seems to be a factor in producing increased resident satisfaction with the building and a strong sense of commitment to the mixed‐income alternative to exclusively low‐income housing projects. The extra resources invested in physical improvements and the extraordinary media attention paid to this model project may have created a “Hawthorne effect,” which also produced higher levels of satisfaction. The existence of this successful model is not sufficient to provide more housing alternatives; community‐based advocacy for more mixed‐income developments is needed.     

Comment on Scott A. Bollens's “In through the back door: Social equity and regional governance”

Abstract

The resurgence in regionalism is not coming about primarily because cities and suburbs see themselves as interdependent competitors in the global economy, as argued in Scott A. Bollens's “In Through the Back Door: Social Equity and Regional Governance.” Instead, enough communities are finding tax equity programs, land use measures, and cooperative governance in their own self‐interest to create gentle progress toward regional equity. However, regionalism lags in ending concentrated poverty and racial segregation because few civil rights organizations are raising these issues as fundamental to a regional agenda. The race issue is not being raised because of lack of understanding and because of competing visions on how to do it.     

Comment on Andrew S. Carron and R. Dan Brumbaugh,Jr.’s “The viability of the thrift industry”

Abstract

Krueckeberg summarizes Hernando de Soto's premise on property rights and offers a critical interpretation of de Soto's work, arguing that it emphasizes efficiency over equity and, ultimately, that enhanced property rights alone are unlikely to significantly improve housing stability or access to capital for households living in informal arrangements. I clarify several of Krueckeberg's discussions of de Soto's ideas from the perspective of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD).

The ILD perspective, informed by de Soto's writings, contrasts with Krueckeberg's in the following five areas: access to utilities and services in squatter settlements, the criminal nature of these communities, the ability of the poor to fulfill the responsibilities of formal ownership, their ability to borrow against formally owned property, and the impact of formalizing property on rental housing. I close by considering how the ILD perspective on formalization might be brought to bear in the United States.     

Comment on James H. Carr and Michelle Mulcahy's “Twenty years of housing policy: what's new,what's changed,what's ahead?”

Housing policy in the post Great Recession (GR) era faces tremendous uncertainties, but clearly there will be more sensitivity around risk, quality, and transparency in capital markets. The post-GR domestic policy environment and economy are likely to impose several overarching constraints, including less access to world capital markets for financing housing, more restrictive assessments of risk, and increasing restraints on federal domestic spending particularly for non-entitlement programs. Carr and Mulcahy provide a substantial agenda of liberal-progressive policies that focus on the predatory and risky practices of loan originators and promote expansion of home ownership for low-income households. If we are indeed on the brink of an era of austerity, the housing policy debate will need to focus on priorities for contraction rather than expansion in housing programs, and on tenure-neutral policies rather than promoting home ownership.     

Comment on Langley C. Keyes et al.’s “Networks and nonprofits: Opportunities and challenges in an era of federal devolution”

Abstract

Housing markets are determined by a complex interplay of consumers and suppliers. The Keyes et al. article discusses the changing landscape for nonprofit housing providers and what recent developments in federal housing assistance policy will mean to them. But this perspective is too narrow to predict the effects of changes in federal housing policy because all housing providers are somewhat interrelated. All housing providers need to be considered, and using the terms “for‐profit” and “nonprofit” to distinguish between the two types of providers is unfortunate and misleading.

For‐profits and nonprofits are fundamentally different: They place a different emphasis on community, and nonprofits can often deliver subsidies that for‐profits cannot. In addition, the strengths and the skills needed to produce housing under somewhat different objectives have led to some specialization. Ultimately, however, determining the optimal provider or mix of providers is best left to local and state governments as federal housing assistance devolves.     

Comment on Chester Hartman and David Robinson's “evictions: The hidden housing problem”

Abstract

Evictions and involuntary moves negatively affecting poor renters present a significant problem. Creating a national database to comprehensively document the magnitude of the problem, however, presents serious difficulties. Most local courts do not publish data on court actions involving evictions. To do this on a national level and to obtain all of the data needed by the authors would require special funding and the cooperation of courts; these are unlikely to materialize. To obtain comprehensive data on involuntary moves beyond the court system would present even greater difficulty.

Improvements can be made in existing protections for tenants vulnerable to displacement without compiling comprehensive national data. Previous examples include the debates over displacement and homelessness. Since legislative and administrative reforms are more likely at the state and local levels, reform efforts, including any data collection, should be primarily focused there.     

Comment on David Listokin,Barbara Listokin,and Michael Lahr's “The contributions of historic preservation to housing and economic development”: Historic preservation in a neoliberal age

Abstract

Listokin, Listokin, and Lahr argue that historic preservation can function as a community development tool, but there are numerous deficiencies inherent in this method that make it a less‐than‐desirable way to revitalize. Historic preservation generally leads to gentrification that in turn displaces many low‐income households. The historic rehabilitation tax credit also represents a circuitous means of providing affordable housing that would be more effectively delivered through direct subsidy.     

Comment on John T. Metzger's “planned abandonment: The neighborhood life‐cycle theory and national urban policy”

Abstract

I take strong exception to the idea that theories of neighborhood change, in and of themselves, caused the decline of inner cities. Rather, the demographic, social, and economic forces that existed in the postwar years caused some inner‐city neighborhoods to decline. The replacement of working‐class and middle‐income households by households with much lower incomes, on average, was the single biggest cause of neighborhood decline. Metzger ignores this fact as an alternative explanation for why some neighborhoods declined. It is highly implausible that my theories and those of other urban experts had such a strong impact on the public policy, building, and finance communities. Because people were responding to real conditions, it is likely that the same events would have occurred even if my model of neighborhood change had never been developed.     

Comment on Charles C. Bohl's “new urbanism and the city: Potential applications and implications for distressed inner‐city neighborhoods”

Abstract

This article argues that distressed neighborhoods greatly benefit from New Urbanist design. New Urbanists have been rebuilding distressed neighborhoods for years, and New Urbanism's mix of architecture, planning, and public policy offers inner‐city neighborhoods the best set of tools available to improve the quality of life for their residents. Principles based on flexibility and absolute rejection of formula allow New Urbanism to offer solutions for a broad range of situations.     

Comment on Elvin K. Wyly and Daniel J. Hammel's “Islands of Decay in Seas of Renewal: Housing Policy and the Resurgence of Gentrication”

Abstract

Wyly and Hammel raise a number of important issues regarding the role of low‐income housing assistance in the more recent resurgence of inner‐city capital investment. However, their methodologies are found to be limited, and their results only weakly support a number of the strong conclusions they draw. Despite these limitations, Wyly and Hammel do present some interesting findings, such as greater loan denial rates for higher‐income applicants in the inner cities than in the suburbs, and raise the possibility of a changing income mix of urban gentrifiers. Building on the article's main theme, the comment suggests strategies to improve low‐income housing policy outcomes and highlights the gentrification conundrum.     

A Review of: “Social Decision Making: Social Dilemmas,Social Values,and Ethical Judgments Edited by Roderick M. Kramer,Ann E. Tenbrunsel,and Max H. Bazerman”

ABSTRACT

Our ability to interpret, generalize, and build theory across public service motivation (PSM) studies is limited by lack of knowledge regarding the equivalence of different PSM measures that researchers frequently use. While past research has given considerable attention to validating multidimensional measures of PSM, this study investigates the psychometric properties of the global measures that have been used to provide much of the empirical evidence on PSM. Building on the lessons of other research using global and multidimensional measures, we first discuss the strengths and weaknesses of existing global measures of PSM relative to those of the multidimensional measures. After highlighting the potential merit of global scales, we then provide empirical justification for global scales. Using five different data sets to compare commonly used global measures of PSM, our findings suggest that these different measures are not only highly correlated with each other but also display a similar pattern and strength of relationships with important correlates of PSM. These findings suggest that these measures do tap into the same conceptual space and help validate our continued reliance on empirical studies that have used different measures to build our understanding of PSM.