One Strike to Second Chances: Using Criminal Backgrounds in Admission Decisions for Assisted Housing

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has changed its position toward housing individuals with criminal records from strict one-strike policies in the 1980s to providing second chances to returning citizens. Many public housing authorities have not updated their admission policies for using criminal backgrounds and still adhere to the one-strike philosophy. In response to new guidance from HUD, housing agencies are trying to find a balance between screening practices to identify demonstrable risk but avoid discrimination and violation of the Fair Housing Act. This research examines several questions critical to assisting housing providers to address the new guidance from HUD. Findings provide direction for housing providers on understanding recidivism risk rates, using useful lookback periods, considering risk and harm across crime types, and verifying rehabilitation and other evidence to design informed policies and procedures for using criminal records in admission decisions for assisted housing.     

Searching for Affordability and Opportunity: A Framework for the Housing Choice Voucher Program

Abstract

Affordability, a key factor in the housing search process, becomes critical when locating rental housing in opportunity-rich areas. The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program accommodates low-income households searching for housing and encourages recipients to reside in low-poverty areas. Affordable neighborhoods that are accessible to public transportation are often found in distressed areas, and not all HCV recipients succeed in locating qualified housing. To address these challenges, a housing search framework is developed to assist HCV households in the housing search process. This framework builds on the methodology of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the Location Affordability Index and Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing assessment tool by creating multivariate indices that incorporate housing supply, accessibility to opportunity, and neighborhood conditions. The framework serves as a foundation for an online housing search application for public housing authorities to further fair housing goals, HCV recipients to locate qualified housing units, and local governments to assess affordability and opportunity.     

Broken Promises or Selective Memory Planning? A National Picture of HOPE VI Plans and Realities

Government efforts to redevelop public housing often face a contentious gap between plans and realities. This paper compares 2014 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administrative data on housing unit counts and unit mixes for all 260 developments receiving Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) revitalization grants with data provided in the original HOPE VI grant award announcements. We find that HUD records undercount approximately 11,500 once-proposed units. The biggest changes were a 29% decline in the number of market-rate units and a 40% decline in homeownership units. The chief shortfall during implementation, therefore, was not with public housing units (although the HOPE VI program as a whole did trigger an overall decline of such units). To help elucidate the dynamics at play when the unit allocation shifts between initial grant award and implemented project, we include a series of five brief case studies that illustrate several types of unit change. Interviews with HUD staff confirm the baseline for record-keeping shifted during implementation once project economic feasibility became clearer; adherence to original unit mix proposals remained secondary. HUD prioritized its accountability to Congress and developers over its public law accountability to build the projects initially proposed to local community residents. Although these changes have sometimes been interpreted as broken promises, it is even clearer that HUD’s monitoring system exemplifies what we call Selective Memory Planning: when planners and policy makers, willfully or not, selectively ignore elements of previous plans in favor of new plans that are easier to achieve.     

Moving out of poverty: Expanding mobility and choice through tenant‐based housing assistance

Abstract

Historically, federal housing policy has contributed to the concentration of poverty in urban America. Moving out of poverty is not the right answer for every low‐income family, but tenant‐based housing assistance (Section 8 certificates and vouchers) has tremendous potential to help families move to healthier neighborhoods. This article explores the role of tenant‐based housing assistance in addressing the problem of concentrated inner‐city poverty.

The Section 8 program by itself does not ensure access to low‐poverty neighborhoods, particularly for minority families. Supplementing certificates and vouchers with housing counseling and search assistance can improve their performance; a growing number of assisted housing mobility initiatives are now in place across the country. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should continue to fund these initiatives and increase their number over time. HUD should also strengthen incentives for all housing authorities to improve locational outcomes in their Section 8 programs.     

The Characteristics and Unmet Housing Program Needs of Disabled HUD-Assisted Households

The mismatch between the housing needs of persons with a disability and the housing programs designed to accommodate those needs is an important housing policy concern. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sponsors several programs designed to improve the housing conditions of persons with a disability, but we know little about the characteristics of persons with a disability, among those receiving federal housing assistance, or the degree to which persons with a disability are served by HUD-sponsored housing programs that are designed to meet the needs of persons with a disability. Our study relies on administrative data from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau to address this research gap. We find that many persons with a disability are served by HUD-sponsored programs that are not designated for persons with a disability, even when disability accommodations have been requested, and a similarly large share of persons with a disability live in potentially eligible low-income households that do not receive HUD assistance.     

Public housing authorities: Determining an appropriate role in a national preservation strategy

Abstract

This paper examines the obstacles and issues involved in developing a comprehensive preservation agenda for public housing and explores the capacity of public housing authorities (PHAs) to meet the current and future demand for affordable housing. The paper discusses the current challenges facing the public housing program and PHAs and examines the roles and functions PHAs can assume in the current preservation and affordable housing crisis. Six specific roles for PHAs are included: resolving the equity/community dilemma, improving management, articulating modernization needs and carrying out modernization programs, preventing the loss of public housing units through sales and demolition, assuming management of privately owned subsidized housing, and developing new public housing. Although there is also much potential in nonprofits as providers of low‐income housing, they must be joined by PHAs in a comprehensive low‐income housing production and preservation strategy.     

Survival of the Fairest: Examining HUD Reviews of Assessments of Fair Housing

ABSTRACT

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule, arguably the most significant federal effort in a generation to address place-based disparities in access to opportunity and to advance fair housing. In 2018, HUD suspended the rule, it said in part because of the resources it was expending to implement it and in part because of the large share of municipal plans that HUD determined had failed to meet the rule’s requirements. In this article, we present the first analysis of the fair housing plans that HUD did not accept, examining how municipalities failed to meet the rule's requirements, what those failures imply about advancing fair housing, and the extent to which HUD’s enforcement strategy was working before the suspension. Our analysis shows that HUD engaged in detailed reviews of municipalities’ Assessments of Fair Housing and provided constructive feedback. The most common issue with which municipalities struggled was setting realistic goals that would actually advance fair housing and creating measurable metrics and milestones to gauge progress. Several municipalities neglected to conduct thorough regional analyses or analyses of all relevant disparities in access to opportunity. Both shortcomings reflect broader challenges municipalities face in advancing fair housing, particularly in identifying strategies that address interconnected causes of disparities in access to opportunity and in building regional support to address those causes.     

Keeping Abortion Clinics Open: The Importance of Ragsdale v. Turnock in the Post-Casey Era

In 1973, Roe v. Wade constitutionalized a woman's right to an abortion. But, while Roe removed most legal obstacles to abortion, it did not address the limited availability of abortion services in the nation. The case examined here, Ragsdale v. Turnock, revolved around an Illinois statute that imposed far-reaching restrictions on abortion clinics, the site of most U.S. abortions since Roe. The crucial role of clinics in providing abortion services explains why the dispute represented by Ragsdale had the potential for an enormous impact on legalized abortion in the United States. Because of the number of women affected, the Ragsdale litigation could have led to the most significant judicial ruling since Roe. The suit resulted in a settlement in which plaintiffs secured the right to a legal clinic abortion during the first 18 weeks of pregnancy. Although the case was settled to the satisfaction of pro-choice advocates, a similar law today might well survive constitutional scrutiny.     

Post-Foreclosure Conveyance of Occupied Homes and Preferential Sales to Nonprofits: Rationales,Policies, and Underlying Conflicts

This article explores the reasons why the conveyance of foreclosed homes with occupants makes sense, and why nonprofits should be given preferential treatment as purchasers, as well as the relevant policies and practices of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Housing Administration (HUD/FHA) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Government-Sponsored Enterprises (FHFA/GSEs). It also presents recommendations for revising current policies, and suggestions for further research. These issues also raise underlying questions about how the federal agencies view their public purpose roles and the implications for possible increased long-term public costs to shelter low-income households displaced because of foreclosure of their homes. Although HUD/FHA’s guidelines allow for conveyance of foreclosed homes with occupants, the evidence—interviews with key stakeholders in Boston and data obtained from HUD through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request—reveal that the guidelines are largely irrelevant in practice. Although there has been a change in an FHFA policy that could soften the GSEs’ practice of no occupants at conveyance, it is not yet clear whether this will result in former owners and tenants being allowed to remain in their homes following foreclosure. Concerning preferential sales to nonprofits, whereas positive new policies have been issued by both the FHFA and HUD, the extent of implementation is not known. Finally, it appears that HUD/FHA and the FHFA/GSEs view foreclosed homes more as financial assets, whose value they seek to maximize, rather than as dwellings for financially strained households that, if evicted, may need additional housing subsidies and as part of a strategy to preemptively stabilize neighborhoods.     

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.     

Revived and Discouraged: Evaluating Employment Barriers for Section 3 Residents With Criminal Records

Section 3 was established in the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Act of 1968 to provide employment for public housing residents in distressed communities while rebuilding underserved neighborhoods. As a provision that recipients of HUD funding must comply with, Section 3 reporting agencies are having trouble securing employment for ex-offenders. This is problematic since low-income ex-offenders unable to secure stable employment are more likely to recidivate. Research evaluating the specific barriers to employment for Section 3 residents with criminal records and policy recommendations are sparse although the problem is prevalent in communities nationwide. This study uses San Antonio, Texas as an example for conducting a policy review to identify the barriers to employment for Section 3 ex-offenders. The results of the qualitative analysis indicate that at the national level, HUD and the Section 3 provision do not create barriers to employment but state and local policies and practices do.     

How Affordable Is HUD Affordable Housing?

This article assesses the affordability of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rental assistance properties from the perspective of transportation costs. HUD housing is, by definition, affordable from the standpoint of housing costs due to limits on the amounts renters are required to pay. However, there are no such limitations on transportation costs, and common sense suggests that renters in remote locations may be forced to pay more than 15% of income, a nominal affordability standard, for transportation costs. Using household travel models estimated with data from 15 diverse regions around the United States, we estimated and summed automobile capital costs, automobile operating costs, and transit fare costs for households at 8,857 HUD rental assistance properties. The mean percentage of income expended on transportation is 15% for households at the high end of the eligible income scale. However, in highly sprawling metropolitan areas, and in suburban areas of more compact metropolitan areas, much higher percentages of households exceed the 15% ceiling. This suggests that locational characteristics of properties should be considered for renewal when HUD contracts expire for these properties, based on location and hence on transportation affordability.     

Housing Programs Fail to Deliver on Neighborhood Quality,Reexamined

This article revisits the relative performance of housing programs in terms of delivering on neighborhood quality. Newman and Schnare examined this issue in 1997, and this article updates their work more than a decade later. Both efforts examine the neighborhood characteristics surrounding assisted rental housing and assess the direction of assisted-housing policy. The analysis is performed by exploring census data at the tract level for the tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher program plus a set of project-based programs, including public housing, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, and other HUD multifamily programs. We conclude that Newman and Schnare remain correct that rental housing assistance does little to improve the quality of the recipients' neighborhoods relative to those of welfare households and can make things worse. However, things have improved. The Housing Choice Voucher and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit programs have grown in importance over the intervening years and have improved their performance by moving more households into low-poverty, less distressed areas. Importantly, these active programs for assisted housing are beginning to find ways to overcome the barriers preventing entry into the suburbs, although more needs to be done.     

Housing and the working class in an Indian metropolis

The paper examines a part of the housing market in the Indian metropolitan city of Bangalore. Some problems of housing finance from the viewpoints of families and of public authorities are indicated. It is argued that it is these financial problems that make access difficult for the poorer half of the population of Bangalore to forms of housing other than inner city slums or urban fringe informal housing. Public housing with its unrealistic standards of service provision, but especially its high initial access costs is not well designed to meet the needs of the majority of families. The paper concludes that unless public housing authorities emulate the private housing market they will continue to play a marginal role in housing in a city such as Bangalore. There are signs that this is happening in India with experimentation in both housing finance and lower service standards.     

Housing Subsidies and Early Childhood Development: A Comprehensive Review of Policies and Demonstration Projects

ABSTRACT

In this article, we ask how housing subsidies might influence young children. We examine two national housing policies – public housing assistance and the Section 8 vouchers program – and two demonstration projects that aimed to improve the administration of providing housing subsidies – HOPE (Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere) VI and Moving to Opportunity. This article is a critical examination of these policies and demonstration projects in relation to the following housing dimensions that promote the healthy development of young children: income supplements residential stability, physical environment, access to services and amenities, housing choice, neighborhood safety, and social capital. We compared advantages and limitations of each of these national housing policies and demonstration projects and examined ways in which they might influence children in these housing dimensions. The article concludes with implications and future research directions for U.S. housing policy by discussing its most recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) initiative, Rental Assistance Demonstration, in addressing limitations of housing policies and demonstration projects we examined.     

Race and Assisted Housing

This article explores racial disparities between assisted housing outcomes of black and white and white households with children. We compare the assisted housing occupied by black and white households with children, and examine whether young adult education, employment, and earnings outcomes in 2011 differ between blacks and whites who spent part of their childhood in assisted housing in the 2000s. We use a special version of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) that has been address-matched to federally assisted housing, and the PSID’s Transition to Adulthood supplement, along with geocode-matched data from the U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS), CoreLogic real estate data, and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Statistical methods include difference in means, logit and general linear models. We find no evidence of racial disparities in the type of assisted housing program, the physical quality of project-based developments, or the management of public housing developments in the 2000 decade. But black households with children are more likely to live in assisted housing that is located in poorer quality neighborhoods. Multivariate tests reveal that the worse outcomes of black young adults compared with whites disappear once socioeconomic differences are taken into account. The discrepancy in assisted housing neighborhood quality experienced by black and white children makes no additional contribution to predicting young adult outcomes. Nonetheless, black children living in relatively better assisted housing neighborhoods tend to have better outcomes in young adulthood than those who live in poorer quality assisted housing neighborhoods. We discuss sources of racial disparity in neighborhood quality, and the policies enacted and proposed to address it.     

The role of subsidized housing in reducing homelessness: An empirical investigation using micro-data

Additional funding for subsidized housing is one of the most commonly proposed solutions to the problem of homelessness. For example, the Interagency Council on the Homeless has called for a $2 billion increase in the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to address the shortage of subsidized housing. However, research on the effect of subsidized housing in reducing homelessness is far from conclusive. This study combines data from the American Housing Survey (AHS) with a survey of the homeless to estimate the effectiveness of subsidized housing in reducing homelessness. The results indicate that subsidized housing has not targeted those most at risk of being homeless, and therefore a simple expansion of existing housing programs will have little effect on the number of homeless.     

Future Prospects for Public Housing in the United States: Lessons From the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program

This article provides an overview of the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program in the United States and examines its early implementation from its start in 2013 through April 6, 2016. RAD was devised to address the physical deterioration of public housing and secure a more stable funding stream. It requires public housing authorities to shift properties out of the public housing program into a different subsidy program (project-based Section 8) which enables them to obtain mortgages on more favorable terms and to secure tax-credit investment. The program is currently limited to 185,000 housing units. As of April 6th, the program was fully subscribed, and had generated more than $2 billion in new investment. Extrapolating from the early results, RAD has the potential to yield more than $15 billion for fund the redevelopment and renovation of public housing.     

REMEDIES WITHOUT RIGHTS? THE LEGAL BASIS OF BROAD-GAUGE DECREES IN PRISON CONDITIONS CASES

This paper examines the legal basis for "broad-gauge" or "administrative intervention" decrees in the sort of lawsuits which have come to be known as extended impact cases, polycentric disputes, or public law litigation. It concludes that equity provides an adequate basis for such decrees and that the Supreme Court's recent use of a narrower view of judicial equity powers, sometimes called the tailoring principle, is not compelled by precedent. The paper further argues that the Supreme Court appears headed in the direction of using the tailoring principle in prison conditions cases (e.g., Bell v. Wolfish ), although some support for a broader view of judicial equity power is found in Hutto v. Finney .