Comment on Dennis P. Culhane et al.’s “public shelter admission rates in Philadelphia and New York City: The implications of turnover for sheltered population counts”

The article here extended reflects on the excessively narrow debate over the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs)' cost-benefit transfer balance which had been raging for a quarter-century before the 2007–2009 financial crisis. That crisis has cast a new light on the actual costs of GSE operations and exposed the unsustainability of some of their benefits for homeownership. After injecting afew new findings into the traditional debate, this comment adds some of what has transpired in recent years and what may be inferred from it so far. Doing so brings additional analysis to bear on the article's conclusion that “the GSEs might not be justified” and “Maybe it is time for them to exit” although most politicians in the past have been disinclined to show them the door.     

Comment on Dennis P. Culhane et al.’s “Public shelter admission rates in Philadelphia and New York City: The implications of turnover for sheltered population counts”

Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) developments serve renter households with incomes between 30% and 60% of Area Median Family Income. Ideally, the program places units into neighborhoods where there is a shortage of units serving this cohort. LIHTC units are allocated to developers by state agencies through their Qualified Allocation Plans which should direct units to areas of need. Using a national database, this research examines where LIHTC developments were placed in service to determine whether these developments enter tracts experiencing shortages.

The LIHTC program is not directing units to those census tracts where there is a latent demand for units in this rent range. Rather, it is placing units into tracts that have surpluses. Equally, the program is not placing units in tracts with little or no affordable housing. This suggests that the program is not breaking down the income separation that exists in the nation's housing markets.     

Comment on Jennifer Steffel Johnson and Emily Talen's “affordable housing in New Urbanist Communities: A survey of developers”

Abstract

A long‐time criticism of New Urbanism has been that the housing it provides is affordable only to middle‐ and upper‐income families. Johnson and Talen's survey of New Urbanist developers and developments is intended to see whether this criticism is justified. Although the methodology is limited, the results of this survey would seem to indicate that it is.

Because Johnson and Talen's survey is restricted to New Urbanist developments, it is not possible to compare the results with those for other, more conventional developments to see whether New Urbanist developments may actually contain more affordable units than comparable conventional projects. Also, limiting the definition of affordability to the cost of housing alone prevents the authors from seeing whether the housing New Urbanist communities provide would be considered less expensive if housing and transportation costs were combined.     

“Ragged urchins play on marquetry floors”: The discourse of filtering is reconstructed, 1920s–1950s

The idea of filtering has played a key role in our understanding of housing markets and in framing federal policy. The origins of the idea, however, and of the term itself, are poorly understood. Drawing loosely on the approach of discourse analysis, this article clarifies both issues, arguing that language shapes how we think about housing policy, and indeed policy itself. The concept of filtering emerged in Great Britain in the late nineteenth century where, by 1900, it informed arguments in favor of municipal (public) housing. It became influential in the United States in the 1920s but in 1938 was still referred to in different ways, notably as “hand-me-down housing.” Here, it was understood more narrowly, as an alternative to public housing. After 1939, the Federal Housing Administration, though not its leading consultant Homer Hoyt, popularized the term “filtering.” The neutral connotations of this metaphorical term suited the agency's goal of developing an apparently objective discourse of housing markets and market analysis. The term was normalized by the early 1960s.     

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.     

Colonia Housing Conditions in Model Subdivisions: A Déjà Vu for Policy Makers

The informal self-help settlements in Texas known as colonias have received considerable attention as a public policy problem at both the state and federal levels. These settlements proliferated throughout the border region since the late 1970s and research has highlighted the extreme poverty, austere levels of infrastructure, exploitative land sale practices, and poor housing conditions that characterized these settlements. However, both scholars and policymakers have overlooked the continued spread of self-help settlements known as “model subdivisions,” which barring the presence of basic water, wastewater, and electricity services, are nearly identical to colonias. We present the results of household surveys conducted with residents in 24 model subdivisions in Hidalgo County, Texas, in June 2014. The results suggest that, unbeknown to legislators, many of the problems that characterized colonias are now being reproduced in hundreds of model subdivisions that have formed since the 1990s, and which now require concerted attention and intervention by policy makers.     

Untangling Housing Cost and Transportation Interactions: The Location Affordability Index Model—Version 2 (LAIM2)

Abstract

It is now accepted that to have an understanding of housing affordability one must consider not only housing costs, but also the transportation costs associated with that household location. To make this information readily accessible to the public, the United States government created an Internet resource, the Location Affordability Portal – Version 2 (www.locationaffordability.info), to provide housing and transportation costs for every neighborhood in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Although the statistical model at the heart of this resource was designed for predictive accuracy, its design and parameter estimates can provide additional insights into the interaction of housing cost and transportation choices (and thus its cost). This study describes the development and explores the policy implications (and limitations) of this structural equations model, the Location Affordability Index Model – Version 2 (LAIM2).