Empty Neighborhoods: Using Constructs to Predict the Probability of Housing Abandonment

Abstract

Enforcement of the law prohibiting housing discrimination depends largely on actions initiated by persons who believe they have been victimized and, presumptively, on their knowledge of their legal rights. It is therefore important to establish what people know about fair housing law. A recent national survey examines this topic and explores whether public knowledge makes any difference.

A majority of the public is aware of and approves of many aspects of fair housing law, although the size of that majority varies depending on which aspect of the law is considered. By contrast, only a minority of the public is aware of and accepts protections provided to renter families with children. There is an association between knowledge of the law, recognition of conduct perceived to contradict it, and willingness to respond to such conduct, suggesting a link between knowledge and likelihood of self‐protective responses, as envisioned by the Fair Housing Act.     

What Can We Learn About the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program by Looking at the Tenants?

Abstract

Several recent studies have found that homeownership has positive effects on children's development. This article extends these studies by testing whether these effects depend on neighborhood conditions. This extension is important because many low‐income families that become homeowners under current policies promoting homeownership for the poor are likely to purchase homes in troubled or distressed neighborhoods.

Homeownership in almost any neighborhood is found to benefit children, while neighborhood effects are weak. This suggests that the children of most low‐income renters would be better served by programs that help their families become homeowners in their current neighborhoods instead of helping them move to better neighborhoods while remaining renters. However, the positive effects of homeownership on children are weakened in distressed neighborhoods, especially those that are residentially unstable and poor. Thus, helping low‐income families purchase homes in good neighborhoods is likely to have the best effects on children.     

The low‐income housing tax credit program goes mainstream and moves to the suburbs

Abstract

The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program is now 20 years old. With the maturing of the program, the use of tax credits has become commonplace in the development of rental housing across the nation. This article examines how the program has changed both financially and spatially. Specifically, the article asks whether it provides a mechanism that can help deconcentrate impoverished renters by providing access to low‐poverty neighborhoods.

This research finds that as the price for tax credits rises, the program becomes increasingly popular with developers who are helping it make inroads in low‐poverty suburbs. By entering the suburbs, the LIHTC program is meeting and even exceeding the performance of the Housing Choice Voucher Program in terms of offering opportunities to live in low‐poverty settings.     

Local response to federal changes in the housing voucher program: A case study of intraregional cooperation

Abstract

The desire to increase residential choice for Section 8 voucher clients resulted in the adoption of portability by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Portability allows voucher holders to move between the jurisdictions of local housing authorities (HAs). InterHA cooperation could ease the administrative and financial burdens imposed by portability and improve service to voucher recipients. However, voluntary regional cooperation is rare.

This article presents a case study of a successful, voluntary, intraregional cooperative agreement among HAs. Theoretical and empirical analyses suggest that a cooperative agreement is more likely to develop voluntarily if two conditions are present: rational self‐interest and shared norms and trust among the managers. Agreements can ease the burdens associated with portability, but it is important for the parties to regularly assess implementation issues to ensure the agreement's continuing effectiveness. The article concludes with policy implications based on the findings from this research.     

“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 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.     

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.     

The housing and neighborhood conditions of America's children: patterns and trends over four decades

This paper uses national and metropolitan area data from American Housing Surveys over four decades to examine the patterns and trends in the housing and neighborhood circumstances of children. Children across the income distribution have experienced dramatic improvements in the physical adequacy of their dwellings and in crowding but significant deterioration in housing affordability. Poor children are often in greatest jeopardy, with the rate of complaints about crime 25 percent higher in 2005 than in 1975, and the rate of school complaints twice as high in 2005 than 1975. Poor children also experience little payoff from residential mobility in terms of physical dwelling adequacy, crowding, affordability, or adequacy of schools, though moves are associated with fewer complaints about crime. However, it is the near poor – those between 101–200 percent of poverty – and not the poor who appear to be most affected by the tightness or looseness of the housing market.     

The low income housing tax credit and racial segregation

This paper addresses a critical but almost unexamined aspect of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program – whether its use (and in particular, the siting of developments in high-poverty/high-minority neighborhoods), is associated with increased racial segregation in the metropolitan area. Using data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Census, supplemented with data on the racial composition of LIHTC tenants in three states, we examine three potential channels through which the LIHTC could affect segregation: where LIHTC units are built relative to where other low income households live, who lives in these tax credit developments, and changes in neighborhood racial composition in neighborhoods that receive tax credit projects. The evidence on each of these channels suggests that LIHTC projects do not contribute to increased segregation, even those in high poverty neighborhoods. We find that increases in the use of tax credits are associated with declines in racial segregation at the metropolitan level.     

Comment on Chester Hartman and David Robinson's “evictions: The hidden housing problem"—protection or protraction?

Abstract

Since the 1960s, judges and legislatures have made it increasingly difficult for landlords to evict tenants even in those instances where tenants have breached their leases. Sometimes, the growth of tenant protections has actually harmed law‐abiding tenants by raising costs to landlords and allowing rule‐breakers to remain in their apartments. Most landlords and tenants should want a system of laws that provides for both fair and efficient eviction procedures. Tenants should be entitled to legal representation when they are threatened with eviction, but their attorneys should not use the legal system to obtain free accommodations for their clients.

In the end, efforts to improve the housing of low‐ and moderate‐income households should rely not on setting up impediments to eviction, but rather on increasing tenants’ ability to afford housing and reducing the cost of housing development and operation.