Publications Tagged ‘affordable housing’
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White Paper
Key Findings on the Affordability of Rental Housing from New York City’s HVS 2008 PDF
Every three years, the U.S. Census Bureau releases the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (HVS), which assesses changes in various aspects of New York City’s housing and neighborhoods. The primary goal of the survey is to estimate the rental vacancy rate in the City, but the survey also provides valuable insight into other trends in the housing stock. However, the data are released in a format that is hard to understand without statistical software. In order to make the findings available to a wider audience, we have analyzed the data about New York City’s neighborhoods and compiled this summary of noteworthy trends.
Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. June 2009.
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Chapter
Spillovers and Subsidized Housing: The Impact of Subsidized Rental Housing on Neighborhoods LINK
Rental housing is increasingly recognized as a vital housing option in the United States. Yet government policies and programs continue to grapple with widespread problems, including affordability, distressed urban neighborhoods, poor-quality housing stock, concentrated poverty, and exposure to health hazards in the home. These challenges can be costly and difficult to address. The time is ripe for fresh, authoritative analysis of this important yet often overlooked sector.
Ingrid Gould Ellen. Revisiting Rental Housing (Brookings Institution Press). December 2008.
affordable housing, neighborhoods, renters, subsidized housing
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Working Paper
31 Flavors of Inclusionary Zoning: Comparing policies from San Francisco, D.C. and Suburban Boston PDF
As housing costs have risen in the U.S. and federal subsidies for affordable housing programs have declined, inclusionary zoning (IZ) has become an increasingly popular local policy for producing low-income housing without direct public subsidy. The structure of IZ policies can vary in a number of ways; consequently, there is not yet a consensus about what policies constitute “true” inclusionary zoning. In this paper we compare the ways in which IZ programs have been structured in three regions in which it is relatively widespread and long-standing. Our results demonstrate that IZ programs are highly complex and exhibit considerable variation in their structures and outcomes. In the San Francisco Bay Area, IZ programs tend to be mandatory and apply broadly across locations and structure types, but attempt to soften potential negative impacts with cost offsets and alternatives to on-site construction. In the Washington DC area, most IZ programs are also mandatory, but have broader exemptions for small developments and low-density housing types. IZ programs in the Suburban Boston area exhibit the most withinregion heterogeneity. In this area, IZ is more likely to be voluntary and to apply only to a narrow range of developments, such as multifamily or age-restricted housing, or within certain zoning districts. The amount of affordable housing produced under IZ varies considerably, both within and across the regions. The flexibility of IZ allows planners to create a program that accommodates local policy goals, housing market conditions and political circumstances.
Schuetz, Jenny, Vicki Been, Rachel Meltzer. Forthcoming: Journal of the American Planning Association. September 2008.
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Working Paper
Silver Bullet or Trojan Horse? The Effects of Inclusionary Zoning on Local Housing Markets PDF
Many local governments are adopting inclusionary zoning (IZ) as a means of producing affordable housing without direct public subsidies. In this paper, we use panel data on IZ in the San Francisco metropolitan area and Suburban Boston to analyze how much affordable housing the programs produce and how IZ affects the prices and production of market-rate housing. The amount of affordable housing produced under IZ has been modest and depends primarily on how long IZ has been in place. Results from Suburban Boston suggest that IZ has contributed to increased housing prices and lower rates of production during periods of regional house price appreciation. In the San Francisco area, IZ also appears to increase housing prices in times of regional price appreciation but depresses prices during cooler regional markets. There is no evidence of a statistically significant effect of IZ on new housing development in the Bay Area.
Schuetz, Jenny, Vicki Been, Rachel Meltzer. Forthcoming: Urban Studies. June 2008.
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Policy Brief
The Effects of Inclusionary Zoning on Local Housing Markets PDF
This study evaluates the impact of Inclusionary Zoning policies on housing markets in the San Francisco, Washington D.C. and suburban Boston areas. The analysis provides local decision-makers with valuable evidence on the impacts of IZ—a popular but often-controversial affordable housing policy. The policy brief includes an update from February 2010, summarizing additional research that has been completed since the original publication in March, 2008.
Amy Armstrong, Vicki Been, Rachel Meltzer, Jenny Schuetz. March 2008.
affordable housing, housing prices, inclusionary zoning, land use
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Working Paper
The Impact of Low Income Housing Tax Credit Housing on Surrounding Neighborhoods: Evidence from NYC PDF
In this report, we examine the neighborhood impact of low income housing tax credit developments in New York City, where 42,077 units of LIHTC housing were newly constructed or rehabilitated between 1987 and 2003.
Ellen, Ingrid Gould and Ioan Voicu. May 2007.
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Working Paper
Housing Policy in New York City: A Brief History PDF
This policy brief aims to tell the story of housing policy in New York City over the past 30 years or so. The first section describes the city’s unprecedented efforts to rebuild its housing stock during the late 1980s and 1990s. The second section analyzes the specific features of the city’s Ten Year Plan that made these efforts so successful. The third section then discusses the city’s current housing environment and the policy challenges it presents.
Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. April 2006.
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Chapter
The Role of Cities in Providing Housing Assistance: A New York Perspective LINK
Schill, Michael H., Ingrid Gould Ellen, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Ioan Voicu. City Taxes, City Spending: Essays in Honor of Dick Netzer (Edward Elger Press). December 2003.
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Chapter
Regulatory Barriers to Housing Development in the United States LINK
Nothing provides as much material for comparative legal study as the great variety of rule-making that characterizes land law. Land law is perhaps the only legal area in which the leveling march of globalized uniformity has had to yield to the progressive development of local customary law.
Schill, Michael H., Ingrid Gould Ellen, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Ioan Voicu. Land Law in Comparative Perspective (Aspen Publishers). September 2002.
affordable housing, housing prices, land use, neighborhoods, subsidized housing
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Article
Revitalizing Inner City Neighborhoods: New York City’s Ten Year Plan For Housing PDF
This article examines the impact of New York City’s Ten-Year-Plan on the sale prices of homes in surrounding neighborhoods. Beginning in the mid-1980s, New York City invested $5.1 billion in constructing or rehabilitating over 180,000 units of housing in many of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods. One of the main purposes was to spurn neighborhood revitalization.
Schill, Michael H., Ingrid Gould Ellen, Amy Ellen Schwartz, and Ioan Voicu. Housing Policy Debate, 13(3), pp. 529-566. June 2002.
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Book
Reducing the Cost of New Housing Construction in New York City PDF
New York City has been in a self-proclaimed housing “emergency” since the end of World War II. While the rest of the nation responded to postwar housing shortages with a construction boom that left all but low-income households appropriately housed, in New York City developers have not even been able to produce enough housing to satisfy the needs of the middle class.
Salama, Jerry J., Michael H. Schill, and Martha E. Stark. September 1999.
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Article
The Redevelopment of Distressed Public Housing: Early Results from HOPE VI Projects PDF
The redevelopment of distressed public housing under the Urban Revitalization Demonstration Program, or HOPE VI, has laudable social, physical, community, and economic goals. Three public housing projects in Atlanta, Chicago, and San Antonio demonstrate the complexity and trade-offs of trying to lessen the concentration of low-income households, leverage private resources, limit project costs, help residents achieve economic self-sufficiency, design projects that blend into the community, and ensure meaningful resident participation in project planning.
Salama, Jerry J. Housing Policy Debate, 10 (1), pp. 95-142. December 1998.
affordable housing, neighborhoods, public housing, subsidized housing
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Chapter
The Housing Court’s Role in Maintaining Affordable Housing LINK
Galowitz, Paula. Housing and Community Development in New York City: Facing the Future, pp. 177-201 (State University of New York Press). December 1998.