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Research & Policy
Faculty Director Vicki Been Testifies at Charter Revision Expert Forum
On March 21st, Furman Center Faculty Director Vicki Been testified on a Land Use expert panel before the 2019 NYC Charter Revision Commission. Her testimony focused on proposed changes to the city charter that would require the city to develop a comprehensive plan that sets long-term development goals. Been raised concerns about the proposal, noting that the city already carries out a significant amount of planning, and it is unclear how a comprehensive plan would differ from the city’s many efforts. She emphasized that the there is no clear agreed upon definition of comprehensive planning and that submitting such an ambiguous concept to a vote could prove confusing and dangerous for New York City and its voters.
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Research & Policy
Supply Skepticism: Housing Supply and Affordability
Will building more housing lead to more affordable rents and lower home prices? Economics 101 says yes, but an increasingly vocal cohort of advocates and activists—supply skeptics—oppose new housing construction on the grounds that it will not enhance affordability in their communities and might, instead, increase prices and rents.
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Research & Policy
Policy Minute: Perspectives on Housing Supply and Affordability
This Policy Minute examines whether increasing the supply of market-rate housing improves housing affordability.
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Research & Policy
Fact Brief: NYCHA’s Outsized Role in Housing New York’s Poorest Households
As the largest landlord in New York, New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) units represent almost six percent of all occupied housing citywide, and almost nine percent of all occupied rental housing. The city’s public housing provides shelter to substantially more households than any other place-based housing assistance program in the city. In 2017 over 60 percent of the roughly 174,000 households in NYCHA’s public housing developments earned 30 percent of Area Median Income (AMI) or less. That translates to just $28,600 annually for a family of four. These households would have few housing options in New York City without the affordability offered in public housing.
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Research & Policy
Policy Brief: National Lessons of NYC’s Universal Access to Counsel Program
In 2017, New York City enacted the first legislation in the country providing legal representation for all income-eligible tenants facing eviction. The legislation, sponsored by Council Members Vanessa Gibson and Mark Levine, has been implemented in four zip codes in each of New York’s five boroughs, with citywide universal access mandated by July 2022. As major cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Newark, Cleveland, and Boston consider expanding access to counsel, New York’s experience offers important lessons for program design and implementation.
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Research & Policy
Gentrification and Fair Housing: Does Gentrification Further Integration?
On the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, long-time residents of cities across the country feel increasingly anxious that they will be priced out of their homes and communities, as growing numbers of higher-income, college-educated households opt for downtown neighborhoods. These fears are particularly acute among black and Latino residents. Yet when looking through the lens of fair housing, gentrification also offers a glimmer of hope, as the moves that higher-income, white households make into predominantly minority, lower-income neighborhoods are moves that help to integrate those neighborhoods, at least in the near term.
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Research & Policy
Neighbors and Networks: The role of social interactions on the residential choices
NYU Furman Center Faculty Director Ingrid Gould Ellen co-authored a paper with Michael Suher and Gerard Torrats-Espinosa considering the role of information and social influence in determining the effective set of potential housing choices for participants in the Housing Choice Voucher Program.
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Research & Policy
NYU Furman Center Comments on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
The NYU Furman Center submitted comments in response to HUD’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. HUD is considering replacing the AFFH Final Rule despite the considerable agency resources devoted to researching, piloting, and promulgating the rule between 2010 and 2015. This post excerpts and summarizes the key points of our comment, which urges HUD to improve upon the current approach which shows initial promise, as opposed to returning to an approach that has indisputably failed.
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Research & Policy
New York City Property Tax Reform
This week, the New York City Advisory Commission on Property Tax Reform will begin holding a series of public hearings on the current property tax system in New York City. Convened by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Speaker Corey Johnson in May, the commission is charged with developing proposals to make the system simpler, clearer, and fairer, while also ensuring no reduction in city revenues. Numerous public officials, advocates, and academics have called for property tax reform in order to address inequities within the current four-class property tax system. Currently, litigation is pending against the city in which a coalition of real estate developers and civil rights advocates assert that the property tax system is inequitable and discriminates on the basis of race.
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Research & Policy
A Better Conversation about Area Median Income (AMI)
There is a widespread misconception that the methodology used to calculate AMI prevents the poorest households from accessing affordable housing. That’s an intuitive response to affordable housing lotteries where the eligibility is too high for many neighborhood residents but these outcomes are the result of policy choices at the state and local level, not the methodology used to calculate AMI.
