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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.
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Research & Policy
Characteristics of Local Schools Near Families with Federal Housing Assistance
Ingrid Gould Ellen, Faculty Director of the NYU Furman Center, co-authored a new report on the characteristics of local schools near families with federal housing assistance.
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Research & Policy
NYU Furman Center Comment on 2020 U.S. Census
NYU Furman Center submitted a comment to the Department of Commerce on the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. Census.
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Research & Policy
City NIMBYs
In a recent article in the Journal of Land Use, City NIMBYs, NYU Furman Center Director Vicki Been explores the differences between city and suburban NIMBYism and explains why rising opposition to new development, and its increasingly restrictive regulation, matters
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Research & Policy
Making Dirty Land Clean: An Analysis of New York City’s Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP)
A new policy brief by the NYU Furman Center examines how New York City’s Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP) is being used to redevelop hundreds of brownfield sites in the city. The VCP is the city’s primary brownfield remediation program, providing oversight and support for developers to clean up properties with actual or potential contamination. The policy brief released today, Making Dirty Land Clean: An Analysis of New York City’s Voluntary Cleanup Program (VCP), sheds light on this city program to incentivize remediation and redevelopment of contaminated sites.
