All posts by Ted Wimpey

Fair housing news from all over

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We begin the week with bulletins from unlikely places that nevertheless bear on what this here website is all about…

It seems that lots of people who work in Mount Pleasant (population 75,000) can’t afford to live there. (Sound familiar?) The town has something called a “workforce housing” plan, intended to encourage development of housing that people who make 80-120 percent of the area’s median income can afford, but the plan hasn’t produced much. And now, there’s talk of eliminating the plan’s density bonuses so that even less affordable housing would result.

subdivision2

And this is a region where about half the residents already spend more than half their income on housing. The good news, we suppose, is that the town has a workforce housing plan and density bonuses to begin with. That’s more than can be said for some communities. The challenge – in Mount Pleasant and elsewhere — is to ensure that they actually come to something.

The editorial comes to a conclusion that sounds rather familiar: “The town needs a healthy mix of residents to remain vibrant and prosperous in the future, and those residents – of all income levels – will need a place to live.”

(By the way the Post and Courier won the public-service Pulitzer this year for a series on domestic violence against women – a prize citation that the newspaper reminds us of on its masthead – so, as newspapers go, it’s fairly reputable.)

salem

Since 1969 Massachusetts, to its credit, has had an affordable housing program called Chapter 40B. Chapter 40B permits the overriding of local zoning bylaws to allow affordable housing development in towns where less than 10 percent of the housing stock is affordable.

More than 50,000 units have been developed over the years, statewide. The problem noted by the letter-writer is that some recent projects have been targeted to urban areas that already have their share of affordable housing, rather than to the “leafy suburbs.” The takeaway point here is that a good measure of new affordable housing units should be located in middle-income and upper-middle income areas, not just in the same old places.

  • Lastly, an update on what appears to be the longest-running fair housing case in the country.

Back in 1971, Hamtramck, Mich., was found to have violated civil rights of black residents by razing their neighborhoods as part of urban renewal. The remedy was supposed to be provision of 200 family housing units and 150 senior housing units, we learn from an Associated Press account. Well, it seems that Hamtramck still hasn’t made good, and the judge who presided over the case originally is still determined, at age 93, to see it through.

Here’s hoping that protracted case in Westchester County, N.Y., is resolved sooner.

 

A small step in the right direction

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Inclusionary zoning is getting more and more attention as a planning tool to increase the stock of affordable housing. This is a policy that requires, or encourages, various percentages of housing units in new developments to be “affordable.” The standard of affordability varies, but is typically targeted to people earning 80 percent or less of an area’s median income.

snowysubdivision

While inclusionary zoning has proliferated nationwide – a study last year counted more than 500 programs across the country – it hasn’t exactly taken off in Vermont.

True, inclusionary zoning is typically found in urban areas and larger cities, not in rural expanses. Most of the literature on inclusionary zoning, indeed, focuses on metropolitan settings. A recent example is this one from the National Housing Conference on how inclusionary policies can be made more flexible – with examples from urban settings.

The example routine cited in Vermont is Burlington, which adopted inclusionary zoning in 1990 and which happens to be the state’s largest city.

But in fact, small towns can’t make use of it, too – Davidson, N.C. (population 11,000) and Park City, Utah (8,000) are examples.

And closer to home, there’s Hinesburg (4,400). Hinesburg’s regulations apply to developments of 10 or more units in the village growth area, and call for 10 percent of those units to be affordable. Hinesburg also offers density bonuses, expedited review and other development incentives for projects that include affordable housing.

Now, while inclusionary zoning might seem to be a sensible way to address the affordable housing shortage, it’s hardly a cure-all. In Burlington’s case, for example, inclusionary zoning has resulted in just 200-plus affordable units (rentals and sales) over a quarter-century. That’s barely scratching the surface in a city with nearly 10,000 renting households – more than one-third of whom are severely cost-burdened, that is, spending more than 50 percent of their income on housing and utilities.

Inclusionary zoning does serve the purpose of ensuring that new development isn’t entirely upscale and out of reach for people of average means. But it’s just one tool in the affordable-housing planner’s proverbial toolkit. One of the most effective tools of all — in Vermont and everywhere else — would take the form of substantially bigger public appropriations for housing subsidies.

subdivision

Do you suppose we’ll be hearing anything about that, or about how to address the affordable housing crisis, in the coming presidential campaign? Don’t all speak at once.

 

New Jersey’s inspiration

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People in these parts can often be heard mocking New Jersey as some sort of cultural and environmental antithesis to Vermont. But they should be aware that New Jersey gave rise to a landmark civil rights doctrine – in housing – that resonates here.

new-jersey-county-map

That’s the so-called Mount Laurel Doctrine, as set out in two New Jersey Supreme Court rulings in 1975 and 1983, banning economic discrimination against the poor by municipalities in their land-use and zoning decisions. The rulings came after members of the black community in Burlington County’s Mount Laurel Township sued over a housing development plan that would have uprooted them in favor of middle-class and upper-middle-class families. (The town’s zoning effectively mandated homes that low-income families could not afford.)

The Fair Share Housing Center, which was among the litigants, has called Mount Laurel “one of the most significant civil rights cases in the United States since Brown v. Board of Education.” That might sound like a self-serving characterization, and of course, the rulings applied only to New Jersey, but the court’s reasoning echoes across the country. The court pointed out in its 1975 ruling that zoning regulations, “like any police power” exercised by a public entity, must promote general welfare. The decision went on to say:

“It is plain beyond dispute that proper provision for adequate housing of all categories of people is certainly an absolute essential in promotion of the general welfare required in all local land use regulation. Further the universal and constant need for such housing is so important and of such broad public interest that the general welfare which developing municipalities like Mount Laurel must consider extends beyond their boundaries and cannot be parochially confined to the claimed good of that particular community. It has to follow that, broadly speaking, the presumptive obligation arises for each municipality affirmatively to plan and provide, by its land use regulations, the reasonable opportunity for an appropriate variety and choice of housing, including, of course, low and moderate cost housing, to meet the needs, desires and resources of all categories of people who may desire to live within its boundaries.”

jerseycity

The court declared that Mount Laurel “must permit multi-family housing, without bedroom or similar restrictions, as well as small dwellings on very small lots, low cost housing of other types, and, in general, high density zoning, without artificial and unjustifiable minimum requirements as to lot size, building size and the like…”

More than 60,000 affordable units have been built in New Jersey as a result of the Mount Laurel decisions. That’s nowhere near the need, and there has been plenty of pushback, which continues to this day.

Nevertheless, the principle – that land-use regulations must accommodate people of all incomes – has been adopted by other states, including Vermont. Vermont’s zoning statute states, among other things, that:

“No bylaw nor its application by an appropriate municipal panel under this chapter shall have the effect of excluding housing that meets the needs of the population as determined in the housing element of its municipal plan as required…”

Among those requirements is “addressing low and moderate income persons’ housing needs.”

Cayuga’s waters trickle down

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When it comes to fair housing, Burlington might be able to learn something from Ithaca. Ithaca issued its “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice” in May; Burlington’s most recent AI came out in October 2010, so it’s a bit dated.

Ithaca has about 10,000 fewer people, but the two cities have a few things in common – among them, the university/college presence and predominantly white populations. What’s more, they both happen to be listed in somebody’s “17 Best U.S. Cities for Hippies.”

ithacaoverview

Here are some of the Ithaca findings that might raise parallel questions in Burlington:

  • “People with disabilities report higher levels of discrimination and lower levels of housing accommodation than other residents.”

This appears to be the case in Vermont generally, judging from Human Rights Commission reports, but the extent to which it might be true in Burlington is worth a look.

  • “The City of Ithaca does not currently have a Language Assistance Plan, nor is the need for one mentioned in its 2013 Limited English Proficiency Plan.”

Ithaca’s largest minority population is Asian, and four of the seven languages for which translation services are most needed are Asian. Burlington appears to have a more diverse population of refugees, but the question of how Burlington handles assorted language needs is worth asking. After all, as the Ithaca report notes, “Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires that federal assistance recipients provide language assistance to individuals with limited English proficiency.”

  • “The obligation of sub-recipients of City Community Development Block Grant/HOME funds to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing (AFFH) is not effectively communicated by the City nor understood by its sub-recipients.”

Well! Dare we suggest that AFFH is not terribly well understood in these parts, either?

  • “Exclusionary tactics against households who rely on public and private subsidies for housing is prevalent in the City and has a disparate impact on protected classes in Ithaca.”

The report notes that 15 percent of the county’s residents have disabilities, but 40 percent of Housing Choice Voucher recipients (Section 8) have disabilities. Similarly, African Americans comprise 6.5 percent of the county population but 20 percent of the Section 8 population. Fair housing testing showed that discrimination against voucher holders was widespread.

Now in Vermont, housing discrimination against people on public assistance is illegal. How commonly the state’s fair housing law is violated remains an open question, though. What share of Burlington’s Section 8 population is disabled or minority, and how do these people fare in the rental market? Perhaps the city’s next fair housing assessment will address these questions.

 

Vermont’s housing affordability gap, by county

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burlingtonhouse

A couple of years ago, the Urban Institute came out with a study, “The Housing Affordability Gap for Extremely Low Income Renters in 2013.” The takeaway conclusion: Nationwide, there were just 28 “adequate and affordable” units available for every 100 renter households with incomes at or below 30 percent of the area median.

The paper listed, among other things, populous counties with the biggest affordability gaps – that is, the counties with the fewest affordable housing units for every 100 low-income households. At the bottom was Denton, Texas, with only 8 affordable units for every 100 renters. (At the other extreme, Suffolk County in Massachusetts had the smallest affordability gap, with about 50 units for every 100 renters.

We decided to look at the affordability gap in Vermont, comparing the state’s 14 counties using statistics drawn from Vermont Housing Data. The measure isn’t quite the same as the one used by the Urban Institute, but it shows a wide ranging disparity across the state nevertheless.

County Pop. Below pov. (2009-13) Below pov./pop. Subsidized units Subsidized units per 100 people in poverty
Addison 36,821 3,875 11% 499 12.88
Bennington 37,125 4,900 13% 808 16.49
Caledonia 31,227 4,236 14% 548 12.94
Chittenden 156,545 16,672 11% 4,644 27.86
Essex 6,306 995 16% 77 7.74
Franklin 47,746 4,837 10% 761 15.73
Grand Isle 6,970 481 7% 69 14.35
Lamoille 24,475 3,021 12% 358 11.85
Orange 28,936 3,701 13% 399 10.78
Orleans 27,231 4,047 15% 324 8.01
Rutland 61,642 7,655 12% 1,341 17.52
Washington 59,534 5,439 9% 1,232 22.65
Windham 44,513 5,306 12% 1,231 23.20
Windsor 56,670 5,708 10% 1,164 20.39
Vermont 625,741 70,873 11% 13,445 18.97

Here are two key numbers to look at: The number of people below the poverty level in each county; and the number of subsidized housing units in each county per 100 impoverished people.

As you might expect, there’s not enough subsidized housing in any county to accommodate low-income people. But beyond that, it’s noteworthy that the affordability gap is biggest in the two counties with the highest poverty rates (Essex, Orleans) and smallest in the county with the lowest poverty rate. In other words, affordable housing is even scarcer in the poorest counties than in the richest.

 

Beyond the ADA

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The 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act is getting deserved public attention. Still it’s worth mentioning that disabilities were added to the Fair Housing Act in 1988, two years before the ADA’s passage. That is, housing discrimination toward people with disabilities became illegal even before the rights of disabled people were established in employment and public accommodations.

 

Empty wheelchair on the pier in the harbor

As we mentioned in a previous post, of all the protected classes under the Fair Housing Act, disability is the leading source of discrimination complaints, both nationally and in Vermont.

People with disabilities are more likely to draw lower incomes. So hypothetically, it could be argued housing policies that adversely affect people with disabilities might have a disparate impact on poor people more generally.

Here are some Vermont numbers to chew on, from the Vermont Housing Data site:

 

County

Pop.

% disabled

Below pov. (07-11)

Median fam. income

Below pov./pop.

Addison

36,821

13

3,875

69,157

11%

Bennington

37,125

16

4,900

61,270

13%

Caledonia

31,227

18

4,236

54,941

14%

Chittenden

156,545

10

16,672

83,887

11%

Essex

6,306

19

995

45,000

16%

Franklin

47,746

14

4,837

68,408

10%

Grand Isle

6,970

12

481

69,722

7%

Lamoille

24,475

11

3,021

64,500

12%

Orange

28,936

15

3,701

63,253

13%

Orleans

27,231

16

4,047

52,235

15%

Rutland

61,642

15

7,655

61,516

12%

Washington

59,534

11

5,439

70,640

9%

Windham

44,513

16

5,306

63,509

12%

Windsor

56,670

16

5,708

70,467

10%

Burlington MSA

211,261

11

21,990

79,068

10%

Vermont

625,741

13

67,761

70,873

11%

Higher disability rates tend to be correlated with lower median incomes. For example, Chittenden County is on the high end for median family income, and Essex County, at the low end; and the they have the lowest and highest proportions of disabled people, respectively.

 

Housing bias in Vermont: more than meets the eye

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Amid all the overarching attention to housing segregation and inclusiveness prompted by HUD’s newly released AFFH rule, we shouldn’t lose sight of housing discrimination at the granular, or individual level. It’s still very much with us, in Vermont and everywhere else. What’s more, there’s a good deal of housing discrimination that goes unreported, as a cursory look at Vermont’s statistics makes clear.

First, the national picture: HUD does an annual report toting up housing discrimination complaints based on seven protected categories in the Fair Housing Act: race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, familial status. In the last fiscal year for which data are available, total complaints to HUD and affiliated agencies totaled 8,368, of which 53 percent were based on disability, 28 percent on race, 14 percent on familial status (presence of minor children) and 12 percent on national origin.

hudposter

Now consider the complaints filed with the Vermont Human Rights Commission. According to the commission’s most recent annual report, there were 41 housing discrimination complaints in Fiscal Year 2014, of which 19 were based on disability, 4 on  race/color, 4 on “minor children,” and 1 on national origin.

The numbers in Vermont are pretty low, and the discriminatory profile is a bit different from the that for the nation as a whole. Disability is the major source of complaints here, as elsewhere, but in Vermont just 10 percent of the complaints pertained to race. Granted, Vermont is 95 percent white, but the number seems low for two reasons.

For one thing, hundreds of refugees are arriving in Vermont every year. It seems implausible that they confront no discrimination based in the real-estate rental market based on race, religion or national origin.

For another thing, Vermont Legal Aid’s periodic tests of Vermont’s rental markets show much higher incidences of discrimination than are reflected in the complaint statistics.

In 2012-13, VLA conducted more than 200 tests, using control testers and subject testers of assorted races and national origins expressing interest in renting apartments. “Forty-four percent of the tests conducted either demonstrated overt discrimination against the subject tester or otherwise showed preferential treatment toward the control tester,” the VLA’s report concluded. “(T)here were significant rates of disparate treatment against the subject testers in 46 percent of the national origin tests, 45 percent of the familial status test, 36 percent of the African American race/color tests, and 22 percent of the disability tests.”

So, why aren’t more fair housing complaints filed in Vermont? Perhaps because many tenants don’t know their rights, or because they might fear retaliation. As it happens, protection from retaliation is one the rights they might not be aware of.

Socioeconomic segregation: On the rise?

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Across the country, residential segregation by race has declined slightly over the last 40 years, since the Fair Housing Act was passed, but it’s still pronounced in major metropolitan areas. Residential segregation by income, however, has been on the rise since 1970.

So say three sociologists in a journal article published this month, “Neighborhood Income composition by Household Race and Income, 1990-2009.” This one of several scholarly articles in recent years documenting the increase in socioeconomic segregation nationally.

Studies like this typically focus on urban areas, so one might wonder how much their findings apply to a demographic outlier like Vermont. Still, it’s worth considering whether some conclusions resonate here. Here’s one:

“(M)iddle-class households are typically located in neighborhoods that are more similar to those of low-income households than to those of high-income households. That is, high-income households re more segregated from middle-class and poor households than low-income households re from the middle class and the rich.”

This is consistent with an earlier study of residential segregation by income that found that “During the last four decades, the isolation of the rich has been consistently greater than the isolation of the poor.”

Why might that matter? “The increasing geographic isolation of affluent families means that a significant proportion of society’s resources are concentrated in a smaller and smaller proportion of neighborhoods.”

How Vermont’s neighborhood and regional compositions by income are changing is a dissertation topic waiting to be explored. The 2012 “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice” offers a mere snapshot from the 2010 Census. Of the state’s 184 census tracts, there were 23 where at least 51 percent of the residents met the criterion for low-to-moderate income status (less than 80 percent median income). Here they are again:

map5lmi

Is the number of LMI districts on the rise in Vermont or not? Perhaps the upcoming state assessment, to be undertaken under HUD’s new affirmatively furthering fair housing rule, will offer some clues.

 

 

Affordable housing in ski areas, or not

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When Vermont’s “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice” was completed in 2012, it listed as one of Vermont’s “fair housing achievements” the designation of ski areas as possible sites of affordable housing development.

skier

The analysis noted that ski areas are “generally rural, more affluent, and predominantly White areas with high cost housing.” Locating affordable housing in these areas would help spread such housing around the state and avert concentration in urban centers. Moreover, some resorts promote themselves as year-round destinations, so the housing needs of their employees aren’t necessarily seasonal.

In fact, the Vermont’s Allocation Plan for federal and state affordable housing tax credits explicitly mentions, as one of the possible qualifications for receiving such credits, providing “workforce housing in ski areas” – particularly when locating such housing in the nearest town center is not feasible and when the community’s need for affordable housing is underserved.

Fine. How much affordable housing has been developed in ski-area towns under those criteria over the last three years?

None. This fair housing “achievement” is in the vision, not the doing.

OK, so how do ski areas stack up when it comes to providing affordable housing?

Again, we can look at these areas as employment centers (how many jobs they offered in 2014, from the Labor Department’s site)

and total their subsidized housing units, if any, from the Directory of Affordable Housing on the Housing Data website. As you might expect, the results vary widely.

skis

Killington, for example, had 1,735 jobs in 2014, but no subsidized housing units.

Here are two others that come up empty…

Jay: 2014 job total “confidential,” 0 subsidized units.

Stratton: 887 jobs, 0 subsidized units.

Ski-area towns that are at least on the board for affordable housing:

Stowe: 4,155 jobs, 95 subsidized units

Ludlow: 1,554 jobs, 85 subsidized units.

Waitsfield: 1,355 jobs, 42 subsidized units

Jeffersonville/Cambridge: 1,390 jobs, 39 subsidized units

Dover: 1,161 jobs, 33 subsidized units.

Woodstock: 2,115 jobs, 26 subsidized units.

Warren: 1,029 jobs, 18 subsidized units.

Putting AFFH under your pillow

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You’ve been lying awake at night wondering what affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH) will mean in Vermont, right?

cows

Just kidding. If AFFH isn’t on the tip of your tongue yet, we understand. It is, however, an important part of the public policy lexicon, so you might as well start getting used to it. Ted Wimpey’s op-ed in today’s Times Argus is a nice entry point.

Among other things AFFH will afford a fresh look at fair housing choice in Vermont, drawing from data that HUD will provide. This will take the form of “assessment” reports – to be done for Burlington (a federal grant area in its own right) and for the state as a whole.

Chances are, the findings in these reports won’t come as a huge surprise. Consider the “State of Vermont’s “Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice,” completed in 2012.

That report addressed, among other things, racial residential patterns. According to the 2010 census, Vermont was 95.3 percent white. Blacks accounted for 1 percent of the 2010 population; Asians, 1.3 percent; and Hispanic residents, 1.5 percent. That analysis defined areas of concentration as double those levels. So, in the case of African Americans, there were 22 census tracts where the percentage of African Americans was 2 percent or higher, five of which were in Burlington.

Compared to concentrations in other, more urban states, Vermont’s numbers are quite low. Still, as Vermont’s draws increasing numbers of people of color, these numbers – and the patterns of concentration – bear watching, and it will be interesting to see how they play out in the coming AFFH assessment.