All posts by Ted Wimpey

Fair housing backlash?

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An interesting op-ed in the Times today suggests that two recent boons for fair housing – the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the disparate impact doctrine and HUD’s affirmatively furthering fair housing rule – might generate a backlash from an unlikely quarter: white liberals. White liberals tend to be supportive of fair housing initiatives, the argument goes, but not necessarily when then that means stepping up racial integration of their own neighborhoods.

The example cited in the op-ed is New York’s Westchester County, where a Republican executive has been fighting a desegregation order for years, apparently with support from white Democrats in a preponderantly Democratic district. A summary of the Westchester fair housing case, as described by the organization that brought the suit that led to the order, can be found here.

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The recent push for racial integration in Westchester is sometimes portrayed as an example vigorous fair housing enforcement – or “affirmatively furthering” of fair housing – that has been mostly lacking around the country over the past four decades.

In Vermont, where racial minorities are less than 5 percent of the population, affirmatively furthering fair housing might have a somewhat different thrust – toward socioeconomic integration. The goal would be to ensure that lower-income people generally have housing choices in low-poverty, high opportunity areas. Granted, low income is not a protected class, per se, under the federal Fair Housing Act. But disability is protected class, and people with disability are more likely to be of lower income; and under the state fair housing law, receipt of public assistance is a protected class, too.

Well then, how are liberal Vermonters likely to respond to socioeconomic integration? Drawing on the Westchester analogy, might some people who profess support for diversity and tolerance object to proposals for affordable housing in or near their own neighborhoods? We’ll see.

 

Jobs and affordable housing, Part 3

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A while back, we introduced the workforce housing index – namely, the number of subsidized housing units for each 100 jobs in a community.  

And we listed Vermont municipalities with 2,000 jobs or more — we called them “major employment centers” — with their respective indices. Winooski topped them all, followed by Barre City and Springfield.

Well, what about the rest of the state – especially the municipalities with 500 to 2,000 jobs, which we’ll call “medium employment centers”? How do they rate?

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Let’s start with the municipalities that have zero subsidized units — that is, places that are fairly strong on employment opportunity but weak on housing affordability. Here they are, with their 2014 jobs from a Department Labor database in parentheses:

Cambridge (1,390 jobs in 2014), Charlotte (524), Clarendon (1,292), East Montpelier (685), Fairlee (540), Ferrisburgh (547), Highgate (616), Hyde Park (690), Jay (730 jobs in third quarter), Killington (1,735), New Haven (641), Shaftsbury (530), Stratton (529) and Thetford (621).

On the other end, the “medium employment center” with the most subsidized units per 100 workers is Brandon. Brandon had 1,374 jobs and 156 subsidized units, for a workforce housing index of 11.4 — that is, 11.4 units for every 100 workers employed in the town.

Going down the list of municipalities that had between 500 and 1,999 jobs):

Williamstown: 11.3 (subsidized housing units per 100 workers)

Enosburg: 10.1

Townshend: 9.7

Windsor: 9.4

Chester: 9.0

Fair Haven: 8.5

Vernon: 8.5 (note: data preceded Vermont Yankee closing)

Richford: 7.3

West Rutland: 6.9

Ludlow: 5.5

Hardwick: 5.2

Johnson: 5.2

Bradford Town: 5.2

Northfield: 4.9

Poultney: 4.8

Swanton: 4.8

Barton: 4.4

Londonderry: 4.3

Arlington: 4.0

Pittsford: 3.8

Castleton: 3.7

Jericho: 3.3

Putney: 3.2

Waitsfield: 3.1

Dorset: 3.0

Dover: 2.8

Barre Town: 2.8

Norwich: 2.5

Fairfax: 2.4

Bristol: 2.4

Richmond: 2.2

Hinesburg: 2.1

Warren: 1.7

Waterbury: 1.6

Derby: 1.5

Royalton: 1.4

Westminster: 1.1

Georgia: 0.9

Wilmington: 0.6

Rockingham: 0.6

Now, when we bring income data into the mix, we find that there’s a rough, inverse correlation between median family income and the number of subsidized housing units. That’s not surprising. One might expect richer towns to have less housing for low-income people. The pattern doesn’t always hold, though.

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Of the 14 municipalities that have no subsidized housing units, 10 have median family incomes above the state average, and four below.

And in the list above, four of the first five municipalities — the ones with the most subsidized units relative to their numbers of employees — are above average in median family income.

Nevertheless, it’s clear that there’s plenty of room to grow affordable housing in the more well-to-do municipalities. After all, shouldn’t lower-paid employees who work in those towns be able to live there? That’s in keeping with the goal of promoting fair housing choice for everyone in low-poverty, high-opportunity locations — places with ready access to good services, schools and transportation.

Blast from the fair-housing past

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As one might expect, the Obama administration has roused fresh criticism by HUD’s release of the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” rule.

The rule has been castigated as a new example of federal “overreach” and as “social engineering”; to which administration defenders reply that the rule isn’t really new, but rather an exposition of a 47-year-old law (the Fair Housing Act), and that the nation’s residentially segregated housing patterns are themselves the product of social engineering.

Before the public debate over AFFH gets too partisan, however, consider the following presidential words:

“Effective enforcement of our nation’s fair housing laws is also essential to ensuring equal opportunity. In the year ahead, we’ll work to strengthen enforcement of fair housing laws for all Americans.”

The speaker was not Obama, but Ronald Reagan, in his 1983 State of the Union address.

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Later in 1983, in a July 9 radio speech, Reagan elaborated on his support of the Fair Housing Act and his intent to fortify it:

“We believe in the bold promise that no person in the United States should be denied full freedom of choice in the selection of housing because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. We’re proposing a series of amendments that will put real teeth into the Fair Housing Act.”

Those amendments included adding disability and familial status as protected classes, a revision accomplished by congressional year passage five years later. Reagan also proposed stepped up enforcement and stiff fines.

“We believe this is an important step for civil rights,” Reagan concluded. “For a family deprived of its freedom of choice in choosing a home, our proposal will mean swift action and strong civil penalties to prevent discrimination in the first place. As I said, we’re committed to fairness and we’re committed to use the full power of the Federal Government whenever and wherever even one person’s constitutional rights are being unjustly denied.”

So much for the notion that vigorous enforcement of the Fair Housing Act is merely a liberal cabal.

Where is Vermont’s biggest multi-family housing gap?

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When housing advocates talk about increasing the stock of affordable housing, they’re typically referring to multi-family rental housing. Not that programs to expand home-ownership for lower income people aren’t important — they are. But it’s generally agreed that the most cost-effective way to alleviate the affordable housing shortage is by developing multi-family complexes.

Vermont is a rural state, of course, and multi-family housing tends to be concentrated in urban and semi-urban areas, such as Chittenden County. Nevertheless, it makes sense to think about other parts of the state where there’s a clear but unfilled need for multifamily housing.

Consider these two maps from the 2012 Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice, which the state Department of Housing and Community Development filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The first map shows 14 census tracts identified as areas where low and moderate income persons (LMI) are concentrated:

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The second map shows where multi-family housing is located, as a percentage of all housing. This map also outlines the LMI areas:

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So, which counties with concentrations of lower- and middle-income people are short on multi-family housing, and which counties could clearly accommodate more multi-family housing than they have?

Grand Isle, Franklin, Orleans and Caledonia.

New push for integration

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When the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its AFFH rule yesterday, it was the second cause for celebration among fair housing advocates in the last two weeks.

The first was the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the disparate impact doctrine — a key civil rights enforcement mechanism, under which housing policies can be found discriminatory on the basis of their effects, not merely their intent.

The second was the long-awaited AFFH rule. AFFH stands for “affirmatively furthering fair housing,” language contained in the Fair Housing Act of 1968 but not fully elucidated until yesterday.

Essentially, as HUD summarizes it, the rule is a means of overcoming segregation and fostering inclusive communities. This is entirely in keeping with the intent of the Fair Housing Act’s original sponsors – chief among them Sens. Walter Mondale and Ed Brook, who can be seen flanking LBJ as the president signs the legislation into law on April 11, 1968.

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The main point of the Act according to Mondale, “was to replace the segregated living patterns with ‘truly integrated and balanced living patterns.’” To Brooke, the act was meant to break the “dreary cycle of the middle-class exodus to the suburbs and the rapid deterioration of the central city.” (They said as much in their amicus brief to the Supreme Court in the disparate impact case.)

Their vision hasn’t exactly played out over the last half-century, as most major metropolitan areas remain highly segregated. Consider Boston, for example, which has a white/black dissimilarity index of 68. On a scale of 0 to 100, 0 represents total integration and 100, total segregation. Any place that registers over 60 is considered highly segregated. (The State of Vermont, by contrast, came in at 38.8, according to a 2012 report.)

In this map of the Boston area, based on 2010 Census data by Eric Fischer, red dots represent white people; blue dots, black people; orange, Hispanics; and green, Asians.

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Similar maps, some even starker in the depiction of racial separation, can be seen for most major U.S. cities. The AFFH rule, which makes operational the Fair Housing Act’s intent, is seen as a tool that will help overcome these longstanding segregated patterns.

Even though Vermont is 95 percent white, AFFH will have broad application here. After all, a major thrust is to break up pockets of poverty and promote inclusive settlement patterns that give people in protected classes – among them, racial minorities and disabled people – the choice to live in low-poverty areas with access to transit and good services. Vermont has plenty of room for more housing development in keeping with AFFH standards.

 

Side trip to Seattle

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While our “Thriving Communities” campaign focuses on Vermont, we’re not going to wallow in the parochial. An interesting public dialogue on zoning, affordability and housing density is going on in Seattle, and who knows, maybe there’s a takeaway for us.

What does big-city Seattle have in common with small-town Vermont, besides a foliage season?

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Well, much of Seattle is zoned for single-family residences, as are many Vermont municipalities. The news is that a housing advisory panel is poised to recommend scrapping single-family for zoning that allows duplex, triplexes and so forth. Part of the rationale is that single-family districts are perceived to have had an exclusionary effect, by race and socioeconomic class.

The housing advisory panel  reportedly wants to forestall Seattle’s becoming a haven for the rich, and one approach is to promote more density — not just in single-family neighborhoods, but also in zones where multifamily housing now limited to four stories could be redrawn to allow six.

If there’s a lesson in this for Vermont, it’s certainly not in the particulars. Seattle’s population exceeds Vermont’s, after all, and Vermont’s largest city, Burlington, could be fit into one of Seattle’s neighborhoods. (Below is an overview photo of two storied Seattle neighborhoods — Queen Anne and Magnolia — that are laced with single-family residences.

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No, the Vermont takeway is that people here, too, should be thinking about making their zoning and town planning more accommodating of greater residential density near municipal centers. Not high rises, of course, but affordable multi-family housing on a Vermont scale.

Burlington’s housing-wage gap

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Burlington needs more affordable housing, lots of it. Affordable rentals, especially. After all, renting households far outnumber owner households in this city, and by any measure, they’re financially stressed. On average, according to a city report last year, Burlington’s renters pay 44 percent of their income on housing. More than one-third of Burlington’s renters pay more than half their income on housing. That’s what’s known among housing specialists as a severe burden.

Because of inclusionary zoning, we can be fairly confident that new, affordable rental units will be made available wherever big new developments go in. The hope here, at the Fair Housing Project, is that such developments be spread around the city. Not all the new affordable units have to go in the Old North End!

The South End would seem to be prime candidate for more subsidized, multi-family housing, and as far as we’re concerned, the Hill should be another possibility. Granted, there’s a trade-off between the price of land and the number of units that can be developed on a given tract; but still, we support the idea of locating a decent share of new affordable housing in low-poverty areas.

Here’s an interesting perspective on Burlington’s unaffordability from the point of view of low-wage workers. Consider five occupational categories that lead the state in numbers of workers: cashiers, personal care aids, retail salespeople, food prep workers and wait staff. Look at this graphic (courtesy of the National Housing Conference’s “Paycheck to Paycheck” that shows what annual income is needed to rent an apartment in Burlington without being burdened; and how their incomes compare:

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Incidentally, personal care aide is one of the state’s fastest growing occupations. That’s a testament to the greying of Vermont, because personal care aides assist elderly or disabled adults. Is it too much to ask that personal care aides be able to find affordable housing in the same communities where they serve their clients?

What about home ownership in Burlington for these workers? Similarly out of reach:

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Jobs and affordable housing, Part 2

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It’s not uncommon to hear Vermont employers complain that the high cost of housing is a deterrent to recruiting employees. Everyone knows Vermont needs more affordable housing. The question is, where should new affordable housing best be located?

The Fair Housing Project contends that it should be located near town centers, in mixed income areas that have good access to employment, transit and other services.

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Some municipalities offer more affordable housing than others. In an effort to throw some light on where the needs are, we introduced the workforce housing index in our last post. This is the number of subsidized housing units for every 100 jobs in a town. Subsidized units are affordable, by definition, to people earning up to 80 percent the region’s median income, including workers in relatively low paying jobs. (Granted, affordable housing is also in short supply for middle-income workers – teachers or police officers, for example. A more comprehensive workforce housing index would take their needs into account, too.)

Without further ado, here’s how Vermont’s “major employment centers” rank in providing affordable housing. Again, the index is the number of subsidized housing units per 100 jobs:

Winooski: 24.5

Barre City: 9.9

Springfield: 7.5

Brattleboro: 6.9

Burlington: 6.8

Randolph: 6.3

Vergennes: 6.3

Rutland City: 6.1

St. Johnsbury: 5.9

St. Albans Town: 5.7

Bennington: 5.5

St. Albans City: 4.1

Manchester: 4.0

Montpelier: 3.9

Colchester: 3.7

Middlebury: 3.3

Newport: 3.2

South Burlington: 3.2

Lyndon: 2.9

Rutland Town: 2.7

Essex: 2.5

Stowe: 2.2

Morristown: 2.2

Hartford: 2.0

Williston: 1.7

Shelburne: 1.6

Waterbury: 1.6

Derby: 1.5

Milton: 1.4

Woodstock: 1.2

Rockingham: 0.6

A couple of observations: Municipalities with public housing authorities tend to rank high on the list, as might be expected. As for other towns that don’t have public housing authorities, well, some are clearly pulling their weight more than others.

In Chittenden County, Burlington and Winooski have the great majority of subsidized units, but they account for less than half the jobs. (The jobs total of Williston, South Burlington and Essex alone exceeds that of Burlington-Winooski.) Clearly, other Chittenden County towns have a ways to go in meeting the affordable housing needs of their workforces.

Jobs and affordable housing, Part 1

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“Workforce housing” has become a popular term among housing advocates. Its definition varies, but for our purposes, it simply means affordable housing that’s fairly close to the workplaces of lower-and middle-income people.

Now, the ideal is that all the people who make a town’s economy run — the cashiers and the teachers, the home health-care aides and the police officers, the waitresses and the accountants, the secretaries and the tradespeople, from carpenters and plumbers to electricians — should all be able to live in town, if they want. That’s a form of population diversity — in skill sets, in housing options — that the Fair Housing Project wants to encourage: affordable housing for people of mixed incomes near their work sites.

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Well then, one might well wonder how the job locations and the affordable housing units in Vermont match up … or don’t, town by town.

There’s no easy way to get at this, but here’s a proxy approach:

Look at municipalities that are employment centers and see how many units of subsidized housing they have.

Of course, “subsidized housing” typically refers to housing for people earning up to 80 percent of the median income, so it’s not the same as housing that accommodates a wide-ranging workforce of middle and above average incomes. But at least we can get an idea of which employment centers are more or less accommodating of lower-paid workers — the cashiers and personal care aides, for example, the two occupations with the most numerous openings in Vermont, according to the Department of Labor. We’ll assume that full-time cashiers and personal care aides qualify for subsidized housing. (Cashiers’ median hourly wage in Vermont last year was $9.73; personal care aides’, $10.99. By contrast, Vermont’s “housing wage” — the hourly rate needed to afford an average apartment without paying more than 30 percent of income– was $19.36.)

As for “employment centers” there were more than 80 Vermont municipalities that offered 500 jobs or more in 2014, according to Department of Labor statistics.

Of those, more than 30 had 2,000 jobs or more. Arbitrarily, we’ll call those the “major employment centers.”

To find out how many subsidized housing units each municipality has, we simply go to the Directory of Affordable Housing on the Housing Data website , pull up all the site-specific units for each town, and add them up.

With these two figures for each municipality — number of jobs and number of subsidized (affordable) housing units — we can derive a seat-of-the-pants workforce housing index: How many subsidized units for each 100 jobs. The higher the index, the more “workforce housing” that community provides.

Well, it turns out that all but one of Vermont’s major employment centers have a workforce housing index under 10 – that is, they each have fewer than 10 affordable housing units for every 100 workers.

The exception is Winooski, where the index is a whopping 24. (The city occupies a mere square mile, much of which is included in the aerial photo above.) Winooski had 2,799 jobs in 2014 and 687 subsidized housing units — the friendliest affordability ratio in Vermont by far.

Which major employment centers in Vermont had the fewest subsidized units? Stay tuned.