All posts by Ted Wimpey

Fifty Years After the Fair Housing Act was Passed to Combat Segregation, We are Still Struggling to Find the Will to Implement It

Source: Housing Perspectives (from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies) 

“… the interest in maintaining segregation lies with individual localities, but …the sum of the localities (in the form of metropolitan regions or states) are invested in combating it. While not discounting the fact that many people say they desire integrated neighborhoods in the abstract while opposing them in their own community (something anyone who has ever attended a local zoning meeting in an exclusionary area can attest to) the math is obvious. Opposition is concentrated in localities with a minority of the population, and this opposition is the roadblock to creating truly integrated regions.”

“In moving forward, we should look back on what moved us from these tentative steps in the 1950s toward the broad ones of the 1960s, mainly the organization, enfranchisement, and political power that the civil rights movement produced, and see how we can recreate it for modern times. Without this, “what will it take” and “what can we do” will stay questions with different answers.”

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies advances understanding of housing issues and informs policy.

Housing Crunch A Problem In Rural America, Too | VPR

The housing crunch is also being felt in rural cities across the U.S.

“…many communities don’t have enough homes for new workers and ignoring the issue could result in fewer jobs in the long run.

[Emphasis added.]

Go directly to the Source: Housing Crunch A Problem In Rural America, Too . News | OPB

Miracle on 42nd Street: A Tale of Artist Housing – Shelterforce

Source: Miracle on 42nd Street: A Tale of Artist Housing – Shelterforce

“Today, Manhattan Plaza has several waiting lists of over 600 people. Like most of the city, the development’s surrounding neighborhood has undergone a complete transformation, and it now sits on prime real estate. Related Companies purchased the complex in 2004 and extended its Section 8 contract, which requires renewal regularly. Elliot says there is a new plan to build 1,500 affordable housing units for artists in New York City.”

Say It Loud: Renters’ Rights are Civil Rights! – Shelterforce

Hand made sign about gentrification in a demonstration.

 Photo by Abbey Hambright via flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

“Generations of racist government policies such as redlining, the razing of neighborhoods to build highways, and exclusionary zoning has created deeply segregated and unequal neighborhoods. These policies both prevented people of color from accessing resources where they lived and from moving to suburban neighborhoods where resources were being invested.”

“Advocates and renters argue that protecting tenants is good policy because it advances equity, economic opportunity, and even a healthier environment.”

Read full article from Shelterforce Source: Say It Loud: Renters’ Rights are Civil Rights! – Shelterforce

Thanks to Shelterforce for publishing such articles as this one.

[Shelterforce Note: This article is adapted from the IGNITE! Community Pitch Fest, held at the Grounded Solutions Intersections 2017 conference on Oct. 11, 2017. Out of 20 entries and 6 finalists, audience members chose Public Advocates’ pitch as the winner.]

Two Chittenden County VT Mobile Home Parks Working to Preserve Affordable Housing through Cooperative Park Purchase

mobile home park picture
Photo credit to Vermont Public Radio

NEWS RELEASE 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jonathan Bond, 802-660-3455×105,  jbond@cvoeo.org

“With the motivated resident leaders that these two parks have, we have seen success in the cooperative model throughout Vermont, New Hampshire and elsewhere. Cooperative ownership can lead to improved quality of life and maintain the long-term affordability for the park’s residents. It creates thriving communities where residents can continue to own their home, collectively own the surrounding land and prosper.” 

St. George & Hinesburg, VT – A coalition of two mobile home park cooperatives of St. George Villa MHP and Sunset Lake Villa MHP are working feverishly to purchase their respective parks from private ownership and have put forth their best offer to purchase the parks. At a public meeting Wednesday, December 13, 2017, residents heard from their cooperative board’s terms of making an offer, including the engineer’s inspection report and property appraisal completed with financial support from the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board.  The best initial offer the cooperative can make will be limited to the appraised value they’ve received of $6,025,000.00; this is well short of the current asking price registered with the State of Vermont for the two parks of $6,950,000.00.

With the motivated resident leaders that these two parks have, we have seen success in the cooperative model throughout Vermont, New Hampshire and elsewhere. Cooperative ownership can lead to improved quality of life and maintain the long-term affordability for the park’s residents. It creates thriving communities where residents can continue to own their home, collectively own the surrounding land and prosper.

Residents, knowing it’s a long shot for the owner to accept their offer are still proceeding for their once in a generation opportunity to bring their park out of private investors hands and under the control of the residents who live there. Residents thus far have been successful in exercising their petitioned rights under Vermont law, allowing them up to 165 days to make an offer. They know it is an uphill battle with potential outside bidders willing to offer significantly more.

CVOEO’s Mobile Home Program providing residents support about their rights under state law and the Cooperative Development Institute providing technical purchase, and cooperative management assistance will continue to stand with residents through this process. A process we have seen the first-hand transform the lives of the residents living cooperatively owned communities

The coming days and weeks will tell if the resident’s offer will be accepted. In making the offer, the resident cooperative is willing to raise their current lot-rents now so they can see their money reinvested into the resident-owned land to keep long-term affordability. The long-term affordability is particularly important given that Vermont and specifically Chittenden County struggles to provide adequate, affordable housing supply to its residents. Under new private ownership, it’s most likely they will also see lot-rents increased for investor gain. We are hoping the informed and responsible offer made by residents will prevail.

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New Report: Surge in the Supply of Higher-Cost Rental Housing is Slowing Amidst Persistent Affordability Challenges for Working-Class Households

Housing Perspectives (from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies)  The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies advances understanding of housing issues and informs policy.

“… We’re finally seeing the record growth in renters slow down, but while the market has responded to rental housing needs for higher-income households, there are alarming trends  that suggest a growing inability to supply housing that is affordable for middle- and working-class renters, let alone those with very low incomes. Addressing these challenges will require bold leadership and hard choices from both the public and private sector.”

Read More From the Source: Housing Perspectives (from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies)

Affordable housing advocates foresee $15 million drop in investment due to tax reform | True North Reports

By Briana Bocelli,
a freelance writer for True North Reports. 12/6/17
Symbolic picture of home built on money stacks
Image courtesy of Flickr https://www.flickr.com/people/68751915@N05/

“The House and Senate tax bills could be detrimental to an already struggling affordable housing situation in Vermont, according to estimates released by the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition.”

Continue reading Affordable housing advocates foresee $15 million drop in investment due to tax reform | True North Reports

“Not very many options for the people who are working here…”

A Paper from CARSEY RESEARCH: University of New Hampshire, Carsey School of Public Policy,  Fall 2017, Jessica A. Carson and Marybeth J. Mattingly

Rural Housing Challenges Through the Lens of Two New England Communities

 “In this brief, [Jessica A. Carson and Marybeth J. Mattingly] use interview and focus group data to describe some of the ways that restricted rural housing stock affects working families in two rural New England counties, and explore solutions proposed by rural residents and experts to make housing affordable …

“Subsidies and publicly funded programs can play a part in alleviating the challenges of affordable rural housing, but  addressing the issue of affordable housing in rural places will require a variety of approaches. For instance, at the local level, residents can encourage local zoning and planning boards to align town regulations with “inclusionary zoning” practices, such as requiring a certain percentage of housing units to meet affordability standards and offering incentives to developers for constructing affordable dwellings. Municipalities might also loosen or alter zoning restrictions to reduce lot size requirements and allow construction of structures other than traditional single-family
dwellings, including duplexes, in-law apartments, backyard cottages, townhouses, or bungalow courts.”

Trickle Up Housing: Filtering Does Go Both Ways – Shelterforce

Building homes for extremely low-income people allows other homes to filter up to people in need—a better bet than waiting for luxury units to trickle down.

Author, Miriam Axel-Lute – November 2, 2017

“There’s a lot of talk about how homes will “filter down.” The argument goes that building new luxury housing will allow the wealthiest people to move into new housing, and (if the supply outstrips demand), eventually what had been high-end housing will command less money and will “filter down” to be affordable to lower income levels. Just how well this works, for whom, and how quickly is the subject of muchdebate, which I won’t wade into right now.”

“But here’s the thing we don’t talk about enough: developing affordable housing in a tight, high-cost market also increases overall affordability through filtering! Just in the other direction—it trickles up.”

Source: Trickle Up Housing: Filtering Does Go Both Ways – Shelterforce   Click the link to read the whole story on the Shelterforce site.