Tag Archives: housing news

An elegant solution: home sharing

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We all know that no single approach will alleviate the affordable housing crisis. Government, which bears the lion’s share of the responsibility, is not fully up to the task, and as we’ve mentioned, the issue is not even getting its share of attention in public forums or political campaigns.

Here and there, private and nonprofit initiatives peck away at the problem. Among those initiatives is home sharing, which addresses two of Vermont’s well-known trends: a greying population that wants to be able to age in place; and unaffordable housing costs for the younger set, including the proverbial young professionals.

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Home sharing matches older homeowners with younger renters willing to help out who can’t afford market rents. An apt match is a win-win, as this article in Monday’s Valley News explains.

Granted, this program  is a drop in the housing-unaffordability bucket, with fewer than 200 shared properties. But it’s a drop that deserves to grow, along with the post-65 population bulge that makes Vermont, by some measures, the oldest state in the country.

 

Parsing the disparate-impact ruling

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Fair Housing Law cognoscenti will be happy to learn of new journal article by Robert G. Schwemm, acknowledged to be a principal academic authority in these matters. In a Columbia Law Review sidebar, Schwemm takes on the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on disparate impact and sorts through the ramifications, “What’s new and what’s not.”

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Even for non-cognoscenti this article can be useful, given that it’s a fairly breezy (for a law journal) way of catching up with fair housing developments.

The court’s opinion – which essentially upheld the longstanding theory that discrimination is legally actionable by virtue of its effect, not merely intent, was celebrated by fair housing advocates all over the country. The impact on Vermont remains to be seen, however, because disparate-impact arguments typically rely on statistics, and Vermont communities are so small that statistics are not always meaningful.

Still, Schwemm ‘s article makes several points worth Vermonters’ notice, among them:

–the established practices, since the mid ‘70s, of using disparate impact to challenge “exclusionary zoning and other land-use restrictions by local governments that blocked or limited housing proposals of particular value to racial minorities or persons with disabilities.”

–the additional protected classes that Vermont (and many other states) added in their own fair housing laws are specifically preserved under the federal Fair Housing Act. Those additional categories in Vermont include receipt of public assistance (e.g. Section 8), sexual orientation and gender identity. The implication is that, because of the Supreme Court decision, disparate-impact claims could be made successfully for people in these, state-specific categories as well. Assuming, that is, that the plaintiff could get the necessary numbers in order.

 

An affordable-housing outlier

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A common refrain in the national “conversation” about the affordable housing crisis, or shortage, is that development of new multi-family rentals is, well, costly … even unaffordable, in some cases.

One standard cost we’ve seen bandied about is $200,000 per unit. That’s the figure set out in the Windham & Windsor Housing Trust’s treatise on this topic, “Why does it cost so much to construct affordable housing?”

The other day we stumbled across an article about a developer in Portland, Ore., who operates on a different model — tight scheduling, efficiency, no frills, and remarkably, all-private financing — without public subsidies. The result: a unit cost of around $70,000. Here’s a glimpse:

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We can’t vouch for the economics of this, but the website of the developer — Home First Development — links to an article, “Building affordable units for less,” that offers a thumbnail accounting of the approach taken with a 27-unit apartment complex built for $1.89 million. This development is in east Portland, a few miles from downtown, so we presume the land was less costly than for a comparable site close in.

Another, more recent development, also in east Portland, comprises 78 one- and two-bedroom units that rent for $395 to $775 a month, according to the news story that sparked our interest. The cost of building that project? $5 million.

In each case, the developer began by estimating how much low-income tenants (e.g., $24,000 a year) could afford to pay for housing, then worked through the financing with that constraint.

Might such a model be replicable? You be the judge.

 

Mapping the rental-affordability shortage

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The Urban Institute has a tidy synopsis of the rental-affordability crisis that we keep referring to, complete with an interactive national map with data at the county level. Key points in the narrative: the rental population is increasing, the availability of affordable units for poor people is declining, and the responsibility of the federal government to do something about remains paramount. (We might add that the penchant of national leaders is in decline.)

Nationwide, in 2013, there were just 28 affordable living units per 100 renter households of extremely low income, down from 37 in 2000. Here’s the national map:

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The darker counties have more units per low-income population. (Jones and Wayne counties in Mississippi are at or near the top, at 71. Click here for the interactive map.)

Vermont does a little better than the national average. Here’s the Northeast map, with Lamoille County highlighted:

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The figures for Vermont counties:

Caledonia, Lamoille, Orleans, Washington: 29 affordable units per 100 extremely low-income households.

Grand Isle: 32.

Chittenden, Franklin: 35.

Addison, Bennington, Rutland: 47.

Orange, Windham, Windsor: 49.

Those numbers may look impressive compared to some other states, but don’t forget that a majority of the extremely low income population is still out in the cold.

 

Segregation back on the table

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Here are a couple of readings that expand on some of our previous posts on the inexorable AFFH theme:

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“Segregation 101” takes off from an August Times story on Section 8 (that is, racial) discrimination in metropolitan St. Louis. One obstacle to locating more Section 8 voucher holders in middle-class suburbs, the story notes, is a relative lack of rental apartments in such suburbs — in part because of zoning practices that favor single-family homes.

“Segregation Conversation Goes National” offers another rebuttal to the controversial Edsall op-ed and advocates a dual approach to the housing affordability crisis: investing in poor neighborhoods and, on one hand, and settling more poor people in “opportunity-rich” middle-class neighborhoods, on the other. (That seems to be the strategy that Justice Kennedy implicitly endorsed in his disparate impact decision, as we noted previously.)

There’s also a reference to a regional program in Chicago that helps disperse urban Section 8-holders to outlying suburbs. (For an account in The Atlantic, click here.) Elements of that might translate well to Vermont, where the Section 8 program outside of Burlington and several other cities, is already administered by a “regional” agency (Vermont State Housing Authority) that covers the rest of the state.

Meanwhile, the Times lands another editorial today another segregation motif — racial discrimination by real estate agents around the country.

 

So much for the Promised Land to our east

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Does this lament sound familiar?

“Our members in the business community are telling us this lack of affordable and available housing is beginning to impact their ability to hire and retain employees…”

That comment could easily have come from a business leader in Vermont, but instead it’s someone from the statewide chamber of commerce … in New Hampshire!

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New Hampshire! That’s where Vermonters go for motorcycle rallies. That’s where Vermonters go to buy stuff, because there’s no sales tax. And that’s where Vermonters might even think about moving to, because there’s no income tax, either … except that New Hampshire is just about as housing-unaffordable as Vermont, maybe more so.

Most renters who work in the Lebanon-Hanover area, according to this story in the Manchester Union Leader, have to commute 25-30 miles. Who, knows, maybe some of them are commuting from our Vermont tax haven!

Well now, if housing unaffordability is a crisis even in almost-tax-free New Hampshire, you might think that issue will come to the fore in the run-up to the presidential primary. Don’t bet on it, though. So far, housing is off the table for contending luminaries in both major parties.

Enough small talk about the two little neighbor states. Let’s go to the numbers, provided by the National Low Income Housing Coalition in its 2014 “Out of Reach” reports:

Vermont:

Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment: $1,007

Housing wage (i.e., the hourly pay rate needed for that apartment to cost 30 percent of income): $19.36

Estimated average wage for renter: $11.24

New Hampshire:

Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment: $1,049

Estimated average wage for renter: $13.35

Housing wage: $20.18

 

Once more, with feeling

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It’s not every day that we can praise the New York Times editorial board for following in Thriving Communities’ wake. Saturday’s editorial, which borrows its headline, “The Architecture of Segregation,” from a study we posted about last month. The editorial, while noting this two summer’s “positive” developments – the Supreme Court’s disparate impact decision and HUD’s AFFH rule – rightly takes federal officials to task for failing, over many years, to enforce the Fair Housing Act. And the editorial invokes Walter Mondale’s comments at the HUD conference last week about how the act’s intent is “not fulfilled” by exclusionary land-use planning.

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While government deserves a good share of the blame for the present state of residential racial segregation, there are those in the community of fair housing advocates who contend that the real estate industry has been at fault, too. How else to account for the fact that upper-middle-income black families don’t have comparable access to the neighborhoods where their upper-middle-income white family peers live.

Indeed, one factor that may have contributed to segregated patterns is the choice of many whites to opt out of integrated communities, as Stacy Seicshnaydre pointed out in a law journal article last year, “The Fair Housing Choice Myth.” And one way to address that, Seicshnaydre argued, is to defund exclusion — as application of the AFFH rule promises to do, at least in theory.

Meanwhile, HUD conferees were reminded last week, redlining is still with us, and new cases are in the pipeline.

 

Sleeper issue, Part II

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Last week we looked at what the official websites of Democratic presidential candidates had to say about affordable housing, or fair housing, or ANY kind of housing, and we came up empty. Affordable housing may be a national crisis, and residential segregation may be a national scourge and a key contributor to the unrest in Ferguson, Baltimore and elsewhere, but these issues missing from the Democrats’ campaign discourse these days.

The same is true for the Republicans, but perhaps it’s just as well. A primary candidate in a crowded field benefits by mobilizing zealots and true believers, so the fact that housing is not a flashpoint for various segments of the Republican “base” might not be a bad thing.

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HUD’s affirmatively furthering fair housing  (AFFH) rule has been getting a rise out of conservative commentators, but the presidential candidates apparently don’t think flogging it will get them very far. They’re sticking with more familiar standbys, such as Obamacare and gun regulation.

In any case, just for the sake of balance, we looked at websites of the 17 Republican candidates. Many had “issues” tabs. (Donald Trump, interestingly, has a “positions” tab, and when you click on it there’s only one: Immigration Reform.)

Any mention on these sites of the housing problem in any form?

Jeb Bush: No

Ben Carson: No

Chris Christie: No

Ted Cruz: No

Carly Fiorina: No

Jim Gilmore: No

Lindsey Graham: No

Mike Huckabee: No

Bobby Jindal: No

John Kasich: No

George Pataki: No

Rand Paul: No

Rick Perry: No

Marco Rubio: No

Rick Santorum: No

Donald Trump: No

Scott Walker: No

HUD gets a pass from all of them, even those who inveigh against “regulation” and “big government.”

 

Hey, what about us backwaters?

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We’ve mentioned before that much of the literature on affordable housing and affirmatively furthering fair housing focuses on major metropolitan areas and their urban demographics. We’re not immune to all those gnarly issues here in Vermont, but we can’t help but wish for more analysis with a rural focus.

Help may be on the way from HUD, via its Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Tool, which promises to provide maps, housing and demographic data for jurisdictions in all parts of the country, including the rural ones. We say “promises” because we can’t seem to get the tool, which is still in development but available for interim inspection, to work for Burlington or the rest of Vermont — the two jurisdictional options. The mapping tool does work on our desktop for New Hampshire and Maine, so it’s possible to get an idea of what sorts of data plots we’ll be able to see for Vermont one of these days.

You can try your luck by clicking here. Then click OK, choose one of the 12 maps you’d like to see (e.g., race/ethnicity, housing choice vouchers, demographics and transportation, etc.), then the state and jurisdiction. If you can get it to work for Vermont, great; if not, choose another place just to get an idea.

When this system is fully functional, it will be accessible to anyone and perhaps will spare HUD grantees the expense of hiring consultants to do the requisite fair-housing analysis.

Meanwhile, rural places like Vermont do have another helpful data source, the Housing Assistance Council, which provides interactive maps with data on the state and county level. Here’s what the Vermont map looks like:

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The darker counties have higher poverty rates. We don’t know how to make the map interactive on this blog, so click here to explore it on the Council’s website. You can click on each county for a wealth of data. You’ll notice that the rural percentage of each county’s population is listed – 100 percent, in most cases, 0 percent in Chittenden County, our very own megalopolis.

 

Show me a micocosm

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If you never had the time or inclination to read Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the 21st Century,” you could still learn a good deal about economic inequality simply by reading the reviews.

Similarly, if you haven’t seen the six-part TV series “Show Me a Hero,” which concluded recently on HBO, you can still learn a little something about affordable housing just by skimming the reviews. (Disclosure: We haven’t read Piketty in full or watched “Show Me.”)

The series – co-written by David Simon (of “The Wire,” which we have seen and can recommend) — depicts a political struggle in Yonkers during the ‘80s. The “Show Me” story resonates today with a plot-line driven by a maverick political leader and opposition to affordable housing that’s evocative of recent attacks on HUD’s affirmatively furthering fair housing rule.

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You can get a pretty good sense of the show, and its topical currency, in this treatment in the Washington Post, or in this one in the Guardian.

And lest you think the contesting attitudes and political battles are limited to the metropolis, think again. What the current director of public housing in Yonkers says , in this Slate interview, is true all over.

“There is always community resistance to affordable housing,” Joseph Shuldiner says. “People believe that affordable housing will bring down the value of their property and bring in people who are not desirable. I don’t think in most cases that’s proven to be the case. “

And he captures the dilemma of where to invest limited public resources:

“We really need to maximize the number of viable communities with affordable-housing opportunities. That means both getting affordable housing into already viable communities but it also means making the poverty concentrated areas viable so they will attract other-than low-income people.”