NLIHC's Advocate's Guide

The National Low Income Housing Coalition publishes an annual Advocate's Guide, an excellent guide to housing and community development policies and programs. Click here to view it.

Out of Reach Report

The National Low Income Housing Coalition also releases the Out of Reach Report annually, which contains information on housing affordability in every jurisdiction in the country. Click here to access the NC section of 2009-10 Out of Reach Report, which was released in May, 2010. 

The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold

New evidence reveals that the wealth gap between White and African American families has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation.  Using economic data collected from the same set of families over 23 years (1984-2007), we find that the real wealth gains and losses of families over that time period demonstrate the stampede toward an escalating racial wealth gap. This report is the first in a series that audits the growth of the racial wealth gap over the past generation.

Wealth, what you own minus what you owe, allows people to start a business, buy a home, send children to college, and ensure an economically secure retirement.  Without wealth, families and communities cannot become and remain economically secure.   Recognizing the importance of building wealth over a lifetime, our nation has created public policies that provide incentives and subsidies for asset building activities.  However, reforms are needed to ensure that such opportunities and rewards are distributed equitably.  Click here to download the report.

When Investors Buy Up the Neighborhood: Strategies to Prevent Investor Ownership from Causing Neighborhood Decline

The next chapter of the foreclosure crisis is unfolding – and it’s continuing to hit poor communities and people of color the hardest. With so many foreclosed homes available for pennies on the dollar, unscrupulous investors are buying up huge chunks of neighborhoods – and leaving properties to fester and communities to suffer.

In the new PolicyLink report, When Investors Buy Up the Neighborhood: Strategies to Prevent Investor Ownership from Causing Neighborhood Decline, authors Kalima Rose and Sarah Treuhaft of PolicyLink and co-author Karen Black look at promising strategies to deter unscrupulous slumlords and home-flippers.  Click here to download the report.

State of Metropolitan America

The State of Metropolitan America is a signature effort of the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program that portrays the demographic and social trends shaping the nation’s essential economic and societal units—its large metropolitan areas—and discusses what they imply for public policies to secure prosperity for these places and their populations.

This report focuses on the major demographic forces transforming the nation and large metropolitan areas in the 2000s. In this sense, it previews what we will learn from the results of the 2010 Census, as well as supplements those results in important ways. It includes chapters that correspond to nine of the most important subjects tracked by the Census Bureau in its annual American Community Survey, along with the policy implications of the findings.

Click here for more information and to download the report.

HUD Studies

When an individual or a family becomes homeless for the first time, the cost of providing them housing and services can vary widely, from $581 a month for an individual's stay in an emergency shelter in Des Moines, Iowa to as much as $3,530 for a family's monthly stay in emergency shelter in Washington, D.C. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development today released three studies on the cost of 'first-time' homelessness; life after transitional housing for homeless families; and strategies for improving access to mainstream benefits programs.

HUD's study, Costs Associated with First-Time Homelessness for Families and Individuals, examines how much it costs to house and serve nearly 9,000 individuals and families in six areas of the country. The report studies the cost of first-time homelessness among individuals in Des Moines, Iowa; Houston, Texas; and Jacksonville, Florida. In addition, the Department looked at the cost of first-time family homelessness in Washington, DC; Houston, Texas; Kalamazoo, Michigan; and a large area of upstate South Carolina.

HUD also released two additional homeless studies today:

Life after Transitional Housing for Homeless Families

This study follows 195 families in 36 transitional housing programs in five communities for three, six and 12 months after leaving the program. Given the significant investment HUD makes in transitional housing programs, and in light of the program's costs mentioned above, it is important to understand the effectiveness of these programs. The five study communities were Cleveland/Cuyahoga County, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Houston and Harris and Benton Counties, Texas; San Diego City and County, California; and Seattle/King County, Washington.

Strategies for Improving Homeless People's Access to Mainstream Benefits and Services

HUD studied seven communities (Albany/Albany Co., NY; Albuquerque, NM; Metropolitan Denver; Miami-Dade Co., FL; Norfolk, VA; Portland, ME; and Pittsburgh/Allegheny Co., PA) to document how communities mobilized to improve homeless people's access to mainstream benefits and services in light of HUD's goal of dedicating a larger portion of HUD homeless assistance funding to housing.

For more information, click here. 

Priced Out in 2006

Technical Assistance Collaborative's biennial study verifies that low-income people with disabilities are experiencing a national housing affordability crisis.  Published in collaboration with the CCD Housing Task Force with funding from the Melville Charitable Trust. Click here for more information.

Section 8 Made Simple: 2nd Edition (June 2003)

Technical Assistance Collaborative's  guidebook contains practical information to assist people with disabilities and the entire disability community to navigate through the Section 8 program more successfully.  Click here for more information.

The Broker "Tax": Brokers Gouge Borrowers with Weaker Credit

If you and your neighbor have the same financial qualifications and apply for the same type of home loan, you would expect to get about the same interest rate.  Not necessarily so according to research we released today.  Steered Wrong: Brokers, Borrowers and Subprime Loans  shows that for people with weaker credit, brokers consistently charge significantly more than direct lenders.

During the first four years of a mortgage, a typical subprime borrower who gets a mortgage through a broker pays $5,222 more than if he or she had obtained the loan directly from a lender.

This research released by Center for Responsible Lending was based on an analysis of 1.7 million mortgages made between 2004 and 2006 to people representing the full credit spectrum. To find out more, please click here, where you can download the full report.   

The Best Value in the Subprime Market: State Predatory Lending Reforms

The Center for Responsible Lending released new research showing that strong state laws do the best job of protecting credit-strapped families from predatory lending in the subprime mortgage market. The study shows that abusive lending drops significantly in states with strong laws, yet borrowers in the subprime market still have ready access to credit. In the most surprising finding, the research also shows that borrowers in states with predatory lending laws pay comparable interest rates for subprime mortgages -- and often even lower rates. Click here to download the report.

Same Risks, Higher Prices: Race, Ethnicity Translate into Higher-Rate Loans

The Center for Responsible Lending has also released Same Risks, Higher Prices: Race, Ethnicity Translate into Higher-Rate Loans.  In this study, which examined 50,000 subprime loans, CRL found that African-Americans and Latinos are almost a third more likely to get a high-priced loan than white borrowers with the same credit scores. To download this report, click here.
 

Losing Ground

A new Center for Responsible Lending study reveals that 2.2 Million borrowers face foreclosure on subprime home loans, and will lose as much as $164 billion due to foreclosures in the subprime mortgage market.

The Losing Ground study is the first comprehensive, nationwide review of millions of subprime mortgages originated from 1998 through the third quarter of 2006. CRL finds that despite low interest rates and a favorable economic environment during the past several years, the subprime market has experienced high foreclosure rates, and we project that one out of five (19.4%) subprime loans issued during 2005-2006 will fail.

The report discusses a number of factors that drive subprime foreclosures—these include adjustable rate mortgages with steep built-in rate and payment increases, prepayment penalties, limited income documentation, and no escrow for taxes and insurance.  For more information and to visit CRL's website, click here.  To download this report in .pdf format, click here.

Don't Buy the Myths: Renting Can Be A Smart Investment

Homeownership is not always the best alternative for people.  Every year, thousands of Americans enter into homeownership for the wrong reasons, and often could have saved money by renting.  Click here to download the report, Don't Buy the Myths: Renting Can Be A Smart Investment, published by the National Multi Housing Council and the National Apartment Association.

32 Years of Housing Data: 1973-2005

Click here to download a new report, 32 Years of Housing Data, available from the HUD USER web site. You can find the report in the "AHS Based Analyses" section of that page.

This report uses the national American Housing Surveys from 1973 through 2005 to take a long view of how the American housing stock has changed over the past three decades. Aimed at a general audience, it is filled with color graphs and tables that demonstrate the changing characteristics of the housing units in which we live. This document will make a useful supplement for anyone teaching a class in urban studies, housing, or similar subjects. Nonprofit, trade, and advocacy groups may want to keep it on hand to show their stakeholders just how much things have changed and the directions of current trends.

The appendix tables will also be useful to data analysts. Have you ever found yourself going through volume after volume of the AHS reports, just to pull out one or two numbers from each in order to construct a time series? The appendices save you the trouble. While they certainly don't contain every statistic in the AHS reports, the main housing indicators are all organized by year, ready to be copied from the PDF and pasted into your spreadsheet.

State-by-State Analysis Shows Link Between Children's Health, Parents' Income, Education Levels

The health of children is affected by the education and income levels of their parents, according to a state-by-state study published by the Commission to Build a Healthier America at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. For the study, researchers measured infant mortality rates and the general health of children in each state based on data from surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and CDC.

The study found that nationwide infant mortality rates increased by 50% when mothers did not complete high school. Nationwide, the infant mortality rate was 6.5 deaths per 1,000 live births, the study found. Mississippi had the highest infant mortality rate at 9.9 deaths per 1,000 live births and Massachusetts had the lowest rate at 4.6 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the study.

In addition, the study compared the percentages of children with "optimal" health -- based on assessments by parents of whether the health of their children ranged from "poor" to "excellent" -- in families with annual incomes that ranged from the federal poverty level to four times that amount.  As income levels increased, parents were more likely to report the health of their children as excellent, the study found.

Nationwide, the study found that 15.9% of children are not at optimal health. Texas had the highest percentage of children who are not at optimal health at 22.8%, and Vermont had the lowest percentage at 6.9%, the study found. Texas also had the highest percentage of children in lower-income families who are not at optimal health at 44.1%, as well as the largest gap between the percentage of children in lower-income families who are not at optimal health and the percentage of those in higher-income families who are not at optimal health, according to the study. According to the study, states in the South and Southwest have the largest gaps, and states in the northern Midwest, northern Great Plains and Northeast have the smallest gaps.

The study is available here.

NYU Study: Permanent housing for homeless does NOT depress property values

A new study examines the impact on property values of developing residences for disabled and formerly homeless people in New York City, and finds that supportive housing actually increased property value growth within a two block radius. Conducted by New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, the study is the first to measure the effect of supportive housing on New York City real estate. Analyzing properties near 123 buildings that provide 7,500 units of housing, it is the largest study of its kind in the nation. 

New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy examined residences built between 1985 and 2003 across a wide array of neighborhoods in an attempt to isolate the impact of supportive housing from other factors that affect property values.  The Center’s report, “The Impact of Supportive Housing on Surrounding Neighborhoods: Evidence from New York City” was released November 6, 2008.

Key Findings

• Over the first five years following construction, the values of properties within two blocks of a supportive housing building rose three to four per cent more than comparable properties not located near supportive housing. 
• The majority of buildings in the sample were located in the higher-density boroughs of Manhattan (49%), the Bronx (25%) and Brooklyn (23%). However, neighborhood density did not affect the relationship between residences and property values, indicating that housing developments have the same benign effect in more sparsely populated neighborhoods.
• While buildings studied range from less than 10 tenants to more than 400, the study found no link between a residence’s size and its effect on nearby property values.  This finding runs counter to the common perception that larger residences are more likely to affect real estate values nearby. 

For the full study visit www.shnny.org.

Balancing Durable Affordability and Wealth Creation: Responding to Concerns about Shared Equity Homeownership

This report explores the potential of shared equity homeownership to balance long-term affordability and asset-building objectives, and how to better understand and respond to community concerns over limiting wealth creation.  Prepared for the Annie E. Casey Foundation by the Center for Housing Policy, and written by Rick Jacobus and Ryan Sherriff.  Click here to read the report

Other National Links

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