Jumping Around

In the past couple of days, some new materials popped up into my In Box, and rather than going into them in-depth, I thought I'd summarize and link.

The National Housing Conference (NHC) has issued ten wonky recommendations relating to reform of the Government-Sponsored Enterprises (Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac).  After noting the key role both has played in the development of multi-family housing, not just single-family homes, NHC discusses the need for capital and the important role the government plays in multi-family housing financing.

The Center for Housing Policy (which is affiliated with NHC) focuses on researching solutions to housing issues.  They reviewed current research on housing affordability and and summarized them as thus:

Key Findings

• For every three units added to the rental stock between 1995 and 2005, two units were demolished or permanently removed from the inventory. Many of these new units target the higher end of the market and are unaffordable to lower-income renters.

• Only one in three poor renters benefits from housing assistance; as a result, nearly half of all renters pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing.

• For every 100 extremely low-income renter households, only 44 units were affordable to and occupied by such households (or vacant) in 2007.

• By 2013, more than one million subsidized units will reach the end of their use restrictions, giving property owners the opportunity to “opt out” of their contracts and threatening the loss of critically-needed affordable rentals.

I would like to call attention to the third point; one argument I've often heard in communities is "we already have enough affordable housing here" meaning housing with lower market rates than average, not those that are subsidized or tax-credit.  Unfortunately, they often don't consider how many are actually rented to people with low income.  People with disabilities living on limited benefits or who are underemployed, for example, often are priced out of the market because other households with higher incomes are more attractive to landlords.  I discussed this previously.

Finally, the Center for Housing Policy also looked into the question of whether or not home ownership is really better for children.  Reviewing some recent studies, data indicates that perhaps it's not the act of home ownership itself that benefits children, but the fact that the type of  parents who become homeowners are also the type of parents that have other characteristics that benefit children.  Other factors include school quality, neighborhood quality, and residential stability.  This is interesting because the heavy promotion of home ownership over the years both by federal government and by local communities are based on the belief that, well, to put it bluntly, homeowners are better people.  Or maybe a better way to put it would be home ownership makes people better. 

I've been arguing recently that not enough resources are devoted to renters.  Society works hard to help people become homeowners through housing counseling workshops, etc. but not as much is done on helping people become better renters.  Or making people better landlords.

Update: Missing link added in.