August 2010
Help Restore Post-Katrina NOLA Neighborhoods by Tearing Down the Freeway
As we reflect on the five years that have passed since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, we can observe both progress and much, much left to be done. Speaking at Xavier University yesterday, President Obama spoke for many when he…
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What? No Investment Opportunity?
Here’s a headline o’ the times, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal though it’s a shame that we were ever in a place where buying a home was anything other than buying a place to live: “Fed’s Hoenig: Mistake To View Housing As Investment Opportunity.” The article stemmed from a statement issued by Thomas Hoenig, president of Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, who said during testimony at a field hearing by the U.S. House Financial Services Committee’s oversight and investigations subcommittee in Overland Park, Kan. that “if the American people are looking at the housing market to be their investment opportunity, I think they are making a mistake.” This no-brainer comes with the news that, for the 17th month in a row, foreclosure filings have topped 300,000. In July alone, In 92,858 homes were repossessed, according to a New York Times editorial that cited data provided by RealtyTrac. “As repossessed homes are put up for sale, house prices are likely to fall further. As prices fall, more borrowers end up “underwater” — owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. That’s a big risk factor for default, especially when coupled with high unemployment. Moody’s Economy.com estimates that 1.9 million homes will be lost this year, down only slightly from 2 million in 2009.” What’s more is that the editorial goes on to cite a staggering figure — and one that we already know — that fewer than 400,000 loans have been permanently modified through the administration’s loan modification program and that just over 1 percent — $3.21 million — of the program’s $30 billion allotment has been spent in the program that is voluntary for lenders. more
Instantly See Average Transportation Costs, Emissions for Any Location
The latest in the snazzy series of useful tools and research on housing and transportation costs published by the Center for Neighborhood Technology is called Abogo. It works like Walk Score: you enter an address and the site produces a GIS-coded map and data for that address, including the average amount of monthly spending per household for transportation in the address’s neighborhood and the average monthly amount of carbon emissions per household for transportation, in both cases compared to regional averages. CNT explains its methodology including, in part, the following: “We estimate total transportation costs for an average household from your region living in your neighborhood, including commuting, errands, and all the other trips around town. We count money spent on car ownership and use, as well as public transit use. For CO2 emissions, we count car use only. We use data from the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index, a project of the Center for Neighborhood Technology.” On my NRDC blog, I show not only the map and info for my house, which you see here – our location is below the regional average in both costs and emissions – but also for NRDC’s office neighborhood in DC and for my sister-in-law’s location in an outer suburb. Because of greater regional accessibility, we would expect the downtown location to perform best and the outer suburb to perform worst. That’s exactly the case. Check it out, here. Well done, CNT. Go here to try Abogo for yourself and for more information. more
In Chicago, a Partial Solution to the Foreclosure Crisis?
This week Chicago Alderman Pat Dowell, at the request of Action Now, the former Illinois chapter of Acorn, which broke away in 2008, and their allies, like Southwest Organizing Project, in the Foreclosure Convening, introduced a new ordinance that would…
Washington Post Misses the Point on Inclusionary Zoning
Earlier this week, The Washington Post featured an article by Jeffrey O’Connell headlined, “DC affordable housing policy has put up a goose egg.” The article casts a pall over the city’s new inclusionary zoning program, citing a city report to the effect that the law had created no new affordable homes in Washington between last August, when it went into effect, and March of this year. A little quick to judge a policy designed to produce long-range effects, don’t you think, six months during a recession? The city’s Department of Housing and Community Development summarizes the policy’s requirements and objectives: “Inclusionary Zoning requires that a certain percentage of units in a new development or a substantial rehabilitation that expands an existing building set aside affordable units in exchange for a bonus density. The goals of the program are to create mixed income neighborhoods; produce affordable housing for a diverse labor force; seek equitable growth of new residents; and increase homeownership opportunities for low and moderate income levels.” Worthy goals, those. If one stays with the Post story, one eventually comes to the more promising facts: development proposals requesting zoning approvals for 4800 homes have been submitted to the city. If those projects are approved and built, at least 430 new affordable homes (offered at below-market rents to qualifying applicants) will be included as part of the projects under inclusionary zoning. Further, building permits have already been sought for another 92 homes, eleven of which will be affordable because of the new policy. In other words, while the recession has dampened homebuilding since the rules took effect, over 400 affordable homes are in planning because of inclusionary zoning, representing nine percent of the new units coming on line. So which is the real story here? No one has argued that inclusionary zoning is a panacea for assuring access to housing for working families and other low- to moderate-income households. As a market-dependent strategy, its impacts will be greater when more homes are being built. But it is a valuable tool, as experience in communities across the country is indicating. For more commentary, go here. (Photo of mixed-income housing in Chicago by Payton Chung) more
Tassafaronga Village: Affordable Green, Gold and Platinum in East Oakland
Oakland, California’s Tassafaronga Village is a new mixed-income, green neighborhood development that is bringing a high degree of environmental excellence to a traditionally underserved portion of the city’s Elmhurst district. A federally assisted HOPE VI development built by the Oakland…
National Housing Institute
