Affordable Housing Policy Case Study

The documentary San Francisco 2.0 examines how San Francisco city officials have given tax breaks to the Silicon Valley tech industry to move to San Francisco. These new techs companies have brought in a lot of wealth to the city, but at a cost. The majority of the low-income natives are being evicted or having their rents raised so high that they can't afford them. The gentrification of the city has impacted low-income districts (for example, the mission district known for its Latin immigrants) that the residents and the culture are being displaced. I believe the documentary is important for the study of the issue of gentrification because San Fransisco was known for being-counter culture, caring for the arts and for civil progress. The housing

Cowan D & Marsh. 2001. A Two Steps Forward: Housing Policy into the New Millennium. Policy Press

The Los Angeles County Board has allocated $25 million dollars to spend on new programs that promote social justice. I have developed a proposal to allocate the money to create affordable housing complexes in communities within the city. The communities selected for housing developments are Boyle Heights, Watts, Chinatown, Pico-Union and Elysian Park. The proposal includes spending all $25 million in five developments of affordable housing. Each housing development will have twenty five 2-bedroom apartments. A total of one hundred low income families will benefit in total. My proposal includes asking each family to pay a monthly rent of 1/4 of their monthly earnings. The monthly rent collected from tenants can be used to maintain the developments,

For the past fifty years the shift from meeting the housing needs of the poor through government projects-based housing to a more individual approach, has been slowly implemented. Housing vouchers now enable underprivileged populations to move from high-poverty, segregated neighborhoods to more un-segregated, low-poverty neighborhoods. Low-poverty neighborhoods have less crime, better opportunities for employment, and more diverse schooling options. Some housing advocates however, contend that housing assistance is unnecessary and is an income subsidy that should be combined with other social safety nets (Clark, W. 2008).

When the recession happened, and the housing market crashed in Los Angeles a few years back many people lost their homes. The foreclosure crisis displaced many homeowners, drove up demand, and rental prices increased. Now, it is almost two years later, and the dramatic rent increases continue to soar. There would be no issue with cost of living increase except; the increases in income have yet to make the same shifts. “In many cities, rent is rising out reach of

The problem is there is inevitably a lack of housing, due to homelessness and influx of people. Without enough housing, the prices of the homes will be very expensive; however, if there is not a balanced mix of luxury and affordable housing, those already living there will be forced to leave because they will not be able to maintain taxes and other increases that will be tacked on to housing expenses. In order to make this process a bit more feasible, New York created the “Inclusionary Zoning program.” This program required “that developers set aside a certain percentage of units in a new development as affordable units.” The issue with this zoning ordinance is that although it was stated as a “requirement” the city kept it as a voluntary process.” With the ordinance being voluntary and developers with a capitalist mentality, many developers opted out of adhering to the ordinance. Although the residents of New York may not be in the power broker or decision-making classification, many of its inhabitants have been there for many years. Unless there are efforts to make this ordinance mandatory, there will be much opposition to keep new development out.

California’s housing situation is severe compared to the rest of the United States. California is included in the top three states with the most “housing cost burdened individuals” (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 2015). In a list of 20 cities where rents were highest compared to income, 10 of the 20 cities were in California with Los Angeles, CA topping the list (Dewan, 2014). Opponents might say that households in poverty could never afford housing due to their impoverished state but poverty measures of California show that the abnormally high cost of housing in California makes matters more severe and causes the amount of households that are severely cost afflicted to increase. Furthermore, when poverty measures take into account California’s uniquely expensive and insufficient housing supply, the results show that housing costs contribute significantly to poverty. For example, when housing costs were included in the California Poverty Measure as well as federal Supplemental Poverty Measure, the poverty rates rose substantially (Wimer, Mattingly, & Levin, 2013) (Short, 2015). And when high housing costs were artificially substituted with low housing costs, poverty rates significantly dropped (Bohn, Danielson, & Levin, 2013). And it’s not just the poor who are affected! Even those who are moderate income earners are becoming financially burdened by high housing costs. Those who are moderately well off compared to low income earners are financially burdened by rent costs in expensive cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles, CA (Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University,

Affordable housing has become the paramount issue of cities and dense urban areas. San Francisco is the posterchild of an unaffordable city that regardless of immense investment from blue chip firms like Google, Facebook, and their ilk of startups evaluated at $1 billion or more, policymakers and elected officials must wrestle with the housing affordability crisis that is considered endogenous to swaths of homelessness and record statistics on crime. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has made affordable housing the centerpiece of his legislation and championed the cause as a social justice issue—neighborhoods must remain affordable to maintain diversity for all races, ethnicities, and low-income families. A small sample of 827 New Yorkers by the NY1-Baruch College City Poll found the main concern of respondents was affordable housing while crime, jobs, and homelessness were peripheral problems (Cuza, 2016). The public discourse on how to address housing across the United States has pointed to negative externalities that surround rent-regulation and homeownership. Conversely, for this essay I will present various cases in order to illustrate the housing crunch is influenced less by housing and land regulations, or antagonistic homeowners but is induced by global market forces.

“I took a trip to Oakland, California and fell in love with the area. We stayed at an Air B&B for the three days of our stay and the house was absolutely beautiful, it looked like my dream home. Despite all the glitz and glamour around us we noticed a large amount of homelessness compared to Columbus. We found out that this property is not someone’s home but a house used strictly as an Air B&B. When you hear something like that and see the amount of homelessness it makes you wonder how many of these homes are strictly for show? So after researching I found out, the reason for the rampant homelessness can be attributed to large increases in rent. Even worse, the cause for the increase is due to Silicon Valley” (Kasongo, 2017). Unfortunately, rent increasing virtually overnight is the reality of many low-income families. This situation is called gentrification and is felt throughout the world, from the Midwest, East coast or even Western Europe, no region is immune to this process. Gentrification in the Midwest is extensive and wide causing the displacement of many low-income minority residents which can lead to even bigger issues.

Housing allocation determinations and planning review powers were also passed down from the state to Councils of Government (COG), which served as regional planning commissions that were thought to be closer to municipal governments and less likely to be perceived as encroaching on local land use decision-making (Ramsey-Musolf para. 7). The need for regional, as opposed to decentralized housing policies, is significant: shortages of housing in one area simply push housing burdens to adjacent cities, exacerbating statewide levels of inequality. Unfortunately, a study cited in the Journal of Planning Literature found that this well-intentioned legislation has only created a production imbalance between LIH and MRH: though collective housing element compliance may have increased between 1990 and 1997, a sample of 53 California municipalities only produced 32% of its

The Leno Amendment can help solve some of the issues that surround the act, by imposing new restrictions and regulations that will hopefully reduce the number of “casualties”. In imposing fines for violations of the act and limiting the number of times the act can be enforced, California is headed in the right direction. However, it has some missteps, such as the lack of time extension for evicted tenants to find new homes. Despite this, the Leno Amendment is the right choice for California. As the Leno Amendment attempts to aid the financial situation of the tenants by giving them more time to relocate, as well as being paid relocation fees, the state of California is attempting to even out the wealth gap. The landlords gained the most money and made up smaller, but wealthier end of the spectrum, whereas the tenants gained the least, and made up the poor majority while the Ellis Act is in place. However, with the aid of the Leno Amendment, California is not only addressing the issue of greed and high tenant evictions, it is also taking a progressive step forward in the fight against the wealth

Mandatory inclusionary zoning violates the 5th and 14th Amendments. Lack of affordable housing across the country is an issue that has gained national attention, and some areas in the country have resorted to zoning strategies to address the problem. For example, builders in Seattle who take advantage of the Incentive Zoning program will receive additional floor area in exchange for including affordable housing units in their developments (Director’s Rule, 2015). In contrast, mandatory inclusionary zoning is the unconstitutional practice of requiring private developers to include a specified percentage of affordable housing in their projects (Lerman, 2006). Mandatory inclusionary zoning violates the Takings Clause of the 5th Amendment. It also violates the life, liberty and property interest protections of Due Process as well as the equal protection provisions under the 14th Amendment.

When cities begin their journey of being gentrified, many locals become displaced. Displacement is when locals are uprooted from their homes, due to outside factors, and forced to move elsewhere. According to the Urban Displacement Project conducted by U.C. Berkeley, “Gentrification results from both flows of capital and people. The extent to which gentrification is linked to racial transition differs across neighborhood contexts... Displacement takes many different forms—direct and indirect, physical or economic, and exclusionary—and may result from either investment or disinvestment” (U.C. Berkeley). Many people are coming into San Francisco’s Bay Area because of how diverse each element is. However, according to Census numbers, between 1990 and 2010, 35.7% of San Francisco’s black population dwindled (Bliss). 35.7% of the black community within San Francisco suffered from displacement. An additional 53% of low-income households in the Bay Area are at risk for displacement and gentrification (U.C. Berkeley). This has definitely left a dent within the diversity reputation held up by the Bay Area. When such a strong large part of people leave, The City will experience a shift in culture and community. Whether, it is the real estate, the food, the different cultures, the Bay Area has always been known for being different. Perhaps, this is why so many outsiders are coming in and buying up every piece of land they can. Whether their intentions were to purchase land and

We looked at a variety of ways to help alleviate this cost. Since one of the main issues causing high living costs in the Bay Area is shortage of housing one of the possible solutions could be building more housing. Possible problems here are that San Francisco itself is not too big of a city and in most cities of this type in the world the population density is increased by building tall buildings –

Affordable housing in the United States describes sheltering units with well-adjusted housing costs for those living on an average, median income. The phrase usually implies to applied rental or purchaser housing within the financial means of lower-income ranges specific to the demographics of any given area. However, affordable housing does not include those living in social housing owned by government and non-profit organizations. More specifically, the targeted range for housing affordability sets below 30 percent of a household's annual income, including all applicable taxes, utility costs and home owners insurance rates. If the mean income per household breaches the 30 percent mark, then the agreed status becomes labeled as