Housing Issues Of Affordable Housing

As part of our final report we are expected to select a planning issue within the City of Boston and undertake an analysis of the issue from a planning perspective. An issue that the City of Boston is dealing with that caught my attention was the lack of affordable housing available to its current and future residents. As cities start to evolve and attract large amounts of people, they also face some drawbacks that can affect where and how city residents can live. Our trip to Boston, Massachusetts opened my eyes to the city’s housing issue and its increasing housing and land values. An issue of this nature often causes residents to be pushed out of the city, into the suburbs or can cause homelessness. Low to moderate income families and youth across the City of Boston are struggling to pay rent and make ends meet. After our meeting with the Boston Housing Authority, I wanted to further explore the issue of housing affordability so I reached out to the City’s Department of Neighborhood Development for more information This paper will look into some topics such as when housing became an issue in the city, if Boston’s student population plays a role, if there any shortcomings in terms of how the city plans for affordable housing, if there are any specific programs in place that deal with affordable housing and if Boston is looking into what other cities may be doing.

The National Law Center on Homelesness and Poverty. “Homelessness stems from a lack of affordable housing. Increasing rents, destruction of traditional low-income housing, and cuts in federal housing programs threaten affordable housing with extinction.”

The problems that arise from housing are numerous. Housing takes up more than half of all real property tax. Not only that, it’s also the largest issue in a family’s budget. The federal government spent $38 billion in preferential subsidies and $2 trillion on housing in total in the year 2006. Rigid zoning codes prohibit certain types of housing from being built. This prevents some citizens from being provided with homes that fit their budget and ads to the chronic problem of homelessness our communities face. Too many houses can crowd neighborhoods and make transit difficult. They can also obstruct view and, when foreclosed upon, lead to plummeting property values.

Those who cannot afford the high prices of housing are often forced out into the streets where they face a very uncertain future due to the number of abuses they encounter daily from all walks of life, with the most damning being the vagrancy laws that come into vogue in areas that are getting gentrified, which many cities have passed to “protect” their newfound assets and tax base from the “lowering” of property values. Furthermore, when cities such as Los Angeles demand that property developers set aside affordable housing for lower income people, they get sued in court, such as in 2009, when real estate developer Geoffrey Palmer successfully sued in order to overturned an ordnance which required that. This was also the same man who also proposed building a footbridge connecting two of his buildings to minimize contact with people he deemed undesirable (Davis).

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,

It is often easy to castigate large cities or third world countries as failures in the field of affordable housing, yet the crisis, like an invisible cancer, manifests itself in many forms, plaguing both urban and suburban areas. Reformers have wrestled passionately with the issue for centuries, revealing the severity of the situation in an attempt for change, while politicians have only responded with band aid solutions. Unfortunately, the housing crisis easily fades from our memory, replaced by visions of homeless vets, or starving children. Metropolis magazine explains that “…though billions of dollars are spent each year on housing and development programs worldwide, ? At least 1 billion people

“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.

Given evidence of the effect of race on housing issues, even as it relates to home ownership, an exploration of the empirical evidence in how it manifests within rental markets is necessary. One of the leading researchers in the contemporary study of eviction is Matthew Desmond. In “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty (2012), he combines statistical and ethnographic analyses to investigate the ramifications of eviction on the lives of the urban poor. The primary independent variable in this study was gender, while the dependent was eviction rates as a percentage. Half of his quantitative analysis involved extracting legal records or court-ordered evictions that took place in Milwaukee County between 2003 to 2007 (n=29,960) (“Eviction and the Reproduction” 91). Using addresses, eviction records were merged with population estimates of Milwaukee’s 880 block groups (“neighborhoods”), and yearly eviction rates for each block group were calculated by gender and pooled to calculate annual averages (Eviction and Reproduction 94). Then risk ratios and differences were determined using 3 different samples: all groups with at least 1 male and female evictee, high poverty block groups where more than 40% of the population lived at or below 150% of the poverty line, and hyper-segregated neighborhoods where at least 85% of residents were same race/ethnicity (Eviction and Reproduction 94). While these measures provided reliable and exact measures of incidence and location,

The readings for this week fall under the umbrella of “Issues in Housing Policy”, more specifically race, discrimination and segregation. Looking at this topic with the naked eye may lead one to conclude that these issues are age-old, but by looking at the occurrences within the housing policy we can very much conclude that these drawbacks still remain and are salient to the present. To begin, the Schwartz piece highlights that housing policies are mandated to condemn the discriminatory practices that plague real estate and mortgage markets, where African-Americans and other minorities are at a “decided disadvantage”. However, the federal laws passed, such as the Fair Housing Act of 1968, prohibiting racial discrimination by real estate

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

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

The accuracy is primarily due to Routhier’s extensive use of graphs and statistics, which provide visual depictions of the issues being discussed. The accuracy of this article is further seen through its use of citations, listed at the bottom of the page where each citation is used, for each statistic and graph presented in the article, making the evidence used in the article credible. One source Routhier used comes from the Metropolitan Council on Housing, which was used when discussing the lack of affordable housing available in New York City. The article she used states, “Many neighborhoods that used to be affordable to people of modest means have seen rents skyrocket, and the only reason why most long-time tenants are able to stay in the communities where they set roots is because of our rent-regulation laws” (Metropolitan Council on Housing). This directly connects with Routhier’s argument regarding unaffordable housing. The direct connections display both the credibility and accuracy of the source. While the article’s primary focus is the homeless population in New York City as of the year 2017, it covers a vast number of variables involved. Such variables include individuals, families, those living in shelters, and those who are not living in shelters. Each variable is covered through both Routhier’s written account and visuals, which analyze

Lack of housing supply is the major issue that leads to the crisis of housing affordability. As a group, we will be researching solutions of providing greater housing supply in California. Our first step is to identify the issue and the multiple causes that contribute to the problem. In addition to memos provide by team members that focus on components of housing supply shortage in California generally, this memo will focus on the supply shortage in coastal metros of California, including a comprehensive view of the consequences and causes of the issue.

The lack of affordable housing in the United States is a problem that doesn 't receive nearly the attention that it necessitates. This absence of affordable housing became especially prevalent following World War II when suburbanization spread across the country like wildfire. Although the sheer number of homes increased, Jim Crow segregation influenced housing policy, meaning that white institutions prevented blacks from obtaining the mortgages needed to afford such homes. Therefore, rather than accept subprime loans, which often result in foreclosure, many black people have been pigeonholed into paying exorbitant rates for dilapidated rental properties located in inner-cities, thereby creating the affordable housing problem. Although the situation seems bleak, with careful planning and execution, we can solve the affordable housing problem. Specifically, my proposal involves the following two components: the government must first revise and draft three forms of legislation that create strict yet concise standards that landlords must follow, and then allocate federal funding to health and wellness programs within poor communities. By examining the contributing societal factors to the lack of affordable housing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then implementing the proposal mentioned above, one could potentially solve the affordable housing problem there and transpose the plan to other impoverished cities across the country.

Gentrification is a problem that is occurring in many communities. The city of Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles is one of the communities that the citizens of the community are notice new apartments build, galleries owner by rich people, and high prices for apartment the people are not able to afford to live there. Because the renewal of neighborhood environments that transform and attract middle and upper-class households and investors, creating problems for those who cannot afford rises of rents. According to O’Regan, “some of the biggest concerns about gentrification-potential displacement and increased rent burdens-are driven by rent or housing cost increases” (152). The only way to