Tag: affordability
What Can Be Done When LIHTC Affordability Restrictions Expire?
The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program has helped create more than 3 million affordable units across the country. But if something isn’t done soon, thousands of those homes could be lost forever as affordability periods expire.
Using Multiple Community-Based Land Trusts to Save Farmland
Agrarian Commons closely resemble community land trusts, but they are unique in that they work collectively to provide long-term affordable and equitable access of small and mid-sized farms.
Opinion: Make the Cost of Home Something We Can All Afford
Two former HUD secretaries come together to help launch a national housing affordability advocacy campaign that calls on local, state, and federal officials (and candidates) to come up with credible solutions to solve the nation’s housing emergency.
Whose Affordable Housing Crisis?
Being priced out of appreciating neighborhoods is not the housing affordability problem most Americans face. But they are facing one.
Millennials and the Affordability Crisis: A Review of Generation Priced Out
As tenant struggles become a bigger focus of activist recruitment, Randy Shaw’s new book, Generation Priced Out, is an essential organizing guide.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, May 4
A Trauma-Centered Approach to Youth Violence in Cleveland | We May Know Who Benefits From Port Covington | What Housing Crisis? | Clearing Homeless Encampments in Philadelphia | Restaurant Tax for Affordable Housing
Interrupting Inequality Through Community Control of Land
Our belief is that community in CLTs emerges not from the simple fact of membership, but from the relationships, cooperative efforts—and disputes–of those occupying and making decisions over the land.
Community Ownership Redefines ‘Highest and Best Use’
The “highest and best use” of real estate should be the maximum fulfillment of social, environmental, and economic benefit for the greatest number of stakeholders including future generations.
Slow Building of Community on Lopez Island
Lopez Community Land Trust combined community control of land, permanent affordability, permaculture principles, a net-zero energy goal, green designs, individual empowerment and fun, into one ambitious housing development project.
The Linchpin of a Just Housing System
A vision is rooted in the belief that housing is a human right, not a commodity to maximize profit. Homes For All believes it is possible to create a just housing system in which everyone has affordable and dignified housing.
Community Control Gives Families Hope for the Future
Because we have our own home we have the liberty to dream, act, and influence our community. We have a unique opportunity as land trust homeowners as we are part of affordable homeownership today, tomorrow, and forever.
Shelter Shorts—The Week in Community Development, March 30
Helping Cannabis Entrepreneurs of Color | The "Business" of Homelessness | Housing Is a Mental Health Issue | Justice for Wage Theft Victims | 2020 Census Already Off to a Bad Start?
After Paying for Housing, How Much is Enough for Basic Necessities?
We need some standards to explain what “enough” means. Here's a breakdown of the Family Budget Calculator, the Self-Sufficiency Standard, and the Housing Poverty Measure.
The Secret History of Area Median Income
AMI is typically used to determine whether a person is eligible for housing assistance. But in a large and wealthy area like the New York City metro, the resulting definitions of “low income” are often skewed, leaving out those who really need the help.
The 30 Percent Rent-to-Income Ratio Doesn’t Add Up in NYC
The 30 percent standard only ‘works’ in calculations where it is irrelevant. The residual-income approach, on the other hand, can turn what all too often becomes an abstract and theoretical discussion into a series of researchable questions.
In Defense of the 30 Percent of Income to Housing Affordability...
At an individual level, the 30 percent standard and the residual-income standard can produce very different results. But as a regional measure of affordability problems, they’re not so far apart.
Affordability: The 30 Percent Standard’s Blinders
Using a simple cost-to-income ratio to measure affordability doesn’t give us a good picture of who is really burdened by housing cost. We need a different approach.
How Should We Measure Housing Affordability?
The simplicity of the 30 percent standard is also its downfall. We don’t expect people of differing incomes or family sizes to pay the same percentage of their income in taxes—why would the same percentage work for housing costs?
Vision, Not Just Critique
In the Spring 2017 issue of Shelterforce, we talk about something that comes up daily for many people working in the community development field—what does housing affordability mean? Crafting practical policies to back up our vision requires that we be thoughtful about all of the pieces.
Q: Do inclusionary housing requirements make housing prices go up for...
A: No, they do not. Market-rate developers are business people. They charge as much as the market will bear. When housing prices go up . . .