![]() David Shulman, Senior Economist at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, says the single most helpful thing that city could do to address its affordability crisis would be to relax existing zoning measures and increase its housing stock. But decentralized housing policies come with their own set of challenges. That seems OK Republican administrations typically like pushing policy decisions to the states. The Harvard study also found that rural areas have higher incidence of substandard housing conditions, such as inadequate plumbing, and fewer plans in place that would allow growing aging populations to stay in their homes.Īll this to say: Any blanket policies from the HUD would fall on each state differently-a fact that has led many states and cities to confront housing affordability issues on their own. But not every state is home to a metropolis. ![]() A Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies Report from 2015 found that the number of cost-burdened renters (those who pay more than 30 percent of income on rent) has climbed steadily since 2001. Cities are rapidly becoming unaffordable, especially to renters. When it comes to housing, all states are not created equal. How much leeway can states expect to have when addressing their own affordable housing issues? This is a modern example of what affordable housing can look like-integrated, energy-efficient, and space-conscious-but people need to see that it’s possible. Take New York City’s new micro-apartment complexes at Carmel Place: 40 percent of the units were set aside for affordable housing, and eight of those were reserved for formerly homeless US veterans. But these days its an attitude that can impede opportunities for affordable housing, in particular, which often come packaged in new projects. Sometimes that's good not every kind of building fits every kind of landscape, and you could argue that NIMBYs stopped a lot of neighborhoods from getting razed for freeways in the 1970s. That's an acronym, in case you haven't seen it, for "Not In My Backyard," and it's a mindset that stymies development of all kinds. “But as soon as you call it 'affordable housing,' the existing residents shift into NIMBY.” “Everybody loves the middle class,” says Mechele Dickerson, a lawyer at the University of Texas and expert in housing and the middle class. Most people believe in the virtue of affordable housing-until someone files a plan for it on their block. And beyond the realm of public housing, middle-class residents in growing cities across America face an ongoing affordability crisis.Īs secretary of the HUD, Carson will oversee construction projects that create affordable housing. Carson hasn't yet pitched an alternate plan for desegregating communities without the Fair Housing Act and school bussing. These opinions will likely be called into question today, at 10 am EST, during Carson’s confirmation hearing. ![]() “There are reasonable ways to use housing policy to enhance the opportunities available to lower-income citizens," Carson wrote, "but based on the history of failed socialist experiments in this country, entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous." In a Washington Times op-ed last year, Carson took a stance against President Obama’s efforts to resuscitate the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which would require communities to ensure affordable housing opportunities for low-income and minority families. But he has strong opinions-primarily that HUD is mostly a failure. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, President-elect Trump’s choice for Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is neither a housing policy expert nor an urban planner.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |