Housing Law Commons^™

Do Americans Support More Housing?, Michael Lewyn

Scholarly Works

An analysis of opinion poll data on housing issues. The article finds that Americans generally believe that their community needs more housing of all types, but are more closely divided about whether such housing should be in their own neighborhoods. The article further finds that members of minority groups, lower-income Americans, and younger Americans are more pro-housing than older, affluent whites.

Affirmatively Furthering Health Equity, Mary Crossley

Articles

Pervasive health disparities in the United States undermine both public health and social cohesion. Because of the enormity of the health care sector, government action, standing alone, is limited in its power to remedy health disparities. This Article proposes a novel approach to distributing responsibility for promoting health equity broadly among public and private actors in the health care sector. Specifically, it recommends that the Department of Health and Human Services issue guidance articulating an obligation on the part of all recipients of federal health care funding to act affirmatively to advance health equity. The Fair Housing Act’s requirement that …

Exclusionary Megacities, Wendell Pritchett, Shitong Qiao

All Faculty Scholarship

Human beings should live in places where they are most productive, and megacities, where information, innovation and opportunities congregate, would be the optimal choice. Yet megacities in both China and the U.S. are excluding people by limiting housing supply. Why, despite their many differences, is the same type of exclusion happening in both Chinese and U.S. megacities? Urban law and policy scholars argue that Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) homeowners are taking over megacities in the U.S. and hindering housing development therein. They pin their hopes on an efficient growth machine that makes sure “above all, nothing gets in the way of building.” …

Affordable Housing For Sustainable Cities: A North American Perspective, Detroit Metropolitan Area And Montreal (Quebec), Courtney Lauren Anderson, Maryse Grandbois

Faculty Publications By Year

Housing is an integral part to elevating and maintaining a quality of life to ensure a healthy and productive citizenship. The overwhelming number of citizens in Montreal and the United States who are unable to find housing that is less than 33% of their income stifles that economic progression of individuals and the society in which these individuals live. The ability for cities to dictate their own plans for creating and maintaining affordable housing without mandates from the federal vacillates among the various levels of government with each level having certain positive and negative elements. Although city autonomy can provide …

The Smart Cities Movement And Advancing The International Battle To Eliminate Homelessness - Barcelona As Test Case, John Travis Marshall, Jessica Venegas

Faculty Publications By Year

Barcelona is a leader in the smart cities movement, a movement that aims to help cities deliver services to citizens more efficiently and economically as a way of making the city a more inviting and inclusive place to live and work. As with any city committed to forward-looking economic, social, and urban development initiatives, it is important to consider whether ambitious goals to reinvent the city include an agenda to solve the persistent problems that have faced major cities for decades, including affordable housing and caring for roofless or homeless men and women. This article ties together the challenges Barcelona …

Alleviating Barcelona's Public Housing Shortages Through Historic Properties, Ryan Rowberry

Faculty Publications By Year

Creating public housing space in Barcelona requires rethinking how its historic properties might maintain their cultural and structural vitality while serving critical social and economic needs. Drawing on programs from the United States, Europe, and China, I suggest two strategies that Catalan officials might use to effectively leverage Barcelona's historic properties to reduce its public housing deficit. The first strategy considers successful financial incentives promoting public housing in historic properties within the United States - the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit - and proposes how the Catalan government might find seed money to fund …

Rapid Re-Housing Of Families Experiencing Homelessness In Massachusetts: Maintaining Housing Stability, Tim H. Davis, Terry S. Lane

Center for Social Policy Publications

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“Recovery Act”) provided $1.5 billion for the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP), a temporary program that addressed both homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing of families already experiencing homelessness. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allocated $44.5 million, including $26.1 million to individual Massachusetts communities and $18.4 million to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Of its funds, the state allocated $8.3 million for rapid re-housing of families who were living in shelters or motels.

This report explores the experiences of 486 of these families who received rapid re-housing assistance …

Maturing Subsidized Mortgages: The Next Frontier Of The Expiring Use Crisis, Emily Achtenberg

Center for Social Policy Publications

Over approximately the next decade, close to 17,000 affordable housing units could be lost in Massachusetts as their federally- and state-subsidized mortgages mature, terminating all associated use and affordability restrictions. Most of this housing, developed 30-40 years ago under various federal and state mortgage subsidy programs, is only partially assisted with project-based Section 8 rental subsidy; but 100% of the units are affordable due to budget-based (and tiered) rent restrictions.

To the extent that the properties have Section 8 assistance, the maturing mortgage crisis overlaps with larger crisis of expiring Section 8 subsidy contracts. However, the unique characteristics of this …

Expanding Homeownership Opportunity Ii: The Softsecond Loan Program, 1991-2006, Jim Campen

Gastón Institute Publications

This report provides data on lending by the SoftSecond Loan Program during the most recent three-year period (2004-2006) as well as over the sixteen-year life of the program. The Mortgage Lending Committee of the Massachusetts Community & Banking Council (MCBC) has had a special interest in the SoftSecond program since its inception and has carefully monitored the performance of its loans. The report updates an earlier report prepared for MCBC by the present author in 2004: Expanding Homeownership Opportunity: The SoftSecond Loan Program, 1991-2003. Detailed information about the origins and evolution of the program, and about the details of …

Borrowing Trouble Vii: Higher-Cost Mortgage Lending In Boston, Greater Boston, And Massachusetts, 2005, Jim Campen

Gastón Institute Publications

Six years ago, in response to numerous reports of the growth of predatory lending, the Massachusetts Community & Banking Council (MCBC) – whose Board of Directors has an equal number of bank and community representatives – commissioned a study of subprime refinance lending in the city of Boston and surrounding communities. The resulting report, Borrowing Trouble? Subprime Mortgage Lending in Greater Boston, 1999, was the first detailed look at subprime lending in the city of Boston and in twenty-seven surrounding communities.

This is the seventh report in the annual series begun by that initial study. Over the years, the …

Borrowing Trouble? Vi: High-Cost Mortgage Lending In Greater Boston, 2004, Jim Campen

Gastón Institute Publications

Five years ago, in response to numerous reports of the growth of predatory lending, both locally and nationwide, the Massachusetts Community & Banking Council (MCBC) – whose Board of Directors has an equal number of bank and community representatives – commissioned a study of subprime refinance lending in the city of Boston and surrounding communities. The resulting report, Borrowing Trouble? Subprime Mortgage Lending in Greater Boston, 1999, was the first detailed look at subprime lending in the city of Boston and in twenty-seven surrounding communities.

This is the sixth report in the annual series begun by that initial study. …

Borrowing Trouble? V: Subprime Mortgage Lending In Greater Boston, 2000-2003, Jim Campen

Gastón Institute Publications

Four years ago, in response to numerous reports of the growth of predatory lending, both locally and nationwide, the Massachusetts Community & Banking Council (MCBC) – whose Board of Directors has an equal number of bank and community representatives – commissioned a study of subprime refinance lending in the city of Boston and surrounding communities. The resulting report, Borrowing Trouble? Subprime Mortgage Lending in Greater Boston, 1999, was the first detailed look at subprime lending in the city of Boston and in twenty-seven surrounding communities.

This is the fifth report in the annual series begun by that initial study. …

Expanding Homeownership Opportunity: The Softsecond Loan Program, 1991-2003, Jim Campen

Gastón Institute Publications

The SoftSecond Loan Program emerged at the end of a tumultuous year of struggle over community reinvestment issues that began on January 11, 1989. The lead story in that day’s Boston Globe reported that a draft study by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston had found that there was a pattern of “racial bias” in Boston’s mortgage lending, that the number of mortgage loans in the predominantly black neighborhoods of Roxbury and Mattapan would have been more than twice as great “if race was not a factor,” and that “this racial bias is both statistically and economically significant.” …

Seniors In Public Housing, Jan Mutchler, Francis G. Caro

Gerontology Institute Publications

In recent years, the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) discovered that nearly 40% of the seniors (residents aged 62 and over) living in their public housing developments were living in family housing developments rather than in senior/disabled housing developments. Administrators at the BHA were aware that some seniors lived in family developments, but they were committed to learning more systematically about this population and their needs. They turned to the Gerontology Institute at the University at Massachusetts Boston as a partner in this effort. With funding from the Boston Foundation, the collaboration resulted in a research and policy development effort on …

''Step On A Crack, Break Your Mother's Back'': Poor Moms, Myths Of Authority, And Drug-Related Evictions From Public Housing, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Shelter Poverty: Housing Affordability Among Asian Americans, Michael E. Stone

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

Relatively little research has been conducted that focuses on the housing situation of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans (hereafter generally referred to as Asian Americans), especially on the national level. From a review of about 30 articles and reports over the past decade that examine racial/ethnic housing situations nationally, only one specifically addressed housing problems of Asian Americans (Hansen, 1986) while two others included Asian Americans along with other populations of color. Of the remaining articles, most used the terms race, racial discrimination, or segregation in their titles, yet did not include Asian Americans in the studies. Of particular note, …

Community-Based Housing: Potential For A New Strategy, Rachel G. Bratt

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

While the housing problem in the United States has changed since Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed that "one-third of the nation is ill-housed," it has by no means disappeared. For most low-income people, and to a lesser extent for moderate income people, housing still presents formidable problems.

Academics and housing analysts recognize four major aspects of the housing problem: affordability (ratio of housing costs to income), adequacy (including quality and overcrowding), neighborhood conditions, and availability. Over the past decade, the nature of the country's housing problem has undergone some important transformations.

Until ten years ago the phrase "housing problem" conjured up …

Housing Issues In Boston: Guidelines For Options And Strategies, Joseph S. Slavet

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

Most of the recent analyses of Boston's housing problem reveal a complex and contradictory mix of positive trends and negative factors, clouded by a growing percentage of poor and near-poor resident households in the City and declining commitments by the federal government to housing, particularly for subsidies of new housing production.

That Boston's housing problem, unlike that of many other large cities, is of manageable proportions, however, is attributable mainly to the following demographic trends and forecasts that are not likely to exacerbate the problem and that many even ease some of the most serious current and future pressures of …

Boston's Housing In 1984: Issues And Opportunities, Rolf Goetze

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

Sharp cutbacks in federal aid for housing and community development now challenge Boston to become more resourceful in its housing strategies. In the neighborhoods where new solutions are needed, much has already been happening that can be adapted and expanded. Fortunately, the City's resurgence can also help achieve more results with less public resources, but a fresh approach involving community interests is essential. At the same time, local laws, procedures and programs devised to address past problems must also be critically re-evaluated to determine their appropriateness to the new realities.

Confidence in Boston's future is being uplifted, and many neighborhoods …

Issues Facing Boston: 1984, Housing, Phillip L. Clay

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

The housing problem in Boston is one issue facing the new council which offers both opportunity and complexity. In a city where 70 percent of the households are tenants, where incomes are low and housing expensive, and where major demographic and economic changes are taking place, easy answers are not available. But housing, unlike other issues, is a matter over which the city has some leverage so that progress will be noted and appreciated by an increasingly attentive electorate.

In recent years, the city has not faced the challenge of greater local discretion in housing policy (made available by the …

Shelter Poverty In Boston: Problem And Program, Michael E. Stone

John M. McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies Publications

This paper argues, first, that most housing problems—in Boston and throughout the nation—are ultimately the result of the squeeze between inadequate incomes, on the one hand, and the cost of profitably providing housing on the other. It is also argued that housing cost and incomes together are the most decisive determinants of the overall quality of life of families and communities. Third, it is contended that the long history of inadequate attempts to cope with the affordabiiity problem have not only failed to solve the problem, but have indeed contributed significantly to the broader and serious problems of the overall …

Housing Issues In Boston: Guidelines For New Policy And Program Perspectives, Joseph S. Slavet, Boston Urban Observatory, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Boston Urban Observatory Publications

Urban stagnation and turbulence, the roller-coaster trends In the national and local economy and the vicissitudes of national, state and local public policies have left their mark on Boston's residential neighborhoods and housing markets.

Boston's response to the new opportunities of public policy during the sixties and seventies was to take full advantage of urban renewal, assis ted-housing production and housing rehabilitation. Large-scale activities reshaped the occupancy patterns and market strengths of residential neighborhoods. By mid-1975, however, except for continuing growth in the City's subsidized housing stock, Boston's housing future looked bleak. There was pervasive evidence of a growing housing …

The Insurance Classification Controversy, Regina Austin

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Evaluation Of City Of Boston Fair Housing Programs: The Final Report, Boston Urban Observatory, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Boston Urban Observatory Publications

The City of Boston's 3-year Pair Housing Plan (1981-83) identifies the following six goals for achieving greater freedom of choice in housing for its minority residents: 1) To improve the delivery of services relative to the enhancement of freedom of choice to all minorities in Boston as they relate to fair housing; 2) To increase enforcement of fair housing laws; 3) To increase public safety and security to assure equal access throughout the City of Boston; 4) To Increase the participation of all minorities and low-and moderate-income people in all City of Boston housing programs; 5) To increase low-cost housing …

Substandard Housing And The Cost Of Providing Housing-Related Services, David Podoff, Daniel A. Primont, Louis Esposito, Boston Urban Observatory, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Boston Urban Observatory Publications

Designed as a comparative undertaking by the National League of Cities (NLC) , this study is officially entitled "National Research Agenda Project No. 5: Substandard Housing and the Cost of Providing Housing-Related Services." A similar study was carried out by the urban observatories in Denver and Nashville. According to the study scope of services, the NLC was interested in the cost of "a wide variety of local government activities ... required to support and service urban housing," and how these costs "are affected by housing quality, housing location, age and type of structures. ..." It was also suggested that attention …

The Impact Of Housing Inspectional Services On Housing Maintenance In The City Of Boston: A Preliminary Evaluation, Boston Urban Observatory, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Boston Urban Observatory Publications

This study is a preliminary evaluation of the relative impacts of various City policies and programs related to the enforcement of housing codes and to the maintenance and upgrading of the existing supply of housing. It analyzes code enforcement functions at both the level of central administration and field procedures. City departments covered by the study include Housing Inspection (HID), Building, and the environmental unit of Health and Hospitals. Also reviewed are newer approaches to housing code enforcement, including civil remedies and federally-assisted concentrated code enforcement projects.