The Affordable
Housing Bulletin
November 27, 2006
In Delaware
* DHC Annual Meeting,
Thursday, November 30, 2006
* Housing in a Hurry
* Delaware Among Leaders
in Tax Credit Use
* Ending
Homelessness in Delaware, February 23, 2007
Elsewhere
*
Shared Equity Homeownership
Report
*
Fair Market Rents for
Fiscal Year 2007
*
Prepaid/Opted-Out HUD Properties Compared to Others
*
American
Housing Survey 2005 Data Available
DHC Annual Meeting,
Thursday, November 30
The annual
membership meeting of the Delaware Housing Coalition will take place
Thursday, from 10 am to 1 pm in the conference room at NCALL Research in
Dover.
The
business meeting will include election of board members and officers, the
annual report to members, and the release of DHC’s Strategic Planning Report
which will guide its activities for the next three years.
Following
the business meeting there will be a panel discussion on “The Place of
Affordable Housing in a Wise Land Use Policy,” facilitated by Ellen Wasfi,
President of the League of Women Voters of Greater Dover. Panelists will be:
-
David Edgell, Office of State Planning Coordination
-
Karen Horton, Senior Planner, Delaware State Housing Authority
-
David Keifer, Sierra Club of Delaware
-
Michael Petit deMange, Kent County Department of Planning
After a
question and answer period, lunch will be served. Please RSVP to
dhc@housingforall.org or 302/678-2286 x101
Housing in a Hurry
The latest version
of Housing in a Hurry: A Guide to Finding Room in Delaware, is now
available on our website. Go to:
http://www.housingforall.org/index_hiah.htm Printed copies are available
by calling us at 302/678-2286 x100.
Delaware Among Leaders in
Tax Credit Use
Between 1995 and 2003 the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program
placed 145,000 units of family housing in neighborhoods with poverty rates
of less than 10%. This family housing represents 22% of all the LIHTC
housing placed in these areas. Based on this finding, the authors of a
recent study conclude, in their words, “the program has enormous potential
to provide opportunities for low-income families to live in solid,
middle-income neighborhoods,” but they also find this potential has been
realized unevenly.
The study,
prepared by Jill Khadduri, Larry Buron, and Carissa Climaco for the Poverty
& Race Research Action Council (PRRAC) and the National Fair Housing
Alliance (NFHA), looks at the income, race and ethnicity characteristics of
the census tracts in which LIHTC units were placed between 1995 and 2003.
The study focuses on units with more than one bedroom as potential “family
housing” and the analysis is limited to placements in metro areas with over
250,000 residents as the places where economic and racial separation are
predominantly found. In general, the study finds that low poverty
neighborhoods with LIHTC family housing are more likely to be in high growth
suburbs, with decreasing poverty rates and relatively low minority
concentrations.
Among the
states, the data show that Utah, New Hampshire, New York, Wisconsin
Delaware, Nebraska, and Colorado have placed the largest fraction of their
units in Census tracts with poverty rates below 10%. While there was also
some variation in terms of the racial composition of the neighborhoods in
which units were placed, with Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Arkansas
being the most likely to place units in neighborhoods with low minority
concentrations, few states placed more than half their units in census
tracts with less than half the rate for the metropolitan area as a whole.
As the study
makes clear, since there are no data on the actual tenants and occupancy of
the units, these findings only suggest the potential for economic and racial
deconcentration not the degree to which it is being achieved. Minority and
poor families may not have access or may not choose to live in units placed
in neighborhoods with low poverty rates and minority concentrations. Also,
there is no evidence if the developments themselves are integrated to any
degree.
The study,
Are States Using the Low Income Housing Tax Credit to Enable Families
with Children to Live in Low Poverty and Racially Integrated Neighborhoods?,
can be found at
www.prrac.org/pdf/LIHTC_report_2006.pdf .
Ending
Homelessness in Delaware, February 23, 2007
Please save the date! Ending Homelessness in Delaware: Learn,
Collaborate, Succeed... is a statewide conference being held Friday,
February 23, 2007, from 8:30-4:30 pm at Clayton Hall Conference Center,
University of Delaware. For more information visit:
www.udel.edu/ccrs/homelessnessconference
Shared Equity Homeownership
Report
The National Housing Institute has published a new report examining the
programs and performance of community land trusts, limited equity
cooperatives, and deed-restricted houses and condominiums. The report is
entitled Shared Equity Homeownership: the Changing Landscape of
Resale-Restricted, Owner-occupied Housing. Free downloads are available
from NHI's website (www.nhi.org) and from the CLT Resource Center at the
website of Burlington Associates in Community Development (
www.burlingtonassociates.com
). [NACLTNetwork]
Fair Market Rents for
Fiscal Year 2007
HUD published the Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 Fair Market Rents (FMRs) in the
Federal Register on September 27, 2006. They are effective as of October 1,
2006. FY2007 FMR documentation is available at
http://www.huduser.org/datasets/fmr.html . [HUD USER News]
Prepaid/Opted-Out HUD Properties Compared to Others
Multifamily
Properties: Opting In, Opting Out and Remaining Affordable, comparing HUD properties that have left the
assisted stock and those that remain, is free at
http://www.huduser.org/publications/affhsg/opting_in.html or $5.00
from HUD User, 1-800-245-2691. [HAC News: November 1, 2006]
American Housing
Survey 2005 Data Available
Visit
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/ahs/ahs.html for access to
figures on housing quality and cost, poverty, race/ethnicity, and more for
the U.S., metro and nonmetro areas as a whole, multi-state regions, or (from
previous years) large metro areas. A printed book of tables will be
available from HUD User, 1-800-245-2691. [HAC News: November 1, 2006]