Urban Institute: Housing
Urban Institute reports on: Housing - The Urban Institute is a nonprofit nonpartisan policy research and educational organization established to examine the social, economic, and governance problems facing the nation.

• District of Columbia Housing Monitor Summer 2007
  The District of Columbia Housing Monitor provides a quarterly look at the Washington, D.C., housing market, tracking home prices, real estate listings, new construction, and affordable housing. This issue's special section reports on neighborhood-level housing price trends and highlights the continuing strong price growth in neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River.
• Housing in the Nation's Capital 2007
  This is the sixth in a series of annual reports about housing in the Washington metropolitan region. It assembles and analyzes the most current data on housing conditions and trends in the District of Columbia and the surrounding suburbs. Last year's report focused on linkages between housing and schools in the District of Columbia and the metropolitan region. This year's report takes a regional perspective, examining how the region addresses housing for special needs populations. More specifically, the report assesses the housing options and services available to the elderly, disabled, and homeless and explores the consequences and opportunities for housing policy across the region.
• High Prices and Demographic Shifts Will Test Metro D.C.'s Ability to House Residents with Special Needs
  Despite the recent housing market slowdown, home prices and rents remain out of reach for many Washington-area residents, especially those with physical and mental disabilities, elderly people who can no longer live independently, and the homeless, a new study by the Urban Institute concludes.
• Immigrant Integration in Low-income Urban Neighborhoods : Improving Economic Prospects and Strengthening Connections for Vulnerable Families
  The paper explores the financial well-being and economic integration of immigrant groups compared with native-born minorities and whites in vulnerable urban neighborhoods. Among the main findings from the analysis is that immigrants and native minorities in the neighborhoods we examine face similar types of economic difficulties. However, after controlling for citizenship, English proficiency, educational attainment, and having a drivers license and a reliable car, many of the economic disadvantages disappear for immigrant groups, but not for native-born minorities. These findings suggest that even in tough neighborhoods, the potential for economic integration of immigrants is strong.
• Policies for Affordable Housing in the District of Columbia: Lessons from Other Cities
  A booming regional and local economy and constraints on housing production have combined to create unprecedented housing price inflation in the District of Columbia and present added challenges for the city's goal of preserving an "Inclusive City." This report offers a brief summary of the facts that define the new housing market environment in the city and summarizes the main themes of the Comprehensive Housing Strategy Task Force. In it we identify policy instruments other U.S. cities have utilized to respond to the housing market pressures and whether there are any lessons of relevance for the next stages of strategy implementation in the District.
• Racial Disparities and the New Federalism
  The paper explores how shifts in both social welfare policies and economic conditions beginning in the mid-1990s altered the relative well-being of blacks compared to whitesbetween 1997 and 2002. It uses the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) to assess how the relative well-being of black families improved or disparities persisted. The findings suggest that some of the disparities between whites and blacks narrowed between 1997 and 2002, especially among people with low incomes. But gaps in income, child school outcomes, employment, assets, and welfare and other income supports, remained essentially unchanged over the period.
• Reauthorization of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act : Before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity
  Martha Burt, in congressional testimony regarding the reauthorization of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, discussed definitions of homelessness, activities to prevent homelessness, the advisability of a setaside for permanent supportive housing, and the composition of local homeless planning bodies and their relationship to 10-year planning processes. She also addressed what works for whom, accountability, performance outcomes, and incentives.
• The Skid Row Collaborative 2003-2007 : Process Evaluation
  The Skid Row Collaborative (SRC) is one of 11 projects funded in fall 2003 under the Chronic Homelessness Initiative (CHI) in fall 2003 to demonstrate the feasibility of moving chronically homeless disabled people directly into housing and helping them retain housing with health, mental health, substance abuse, and other supportive services. With much higher housing retention at the three-year milestone than a comparison group (59 vs. 14 percent), the SRC has proved to be a successful model of housing plus services for the Skid Row populationa model that could be adopted more widely in Skid Row and beyond.
• Vouchers for Housing and Child Care : Common Challenges and Emerging Strategies
  Vouchers play an important role in federal efforts to help low-income families obtain both housing and child care. These programs constitute essential components of the promise of welfare reform to encourage and support work among low-income families. And both types of vouchers have the potential to enhance long-term outcomes for children. Although federal housing and child care voucher programs differ in important respects, they also face common challenges, and innovations in one area can potentially inform efforts in the other. This brief highlights promising strategies for tackling challenges to the success of child care and housing vouchers.
• HOPE VI and Neighborhood Revitalization
  The Chicago Process Study was initiated in 2001 to document and assess the early implementation of the HOPE VI redevelopment at the Madden and Wells public housing developments and the changes occurring in the surrounding neighborhoods. Through the study, Urban Institute researchers have provided feedback to the Chicago Housing Authority on HOPE VI-related activities with the idea that findings might inform later stages of redevelopment as well as other public housing redevelopment efforts. This final report examines the status of site development of Oakwood Shores, the breadth of neighborhood change surrounding the HOPE VI site, public housing resident relocation, and supportive services available to current and former residents of the Madden and Wells public housing developments as of autumn 2005.
• Booms and Busts: The Case of Subprime Mortgages
  Edward Gramlich, the Richard B. Fisher Senior Fellow at the Urban Institute and a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1997 to 2005, died September 5. In his last paper, delivered at a Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City symposium shortly before his death, he called for swift action to fix the problems in the subprime mortgage market. The paper was presented by former Federal Reserve colleague David Wilcox, who offered "Four Images of Ned Gramlich" before reading Gramlich's "Booms and Busts: The Case of Subprime Mortgages."
• Promoting Homeownership among Low-Income Households
  The United States current system of low-income housing assistance is biased against homeownership. This paper documents the bias and suggests reforms to eliminate it. The new policies would allow more low-income families to become homeowners by providing similar subsidies for renters and owners under the two largest programs for low-income housing, Section 8 and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. The reforms would not require additional spending, would improve the cost-effectiveness of the system of low-income housing assistance, and would avoid the two biggest mistakes in past attempts to subsidize homeownership: subsidizing the construction of new units and requiring intended beneficiaries to buy from selected sellers.
• Affordable Rental Housing in Healthy Communities : Rebuilding After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
  The devastation and displacement of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita poses a unique set of affordable housing challenges. Although everyone who was displaced by the disaster face significant housing challenges, the needs of low- and moderate-income renters warrant far more attention than they have thus far received. Without affordable rental opt