General News

NLIHC and i4J estimate the costs of emergency shelter, inpatient and emergency medical services, foster care and juvenile delinquency to people experiencing homelessness as a result of eviction. Depending on the number of households evicted, these public costs would range between $62 billion and $129 billion.

NH&RA joined with 139 other organizations to support the National Council of State Housing Agencies’ (NCSHA) letter to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Department of the Treasury calling for an extension to the temporary COVID-related LIHTC relief.

Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise), HUD, Fannie Mae, and Bellwether Enterprise are holding a webinar from 1:30 – 3 p.m. ET on December 10 to discuss their new Ready to Respond: Business Continuity Toolkit. The toolkit equips multifamily affordable building owners & managers with a plan to address crisis as many housing communities confront risks associated with natural disasters and other risks that affect tenants and business resiliency, such as COVID-19.

The Counselors of Real Estate published an article by James Burling, vice president of legal affairs at Pacific Legal Foundation, on America’s Sordid History of Exclusionary Zoning. Burling traces the history state-sponsored, racially motivated exclusionary housing laws via George McMechen’s efforts to obtain a home in the suburbs.

“We agree with the State Auditor that California must develop and implement a long-term, comprehensive and coordinated plan to house those who are experiencing homelessness and lack access to affordable homes. While the claim in the November 2020 audit that $2.7B in tax-exempt bonds were wasted oversimplifies the program mechanics and ignores the economic conditions at the time, what’s critical now — when housing bond demand exceeds supply by more than two-to-one — is that the state allocate all remaining bond issuance authority to affordable housing.”

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies will release its annual State of the Nation’s Housing Report on November 19 and host a release event from 4-5 p.m. ET.

Don Layton authored a new paper with Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, What Should We Do with the GSEs? Common-Sense Reform Recommendations for the Biden Administration. Layton concludes that the new administration, if it is to successfully address the GSE question, must follow one of two possible paths in the next twelve to twenty-four months.

Most older Americans do not reside in livable communities, according to a joint report from the Harvard Joint Center on Housing Studies and the AARP Public Policy institute. The report said most seniors do not reside in places that score high on AARP’s Livability Index, which measures economic and social environments among other factors.

A new blog and paper by Don Layton with the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University explore whether the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) plans and actions are consistent with making the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (collectively, the Government Sponsored Enterprises or GSEs) attractive enough to equity investors, and – given the need to raise such unprecedentedly large amounts of equity – to do so globally and broadly.

A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Household Rental Debt During COVID-19, estimates that by December 2020, 1.3 million renter households will owe $7.2 billion in rent, which is around $5,400 each.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) announced restoration of $466 million of housing cuts in FY2021 to the city’s department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). Mayor de Blasio’s decision to reverse course and restore HPD’s 2021 capital budget will produce roughly 11,000 units of affordable housing, at a time when those homes are […]

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia updated its Rental Housing Affordability Data Tool for households in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. The newly updated data suggest that housing insecurity was widespread among lower-income renters in the Third District even prior to the Coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic downturn.