Opportunity Zones (OZ) were implemented by the federal government and some state and local governments in 2017 to attract new investments to distressed communities in urban and rural areas in the United States. The program offers tax incentives to private businesses for investing in OZ designated neighborhoods.
Housing policy is disability policy, particularly for low-income households served by federal housing programs. People with disabilities are overrepresented in federally assisted rental housing, with 407 out of every 1,000 assisted households reporting a disability.
The US is experiencing a housing affordability crisis. Families that lack access to safe, affordable and stable housing face increased risk of eviction, especially in cities, where the rent burden is most severe. Research suggests that evictions worsen material hardship, can force families into lower-quality housing in more disadvantaged neighborhoods, and erode mental health.
Within the local government context, municipal code enforcement involves relatively entry-level decision makers operating across a highly uneven and diverse tapestry of neighborhoods and living situations. Implicit in code enforcement practices is a blending of objective health and safety concerns with highly subjective social and cultural norms.
The US is facing a housing affordability crisis that continues to exacerbate economic and racial inequities. Inclusionary zoning policies (IZ), which require real estate developers to include below market-rate units in new housing projects, and rent control regulations, which place caps on rental price increases, have reemerged as potential solutions to the housing affordability crisis. However, rent control and IZ policies are complicated and controversial. Studies generally find that rent control decreases rents for tenants in controlled units, but that these benefits may be offset by greater costs in the uncontrolled rental market. Likewise, while there is some evidence that IZ policies can provide economic opportunity for residents with low incomes, critics argue that they also reduce the overall supply of housing and serve as a short-term solution to the larger problem.
Our homes and neighborhoods have a powerful impact on our physical and mental health, with the potential to exacerbate chronic and acute health problems and cost the U.S. billions of dollars annually. Sherry Ahrentzen and Lynne Dearborn investigated how the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the nation’s largest source of funding for the development and preservation of affordable rental housing, can contribute to shaping a healthier housing stock.
Long before the novel coronavirus, poor and working-class communities of color across Florida were weathering a pandemic of multilayered oppressions. COVID-19 lays bare the systemic and structural inequities as pre-existing conditions for the most historically marginalized among us. And while housing is one of the most researched social determinants of health, effective policies have not been adopted to promote residential stability. Florida’s complicated political landscape has led to weak and fragmented tenants' rights protections and limited tools for affordable housing, which creates a structural vulnerability for the most underserved communities. In this project, the research team will study three Florida urban counties that have implemented COVID-related tenant protections in divergent ways (Miami-Dade, Orange, and Hillsborough counties).
Within the last decade, debates on rent stabilization have reemerged among housing researchers, policymakers, and the communities they serve, especially in regions where low-income communities of color have experienced skyrocketing rents and disproportionate rates of residential displacement. As a whole, research on rent stabilization has produced mixed findings and limited empirical analysis to effectively guide policy decisions. This study seeks to address the uncertainty over rent stabilization’s effects by providing an evidence-based analysis of the early impacts of rent stabilization policies on tenants in the cities of Mountain View and Richmond, two jurisdictions in California’s San Francisco Bay Area that adopted rent stabilization ordinances in 2016.
Early research suggests Middle Neighborhoods (MNs), communities that offer affordable housing that is not a result of specific affordable housing policy and access to many outlets that positively shape health and well-being, are opportunity-rich with place-based resources, and policy innovations at the city level hold the potential to increase this existing housing affordability and stability.
Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing in California: A Bumpy Rollout or a Flawed Approach?
As currently defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH),