Tax overhaul is a blow to affordable housing efforts, By Conor Dougherty, January 18, 2018, New York Times: “The last time that Congress approved a sweeping overhaul of the federal tax code, in 1986, it created a tax credit meant to encourage the private sector to invest in affordable housing. It has grown into a $9 billion-a-year social program that has funded the construction of some three million apartments for low-income residents. But the Republican tax plan approved last month amounts to a vast cutback, making it much less likely that such construction will continue apace…”
Tag: Housing subsidies
Affordable Housing
- Millions of poor families could benefit from housing aid Trump wants to cut, By Tracy Jan, August 10, 2017, Washington Post: “The number of poor families struggling to pay their monthly rents or living in deplorable accommodations has grown 41 percent since the beginning of the Great Recession a decade ago, despite a stronger national economy, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. More than 8.3 million very low-income households in 2015 qualified for, but did not receive, federal housing assistance because there is not enough to go around, according to the agency’s latest biennial assessment of ‘worst case housing needs.’ That approaches the record high of 8.5 million in 2011 after historic increases during the mortgage foreclosure crisis…”
- More than half of L.A.’s 1 million poor households live in unaffordable or substandard rentals, study says, By Gale Holland, August 10, 2017, Los Angeles Times: “Los Angeles and New York City top the list of U.S. cities with the most poor people laboring under heavy rent burdens, living in substandard housing, or both, according to a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs study released Wednesday. More than half of Los Angeles’ 1 million very poor households, or 567,000, spent more than half their income on rent or resorted to undesirable housing in 2015, the study said…”
- More Boston neighborhoods seeing affordable housing units, By Tim Logan, August 8, 2017, Boston Globe: “Boston’s building boom is bringing more affordable housing to some of its most affluent neighborhoods. A city program requiring developers to include low-cost apartments in or near their buildings has created more than 400 units of affordable housing in the Seaport and in South Boston since 2000, according to new figures released by the city this week. Nearly 430 more have come in the South End and several neighborhoods in downtown Boston…”
Racial Disparities in Subsidized Housing
- The one area where racial disparities in housing have disappeared, By Tracy Jan, May 5, 2017, Washington Post: “Racial disparities in subsidized housing — which once saw poor black families overwhelmingly housed in large public developments — have essentially disappeared after decades of inequality, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins University researchers. But low-income black families are still far more likely than poor whites to live in segregated, impoverished neighborhoods…”
- Better housing as a path out of poverty: a tough test in Houston, By Simon Montlake, May 4, 2017, Christian Science Monitor: “Iyoba Moshay had just started her shift when she got a text from Alvin, her 7th-grade son. His school was on lockdown after a shooting, he said. There was a body prone on the street outside, visible from his classroom window. Ms. Moshay gulped, and went back to her job tending bar downtown at the Houston Astros’ stadium. It was the second shooting that month near the school, which has an F grade from Texas regulators. For Moshay, a single mother, it was one more reason to wish she could move to a different part of town, far from the crime and poverty of her all-minority neighborhood…”