Topic: Mercados de Solo

Puzzling Out the Housing Crisis

April 16, 2024

By Anthony Flint, April 16, 2024

 

The housing affordability crisis keeps rolling on, dragging down otherwise booming local economies. A survey for the Boston Chamber of Commerce found that nearly one-third of young people say they plan to leave because of high home prices. The Massachusetts housing chief bemoaned: “That’s our workforce.”

“That’s your favorite restaurant that can’t find enough help to stay open,” he wrote in the Boston Globe. “That’s the child-care provider you drop your kids off with. . . . That’s the large company considering moving out of state. That’s our economy.”

Runaway housing costs are impacting homebuyers and renters alike, not just in Boston but nationwide. According to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, the number of cost-burdened renters hit a record high with half of all households spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities.

Young people aren’t the only ones affected by the current crisis. The US population of people over 65 is ballooning past 60 million, and most of those people will be on fixed incomes while managing rising health care costs.

The Lincoln Institute is well-attuned to this extraordinary challenge, and recently dedicated our annual Journalists Forum to the subject of affordable housing. It was a lively series of conversations over two days, with some 30 reporters, editors, podcasters, and Substack columnists sizing up the problem and assessing the impact of several current policy interventions. This episode of the Land Matters podcast features highlights from the event.

The 2023 Journalists Forum: Innovations in Affordability was made possible by a partnership with the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University and TD Bank. The annual convening bridges the media and academic inquiry, allowing journalists to explore new ideas with researchers and practitioners and to network with each other.

The forum was organized by first looking at the scope of the crisis, followed by an assessment of four major interventions: statewide zoning mandates requiring cities and towns to allow more multifamily development; tax policy designed to help manage runaway land prices and real estate speculation (with Detroit’s efforts to establish a land value tax as a case study); local strategies to outmaneuver institutional investors; and potential changes in the home financing system to help close a stubborn racial wealth gap.

Arthur Jemison, director of the Boston Planning and Development Agency, delivered the keynote address, describing the city’s “all of the above” approach to increasing housing supply, including legalizing accessory dwelling units or ADUs, embracing a citywide rezoning initiative known as “Squares and Streets,” and offering big incentives to property owners who convert vacant office buildings to residences.

Cities like Boston are going to need all that and more. According to the State of the Nation’s Housing report issued annually by the Joint Center for Housing Studies, home construction hasn’t kept pace with demand ever since the Great Recession. Prices are up 40 percent nationwide, inventory is tight, and it appears the era of low interest rates is decidedly over.

 


 

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor of Land Lines.

Lead image: Chris Arnold of NPR moderates a panel on housing finance at the Lincoln Institute Journalists Forum with (l-r) Jim Gray of the Lincoln Institute, MJ Hopkins of TD Bank, Chrystal Kornegay of Mass Housing, and Chris Herbert of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. Credit: Anthony Flint.


 

Further Reading

2023 Journalists Forum: Innovations in Affordability (Lincoln Institute)

No Single Policy Will Increase Housing Affordability. We Need a Comprehensive Strategy. (Urban Institute)

AARP Future of Housing (AARP)

Social Housing in America: Architects Must Answer the Call (Common Edge)

Why Is BC so unaffordable? (BCGEU)

This multimedia case examines the impact of Burlington, VT’s affordable housing strategies on the Old North End (“the ONE”)—a historically low-income neighborhood which boasts a robust stock of affordable housing while facing rising costs of living and demand for housing. It traces the history of Burlington’s efforts back to the 1980s, when the city government under then-mayor Bernie Sanders established programs and policies to produce affordable housing and combat gentrification and displacement.

This case study video was named Gold Telly Winner in the 45th Annual Telly Awards in two categories: Documentary: Short Form and Education & Training.

The Case Study

The Backstory

Still the ONE: Lessons from a Small City’s Big Commitment to Affordability, by Julie Campoli appears in the October 2023 issue of Land Lines, the quarterly magazine of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

Exhibits

Map: The Champlain Housing Trust’s 2,569 Rentals and 675 Shared-Equity Homes in Northwestern Vermont

 

 

Map: All Permanently Affordable Units in the Old North End 

Timeline

Burlington Case Study TImeline

References

Aurand, Andrew, et al. 2021. 2021 Picture of Preservation. National Low Income Housing Coalition and Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation. https://preservationdatabase.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/NHPD_2021Report.pdf.
Aurand, Andrew, et al. 2022. “Out of Reach: The High Cost of Housing.” National Low Income Housing Coalition. https://nlihc.org/oor.

Cohen, Helen, and Lipman, Mark. 2016. Arc of Justice: The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of a Beloved Community (documentary film). https://www.arcofjusticefilm.com/.

Davis, John Emmeus. Ed. 2020. The Community Land Trust Reader. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/books/community-land-trust-reader.

Davis, John Emmeus. 1990. Building the Progressive City: Third Sector Housing in Burlington. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/40513.

Ellen, Ingrid, et al. 2021. Through the Roof: What Communities Can Do About the High Cost of Rental Housing in America. Policy Focus Report. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/policy-focus-reports/through-roof-what-communities-can-do-high-cost-rental-housing.

Freddie Mac. 2018. Spotlight on Underserved Markets: Affordable Housing in High Opportunity Areas. Policy Brief, Washington, DC: Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. https://mf.freddiemac.com/docs/Affordable_Housing_in_High_Opportunity_Areas.pdf.

Jickling, Katie. 2018. “Ready or Not: Is Gentrification Inevitable in Burlington’s Old North End?” Seven Days. January 17. https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/ready-or-not-is-gentrification-inevitable-in-burlingtons-old-north-end.

Libby, James M. Jr. 2006. “The Policy Basis Behind Permanently Affordable Housing: A Cornerstone of Vermont’s Housing Policy Since 1987.” Montpelier, VT: Vermont Housing and Conservation Board. https://vhcb.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/articles/permanentaffordability06.pdf.

Opportunity Insights. “Neighborhoods Matter: Children’s Lives Are Shaped by the Neighborhoods They Grow Up In.” Online Research Collection. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University. https://opportunityinsights.org/neighborhoods.

Quigley, Aidan. 2019. “Who Owns Burlington? The Largest Holdings Are in the Hands of a Few.” VTDigger. November 3. https://vtdigger.org/2019/11/03/who-owns-burlington-the-largest-holdings-are-in-the-hands-of-a-few.

Torpy, Brenda. 2015. “Champlain Housing Trust.” Case Study. Center for Community Land Trust Innovation. https://cltweb.org/case-studies/champlain-housing-trust.

For Teachers

Topics

Affordable housing, community land trusts, gentrification and displacement

Timeframe

1980 – 2023

Prerequisite Knowledge

None

Learning Objectives

  • Evaluate the impact of permanently affordable housing in high-opportunity areas
  • Identify the policy approaches that helped Burlington develop and preserve affordable housing opportunities in gentrifying neighborhoods
  • Articulate how a community land trust works and why this model is effective in Burlington

Research on the Benefits, Challenges, and Implications of Land-Based Mitigation Strategies

Submission Deadline: March 7, 2024  -  April 11, 2024

This RFP will open for submissions on March 7, 2024, and close on April 11, 2024. See the application guidelines for additional information on evaluation criteria, expected budget ranges, and further context.

The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy invites proposals for original research that examines the challenges and implications of land-based climate change mitigation responses to promote more effective and equitable action. The geographic focus is global, with particular interest in proposals from a developing context. Proposals will be reviewed competitively according to evaluation criteria. The output is expected to result in a document that could become a Lincoln Institute Working Paper appropriate for publication.

Proposals must align with at least one of the four themes outlined below.

Theme 1: Translate Lessons from Closely Related Fields Past large-scale land-based interventions and extractive industries, such as wildlife conservation, large dams, and mining, demonstrate that policies and programs often fail to consider local contexts and can amplify existing international and domestic power disparities. These past interventions and industries have been examined extensively via diverse academic disciplines, including rural sociology, development economics, anthropology, and geography. Such in-depth review has generated lessons, analysis, and policy recommendations that can be applied to the emerging field of land-based climate mitigation.

This research theme aims to apply the knowledge, history, and policy recommendations from existing research of analogous past large-scale land-based interventions to help minimize the pitfalls of land-based mitigation. Through documentation and analysis, the research should identify lessons and propose recommendations for land-based mitigation.

Theme 2: Emerging High-Level Policy Frameworks and Their Implications for Land-Based Mitigation  Policy decisions that drive the financing and implementation of land-based mitigation occur at a very high level, largely removed from any local context. Ongoing negotiations and decision-making create frameworks that establish expectations, objectives, and rules for defining and undertaking land-based mitigation activities. Such frameworks, which include voluntary carbon markets, Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, net-zero pledges, and nationally determined contributions (NDCs), affect how, where, at what scale, and by whom land-based mitigation is implemented and its potential consequences.

This research theme aims to analyze these frameworks, including the context in which policies and decisions are made, to understand how they are evolving and to identify the emerging policy implications. Implications could relate to emerging national and subnational legislation and regulations on carbon markets, land tenure reforms, or new processes that include local and Indigenous communities in decision-making, among many others.

Theme 3: Understanding Current Trends   While international and national policies are still in development, momentum is building around land-based mitigation strategies and resulting in developments on the ground, from proposals to implementation. Land-based mitigation objectives directly drive these large-scale projects, agreements, and proposals. This research theme seeks to identify and examine such developments, including their challenges, benefits, and implications for local communities, and to extract lessons and insights to guide future work.

Theme 4: Evaluating Alternatives to Carbon as a Commodity  Several less-carbon-centric alternatives that recognize the wider benefits and demands on land more wholly have been offered. Among these are agricultural systems (agroecology, regenerative agriculture, etc.), conservation methods (ecosystem restoration, mosaic restoration, pro-forestation), and rights-based approaches (Indigenous and community-based land stewardship), all of which have been, to some extent, applied, so evidence of their potential benefits and challenges exists. The focus of this research theme is reviewing these alternative approaches, assessing them, and comparing them to other emerging methods. Results from this research theme should help identify viable land-use policies to support effective and equitable land-based mitigation strategies within an earth system governance framework.

RFP Schedule

  • Application deadline: April 11, 2024
  • Notification of accepted proposals: May 2, 2024
  • First progress report*: June 30, 2024
  • Second progress report: October 17, 2024
  • First draft: December 20, 2024
  • Final deliverable(s): May 1, 2025

*We recognize the early timing of this deliverable. The first progress report is intended to show initial advancements and share early project updates, such as data collection or engagement plans. We do not expect it to contain significant findings.

Evaluation Criteria

The Lincoln Institute will evaluate proposals based on the following criteria:

  • Relevance to at least one research theme identified in the RFP guidelines related to the benefits, challenges, and implications of land-based mitigation strategies.
  • Quality of the proposed methodology and sources of data.
  • Qualifications of the members of the research team.
  • Feasibility of project completion within the stated timeline and budget justification.

Details

Application Period
March 7, 2024  -  April 11, 2024