Post-Foreclosure Community Stabilization Strategies: Case Studies and Early Lessons 2008

In the midst of all the foreclosures sweeping the country, and the turmoil on Wall Street, nonprofit housing organizations are quietly going about the work of stabilizing communities hard hit by the crisis. Most have had frontline responsibility for counseling families threatened with foreclosure. With their assistance tens of thousands of families have restructured their budgets, negotiated with servicers to modify their loans, and saved their homes. Other families, too far along in the foreclosure process to stop it from happening, have received help transitioning to new housing arrangements.While the work with distressed homeowners must continue, nonprofits are feeling increased pressure to deal with the growing foreclosed housing stock. These units are causing incalculable harm to neighborhoods, and any hope of housing recovery must ensure that these units are swiftly put back into productive use or demolished. This collection of 14 case studies outlines strategies that nonprofit organizations across the country are using to begin the process of repairing damaged communities.The stakes are enormous. Vacant housing invites vandalism, and becomes a hub for gangs and crime. Virtually all case study subjects reported that, within weeks of housing becoming vacant, thieves break into the units and strip them of their valuable copper plumbing and wiring, heedless of any destruction they leave in their wake. In Phoenix a half-finished, abandoned subdivision was used as an informal "Home Depot" as other homeowners broke in and helped themselves to fixtures and appliances. In Cleveland, vandals remove not just the copper but the aluminum siding from vacant houses. In photos these houses have a desolate, post-disaster look, like the aftermath of a hurricane. When units get demolished the vacant lots soon sprout grass and trash, adding to the community's forlorn appearance.Vacant, deteriorated units place a downward pressure on housing values that puts nearby neighbors in a bind. In order to sell their units they will have to reduce the price, as no one will pay top dollar to live in a blighted neighborhood. Yet their ability to refinance into a more affordable mortgage may be compromised by the drop in property values; in some cases this leads to additional foreclosures and the downward cycle continues.Intervening in these troubled neighborhoods is challenging. In some markets housing prices are still falling, making it hard to determine the value of the units. Bank asset managers and servicers often lack detailed knowledge of the markets, or even of the units they have in their own inventory. This leads them to overvalue their properties and hold out for more than they are worth, delaying the process of acquiring and renovating them for resale to new homebuyers. Finally, the complex ownership structure of mortgages which were rolled into collateralized debt obligations and other investment vehicles makes it very difficult to establish who owns properties and who has authority to negotiate their sale.0

When the recession came to Texas

For years, Texas’ economy seemed to be insulated from the economic uncertainties faced by the rest of the country. But now, reeling from deficits, the strains of immigration, and a troubled housing industry, Texas is confronted with the realities of trying to survive and thrive in the midst of recession. May still believe Texas plays by a different set of economic rules. Contrary to this opinion, the Texas economy is neither inherently better nor more resilient than any other part of the country. In the global economy, Texas has no particular advantage over any other state. The year 2011 is a defining one for Texas. Its legislature will not meet again until early 2013, and the policies it decides upon now will have an incredible influence on the nature of its economic recovery. Texas remains at an economic crossroads.Journalis

01-02 "Mixed Signals: Market Incentives, Recycling, and the Price Spike of 1995"

Environmental economics assumes that reliance on price signals, adjusted for externalities, normally leads to efficient solutions to environmental problems. We explore a limiting case, when market volatility created "mixed signals": waste paper and other recycled materials were briefly worth an immense amount in 1994-95, then plummeted back to traditional low levels in 1996. These rapid reversals resulted in substantial economic and political costs. A review of academic and business literature suggests six possible explanations for abrupt price spikes. An econometric analysis of the prices of wood pulp and waste paper shows that factors that explained price changes in 1983-93 contribute very little to understanding the subsequent price spike. From the econometric analysis and from other sources, we conclude that speculation, rather than "rational" economic factors, must have played a major role in the price spike. If speculatively driven price spikes can disrupt an environmentally important industry such as recycling, then the surprising implication for public policy is that measures to control or stabilize prices, far from interfering with the market, may actually help to make it more efficient.

On the Economic Value and Price-Responsiveness of Ramp-Constrained Storage

The primary concerns of this paper are twofold: to understand the economic value of storage in the presence of ramp constraints and exogenous electricity prices, and to understand the implications of the associated optimal storage management policy on qualitative and quantitative characteristics of storage response to real-time prices. We present an analytic characterization of the optimal policy, along with the associated finite-horizon time-averaged value of storage. We also derive an analytical upperbound on the infinite-horizon time-averaged value of storage. This bound is valid for any achievable realization of prices when the support of the distribution is fixed, and highlights the dependence of the value of storage on ramp constraints and storage capacity. While the value of storage is a non-decreasing function of price volatility, due to the finite ramp rate, the value of storage saturates quickly as the capacity increases, regardless of volatility. To study the implications of the optimal policy, we first present computational experiments that suggest that optimal utilization of storage can, in expectation, induce a considerable amount of price elasticity near the average price, but little or no elasticity far from it. We then present a computational framework for understanding the behavior of storage as a function of price and the amount of stored energy, and for characterization of the buy/sell phase transition region in the price-state plane. Finally, we study the impact of market-based operation of storage on the required reserves, and show that the reserves may need to be expanded to accommodate market-based storage

"Mixed Signals: Market Incentives, Recycling, and the Price Spike of 1995"

Environmental economics assumes that reliance on price signals, adjusted for externalities, normally leads to efficient solutions to environmental problems. We explore a limiting case, when market volatility created “mixed signals”: waste paper and other recycled materials were briefly worth an immense amount in 1994-95, then plummeted back to traditional low levels in 1996. These rapid reversals resulted in substantial economic and political costs. A review of academic and business literature suggests six possible explanations for abrupt price spikes. An econometric analysis of the prices of wood pulp and waste paper shows that factors that explained price changes in 1983- 93 contribute very little to understanding the subsequent price spike. From the econometric analysis and from other sources, we conclude that speculation, rather than “rational” economic factors, must have played a major role in the price spike. If speculatively driven price spikes can disrupt an environmentally important industry such as recycling, then the surprising implication for public policy is that measures to control or stabilize prices, far from interfering with the market, may actually help to make it more efficient.price spike, recycling, economic policy, market volatility

The Business Guide to the Low Carbon Economy: California

Outlines California's climate change policy and offers a detailed framework for calculating and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and purchasing offsets. Includes focus areas for each sector, reference lists, and profiles of successful strategies

2013 Annual Report of UVM Extension and the Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station

2013 Annual report of outreach and research from UVM Extension and Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station

Fashion\u27s Destruction of Unsold Goods: Responsible Solutions for an Environmentally Conscious Future

Over the past two years, headlines of fast-fashion and luxury brands burning their merchandise have flooded media outlets. While this came as a shock to the general public, it has actually been a standard industry practice for decades. As societal norms are leaning more towards environmentally conscious practices, destroying unsold products is no longer viewed as an acceptable option. Brands are facing increased scrutiny related to their environmental impact—such as the amount of textile waste that ends up in a landfill—and how they address the issue. While the media have criticized brands for these practices, they have not suggested long-term solutions to resolve the problem. Brands are left in the dark without a road map showing them how to modernize their systems. Furthermore, when governments introduce new bills focused on textile waste, brands experience added pressure. France is in the process of requiring brands to recycle or reuse their unsold goods by January 2020. However, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for any brand or country: what may work for a fast-fashion brand will not necessarily work for a luxury brand. In the same vein, what may work for France may not work for the United States. This Note explores a number of potential solutions to this problem which range from legal solutions, to reusing, manufacturing, technological, and crisis management solutions. Brands must start to address this issue within their supply chain in a thorough and transparent manner, as this is not a fleeting trend

Hirschmanian themes of social learning and change

Many development strategies assume (or desperately hope) that a country already has the capacity to plan and implement institutional reform or that such institutional reform can be pushed through with the external pressures of aid and conditionalities. In a decentralized reform strategy, developmental change is induced not by government fiat but by releasing and channeling local energies in smaller projects that will in due course spread through links, learning, imitation, and benchmarking. A"Christmas tree"of conditionalities hung on an adjustment loan is generally ineffective in getting a country to develop"ownership"of reform or in generating sustainable change. Development agencies need to work toward client governments genuine commitment to policy reform rather than believe that they can"buy"such commitment with aid money. But how does a country get from here to there? Here is where the Hirschmanian notion of unbalanced growth can be"rediscovered."A country that has already developed a"good policy environment"is like a country that can implement the"balanced growth plans"of the earlier debate. Such a country would be well on its way to development. When the central government lacks such a capability, the Hirschmanian approach is to look for"hidden rationalities"in small areas or on the periphery and then help the small beginnings to spread--using, where possible, the natural pressures of linkages. Rather than try to put all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together at once to make it look like the picture on the box, one starts in the small areas where the pieces are starting to fit together and builds outward, using the links between the pieces. the author shows several authors arriving at a similar strategy from different starting points. Similar ideas underlie the Japanese system of just-in-time production based on inventory, local problemsolving, benchmarking, and continuous improvement: Charles Lindblom's theory of incrementalism and muddling through; Donald Schon and Everett Rogers's treatment of decentralized social learning; and Charles Sabel's theory of learning by monitoring.Educational Sciences,ICT Policy and Strategies,Public Health Promotion,Enterprise Development&Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Educational Sciences,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies