Learning From Land Use Reforms: Housing Outcomes and Regulatory Change

This essay serves as the introduction for an edited, interdisciplinary symposium of articles studying recent land use reforms at the state and local level. These papers provide important descriptive analyses of a range of policy interventions, using quantitative and qualitative methods to provide new empirical insights into zoning reform strategies.After situating and summarizing the collected articles, the Introduction draws out shared themes. For example, these essays demonstrate the efficacy of recent reforms, not only at facilitating housing production but at doing so in especially difficult contexts (like when producing affordable housing and redeveloping single-family neighborhoods). They point to the characteristics of neighborhoods that may be most affected by land use reforms. They show the importance of close attention to forms of tenure and continued demand for ownership models even in densifying locations; the risks of inclusionary zoning as a strategy; and the importance of continued tinkering with policy details for successful implementation

The Failed Federalism of Affordable Housing: Why States Don\u27t Use Housing Vouchers

This Article uncovers a critical disjuncture in our system of providing affordable rental housing. At the federal level, the oldest, fiercest debate in low-income housing policy is between project-based and tenant-based subsidies: should the government help build new affordable housing projects or help renters afford homes on the private market? But at the state and local levels, it is as if this debate never took place. The federal government (following most experts) employs both strategies, embracing tenant-based assistance as more cost-effective and offering tenants greater choice and mobility. But this Article shows that state and local housing voucher programs are rare, small, and limited to special populations. States and cities almost exclusively provide project-based rental assistance. They move in lockstep despite disparate market conditions and political demands: project-based spending overwhelmingly predominates in both high- and low-rent markets and in both liberal and conservative states. States have done so across decades of increased spending. This uniform subnational approach suggests an unhealthy federalism— neither efficient nor experimental. This Article further diagnoses why states have made this unusual choice, identifying four primary culprits: (1) fiscally-constrained states use project-based models to minimize painful cuts during recessions; (2) incomplete federal housing subsidies inadvertently incentivize project-based spending; (3) the interest groups involved in financing and constructing affordable housing are relatively more powerful subnationally; and (4) rental assistance’s unusual, lottery-like nature elevates the value of visible spending over cost-effectiveness. Finally, this Article points the way toward reform, offering two paths forward. Taking a federalist perspective allows for a new understanding of federal housing statutes. Better cooperative models—expanding either the federal or state role in providing affordable housing—could accept states’ limitations in providing rental assistance and exploit their strengths

The Failed Federalism of Affordable Housing: Why States Don\u27t Use Housing Vouchers

This Article uncovers a critical disjuncture in our system of providing affordable rental housing. At the federal level, the oldest, fiercest debate in low-income housing policy is between project-based and tenant-based subsidies: should the government help build new affordable housing projects or help renters afford homes on the private market? But at the state and local levels, it is as if this debate never took place. The federal government (following most experts) employs both strategies, embracing tenant-based assistance as more cost-effective and offering tenants greater choice and mobility. But this Article shows that state and local housing voucher programs are rare, small, and limited to special populations. States and cities almost exclusively provide project-based rental assistance. They move in lockstep despite disparate market conditions and political demands: project-based spending overwhelmingly predominates in both high- and lowrent markets and in both liberal and conservative states. States have done so across decades of increased spending. This uniform subnational approach suggests an unhealthy federalism—neither efficient nor experimental. This Article further diagnoses why states have made this unusual choice, identifying four primary culprits: (1) fiscally-constrained states use project-based models to minimize painful cuts during recessions; (2) incomplete federal housing subsidies inadvertently incentivize project-based spending; (3) the interest groups involved in financing and constructing affordable housing are relatively more powerful subnationally; and (4) rental assistance’s unusual, lottery-like nature elevates the value of visible spending over cost-effectiveness. Finally, this Article points the way toward reform, offering two paths forward. Taking a federalist perspective allows for a new understanding of federal housing statutes. Better cooperative models—expanding either the federal or state role in providing affordable housing—could accept states’ limitations in providing rental assistance and exploit their strengths

Unemployment Among Young Adults: Exploring Employer-Led Solutions

Younger workers consistently experience higher unemployment and less job stability than older workers. Yet the dramatic deterioration in employment outcomes among younger workers during and since the Great Recession creates new urgency about developing more effective bridges into full-time employment for young people, especially those with less than a bachelor's degree. Improving the employment status of young adults and helping employers meet workforce needs are complementary goals. Designing strategies to achieve them requires insight into the supply and demand sides of the labor market: both the characteristics of young people and their typical routes into employment as well as the demand for entry-level orkers and the market forces that shape employer decisions about hiring and investing in skill development. A quantitative and qualitative inquiry focused on the metropolitan areas of Chicago, Ill. and Louisville, Ky

Challenges and Opportunities for Hotel-to-Housing Conversions in NYC

As the country continues to grapple with the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath, policymakers in New York City and Albany have debated how to support the conversion of hotels into housing—and especially affordable housing—as part of a solution to the city’s ongoing housing crisis. The basic intuition is compelling. COVID has forced the shuttering of many commercial establishments, especially in hard-hit New York City. In certain sectors, the effect has been particularly large: these include hotels devastated by shutdowns in tourism, international travel, and business travel. At the same time as these spaces are sitting empty, though, Americans have faced unprecedented challenges in paying their rent—on top of preexisting rent burdens that had been driving housing instability and homelessness well before COVID. It is logical to want to use these spaces—these important physical assets—rather than let them remain unoccupied, and housing is an attractive use. However, not all hotels are ripe for conversion to housing, and the scope of the opportunity presented by hotel conversions is not clear. Some hotels—because of their business model, location, or design—are better candidates for conversion than others, and for conversion to different types of housing. In one case, only minimal and economical renovations might be required; in another, expensive gut rehabilitation would be necessary to turn the hotel into a residential use. To better understand what opportunities for hotel conversion exist in New York City, we examined the legal regime governing hotel conversions to identify the most important regulatory barriers to such adaptive uses. We also compiled data examining how the hotel market is segmented—how many hotel rooms, of what kind, are located where—in order to further understand how different conversion strategies might play out spatially

The costs of uneven development : an analysis of individual earnings loss among dislocated workers in deindustrializing industries

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1985.MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH.Bibliography: leaves 78-83.by Richard Frank Kazis.M.C.P