Strategies for Successfully Marketing and Stabilizing the Occupancy of Mixed-Income/Mixed-Race Properties: A Case Study of Cedar Beech and Elm Street Properties in Manchester, New Hamsphire

Cedar Beech and the two Elm Street properties make up 92 units of mixed-income, mixed-race multifamily housing in Manchester, New Hampshire. Almost half of the residents have incomes below 30 percent of area median income, while a quarter have incomes between 51 and 80 percent of median and a small number (8 percent) have incomes above 80 percent of area median income.The properties were developed and are owned by Manchester Neighborhood Housing Services (MNHS) as part of that non-profit organization's mission to stabilize and revitalize city neighborhoods and to provide affordable housing. Cedar Beech was redeveloped and placed in service as a Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and HOME property in 1994. The properties on Elm Street were placed in service in 2001 with subsidies from LIHTC, HOME, and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston's Affordable Housing Program

Strategies for Successfully Marketing and Stabilizing the Occupancy of Mixed-Income/Mixed-Race Properties: A Case Study of Spanish Oaks in Jacksonville, Florida

Spanish Oaks is a late 1960s garden apartment development in the Arlington section of Jacksonville, Florida. Originally built as market-rate rental housing, Spanish Oaks entered the inventory of the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) after the original owner defaulted. It was sold in 1995 to a partnership of two local non-profits -- Jacksonville Housing Partnership and Families First -- under the RTC's Affordable Housing Program. The development has 194 units with between one and three bedrooms. The agreement with the RTC was that 20 percent of the units (40 units) would be reserved for households with incomes at or below 50 percent of area median, another 55 percent (107 units) could have occupants with incomes up to 80 percent of area median, and a quarter (47 units) could be rented to households at any income level at unrestricted, market rents. The actual income levels of the households in 2005 are more heavily weighted towards the low end: half the units are occupied by households with incomes below 50 percent of median including 38 percent that have incomes below 30 percent of median

Seven Strategies for Successfully Marketing and Stabilizing the Occupancy of Mixed-Income/Mixed-Race Properties - Summary Report

Mixed-Income rental properties that include extremely low-income households (below 30 percent of AMI) are a valuable strategy for community health. They simultaneously address two critical challenges: housing for those most in need and desegregating poverty. Understanding how to operate mixed-income apartments profitably is important to increase the development and underwriting of these properties.With the generous support of the Ford Foundation, NeighborWorks America undertook this study of management and marketing practices of successful mixed-income properties that have served extremely low-income families while maintaining positive cash flow for at least five years.This report describes seven strategies used by these properties to stabilize and maintain high occupancy rates with healthy operating budgets. For each strategy, we provide concrete implementation examples

The 2008 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is pleased to present the 2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR), the fourth in a series of reports on homelessness in the United States. The reports respond to a series of Congressional directives calling for the collection and analysis of data on homelessness. The 2008 AHAR breaks new ground by being the first report to provide year-to-year trend information on homelessness in the United States. The report provides the latest counts of homelessness nationwide—including counts of individuals, persons in families, and special population groups such as veterans and chronically homeless people. The report also covers the types of locations where people use emergency shelter and transitional housing; where people were just before they entered a residential program; how much time they spend in shelters over the course of a year; and the size and use of the U.S inventory of residential programs for homeless people. This AHAR also is the first to compare oint-in-Time estimates reported by Continuums of Care across several years

The 2009 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is pleased to present the 2009 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR), the fifth in a series of reports on homelessness in the United States. The reports respond to a series of Congressional directives calling for the collection and analysis of data on homelessness. The AHAR reports provide the latest counts of homelessness nationwide—including counts of individuals, persons in families, and special population groups such as veterans and chronically homeless people. The report also covers the types of locations where people use emergency shelter and transitional housing; where people were just before they entered a residential program; how much time they spend in shelters over the course of a year; and the size and use of the U.S inventory of residential programs for homeless people. With the 2009 AHAR, we now have three complete years of data on the numbers and characteristics of sheltered homeless people, how they became homeless, and how they used the homeless services system. This is important, because we can begin to see discernable trends in homelessness, including the effects of the recession and of changes over time to the homeless services system. The 2009 AHAR also marks continued improvement in both sources of estimates of homelessness used in the reports. A larger number of communities are reporting Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data to the AHAR, which is used in the analysis of patterns of homelessness over a year’s time. In 2009, 334 communities—representing 2,988 counties and 1,056 cities—reported usable HMIS data to the report, a sizable increase from last year’s report (222 communities). At the same time, the point-in-time (PIT) counts essential for estimating the numbers and characteristics of all homeless people, both sheltered and unsheltered, are improving as communities use more rigorous methodologies for conducting the counts. For the first time, this 2009 AHAR includes information from in-person interviews with local service providers located in nine communities nationwide. This qualitative information provides a contextual backdrop for understanding how homelessness is changing

The 2007 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress

The 2007 AHAR is the first AHAR based on an entire year of data about persons who use emergency and transitional housing programs. In addition, the report contains new information about the seasonal patterns of homelessness and long-term users of shelters and presents new appendices that provide community-level information on the number of homeless persons

The Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is pleased to present this national report on homelessness in America. The report was developed in response to Congressional directives that began in 2001 and charged the Department with assisting communities to implement local Homeless Management Information Systems or HMIS. The primary goals in promoting local HMIS implementation are to improve the delivery of services to homeless clients and to increase understanding of their characteristics and needs at the local and national levels. According to Senate Report 109-109, The implementation of this new system would allow the Department to obtain meaningful data on the nation’s homeless population and develop annual reports through an Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR)

Using Tenant-based Housing Vouchers to Help End Homelessness in Los Angeles, 2016-2020

As part of the larger evaluation of the Hilton Foundation's Homelessness initiative, Abt Associates examined how effective the Los Angeles region's public housing authorities (PHAs) have been in using vouchers to help people leave homelessness, the extent to which voucher holders succeed in using the vouchers, the locations where they use vouchers, and the implications for the PHAs' programs—who they serve and at what cost. This study focuses on 2016 through early 2020, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic

Housing vouchers for the poor

Can the nation's social programs survive the push toward leaner appropriations, a greater use of the market, and a narrower definition of the needy? A program to provide housing assistance for the poor is proposed that fills all these requirements. Housing vouchers are found to be cheaper than other housing programs and more satisfactory for participants. Moreover, the political climate augers well for the new approach.

Targeting housing assistance

This article examines the current system for targeting federal rental housing assistance, a rationed program rather than an entitlement, to households with the greatest need. It describes the current systems for eligibility and for ranking households on waiting lists, and then analyzes relative needs for assistance among different groups of households. We conclude that the main policy objective should be to maintain the present system against the leakages that are starting to occur. We also recommend that assistance be targeted more heavily to families than at present and less to the elderly, and that nonelderly single persons be made fully eligible for assistance.