Policy Brief

The US grapples with a housing crisis, exacerbated in part by a shortage of conventional mortgage loans. Data from 2020 reveals a severe racial disparity, with 27.1% of Black mortgage applicants denied compared to only 13.6% of White mortgage applicants. These denial trends are highly correlated with homeownership rates. Current trends in homeownership by race mirror or exceed those present during the discriminatory practices of the 1960s. Lenders often cite low credit scores and high debt-to-income ratios as grounds for denial. Therefore, proposed solutions include mandating the inclusion of rental payment history in credit scores, offering free homebuying education, and conducting more accessible research on mortgage access. These measures aim to boost credit scores, educate borrowers, and highlight the importance of mortgage access. By implementing these policies, evidence suggests a potential increase in mortgage access, increasing access to homeownership overall and reducing its extreme racial disparity

Homeownership and Mortgage Loans: How Important is a Conventional Loan?

Communities across the United States face a housing crisis that stems in part from a scarcity of conventional home mortgage loans. Conventional mortgage loan application numbers have decreased, and racial disparities persist in mortgage application denial rates. In 2020, the Urban Institute reported that when applying for a mortgage, Black applicants were denied 27.1% of the time, yet White applicants were denied only 13.6% of the time. These denial rates are highly correlated with homeownership rates. Today, despite policy efforts, the difference in White and Black homeownership rates is higher than in the 1960s when the government enforced discriminatory housing policy. While the federal government has tried to improve access to conventional home mortgages by creating the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD), the housing market collapse in 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic have diminished the effectiveness of their efforts as interest rates and home prices soared. Because lenders often cite credit score concerns and high debt-to-income ratios as rationales to deny someone’s mortgage application, policy alternatives must address these barriers while improving mortgage application approval rates and reducing the mortgage denial gap by race. I present the following policy alternatives as potential solutions to meet these goals: • Increase funding for Community Development Financial Institutions competitive grants. These grants will incentivize alternative lending practices that benefit underserved communities. • Create new requirements for homebuyer education that provide information about mortgages, homeownership, etc. Homebuyer education will be critical for potential homebuyers to successfully receive alternative home financing opportunities, such as lower down payments, and ensure equal access to information. • Mandate the inclusion of rental history in credit scores. This will boost credit scores to reflect someone’s ability to make large, scheduled housing payments. • Strengthen regulation of unconventional financing options that lack consumer protections. These regulations will ensure that homebuyers are not exploited by unconventional financing regulation omissions. • Compile information about unconventional financing options. This will assist potential homebuyers in their navigation of the unconventional financing process. After considering how these policy options advance equity, improve effectiveness, and minimize implementation costs, I make following recommendations to the United States government: • Enact regulations that mandate credit reporting agencies include 12 months of positive rental payment history when computing someone’s credit score. • Increase access to free educational resources regarding the homebuying process. • Invest in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to ensure that homebuyers receive adequate protections when engaging in unconventional home financing. • Conduct further research to investigate the impact of conventional mortgage access on homeownership. • Report data on Black renters in more comparable, easily understood ways

The Integration Between Housing and Transportation in Contemporary City and Regional Planning: Transit-Oriented Development for the San Luis Obispo Station

This transit-oriented development will help mitigate the housing crisis in California starting with San Luis Obispo at the local level by developing housing for all demographics. The project will be beneficial towards increasing the livability and connectivity of current residents, commuters, and visitors of the San Luis Obispo region. The project will also activate the spaces by providing a walkway and commercial development for people that were previously not present. The proposed development is projected to activate the area, with new amenities, while promoting the site’s existing uses; The existing cafe and restaurant within the project site will not be relocated nor impacted in economic yield as a result of this project. The TOD project has been designed to protect the historical sites in San Luis Obispo, which includes the Train Station and the Union Pacific building. As the surrounding buildings are designated as historically significant, preserving the style and look of the Train Station area as a whole is significant. An important objective of the project is that the Train Station project site shall conform to the pre-existing Spanish architectural style of the area. The project site is anticipated to blend the proposed development into the surrounding area while complimenting the current uses and architectural style

Camper Conversion

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 has seen hundreds of thousands sequestered in quarantine for long periods of time. When quarantined in an urban setting, many cannot leave their respective apartment buildings which only adds to the strain of isolation. In the context of isolation, the design team of Hafler, Nicholas, Owen, Willis, and Zehentbauer personally sought to incorporate their individual enthusiasm for nature with the benefits of living off-grid. After initial research and deliberation, the team discovered the “Skoolie” community and the plans for a mobile tiny home began production. The team outlined the design project as the full design, purchase, and construction of a 54-passenger bus transformed into a mobile tiny home. The team highlights the terms “sustainable” and “off-grid” in the problem statement, this was done intentionally to ensure that all decisions made in the project were centralized back to these two main themes. By completing this project, the team will make a point to include all living amenities of an average student’s apartment such as hot water shower, fridge storage, living and recreation area, sleeping area for 4-5 adults

Retrieval-augmented Generation to Improve Math Question-Answering: Trade-offs Between Groundedness and Human Preference

For middle-school math students, interactive question-answering (QA) with tutors is an effective way to learn. The flexibility and emergent capabilities of generative large language models (LLMs) has led to a surge of interest in automating portions of the tutoring process - including interactive QA to support conceptual discussion of mathematical concepts. However, LLM responses to math questions can be incorrect or mismatched to the educational context - such as being misaligned with a school's curriculum. One potential solution is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which involves incorporating a vetted external knowledge source in the LLM prompt to increase response quality. In this paper, we designed prompts that retrieve and use content from a high-quality open-source math textbook to generate responses to real student questions. We evaluate the efficacy of this RAG system for middle-school algebra and geometry QA by administering a multi-condition survey, finding that humans prefer responses generated using RAG, but not when responses are too grounded in the textbook content. We argue that while RAG is able to improve response quality, designers of math QA systems must consider trade-offs between generating responses preferred by students and responses closely matched to specific educational resources.Comment: 6 pages, presented at NeurIPS'23 Workshop on Generative AI for Education (GAIED

Who is more likely to buy electric vehicles?

ABSTRACT: To promote electric vehicles, it is vital to know what impacts the preferences for electric vehicles over conventional fuel-based cars. To address this, a discrete choice experiment is developed and integrated into a survey. An online survey was conducted in Canada with 2062 valid responses. Different labels are designed for the survey to determine the most effective GHG information framing to increase the influence of such information on decisions. In this study, the influence of lifecycle emissions is considered. Three ensemble learning techniques are applied and they are compared based on prediction accuracy, and the most accurate technique is applied to determine the relative influence of variables on the intention to buy electric vehicles. Further, the interaction of variables is investigated using xgbfir. Subsequently, Accumulated Local Effect (ALE) is employed to examine the influence direction of top variables on the electric vehicle purchase likelihood. The results suggest that environmental attitudes and purchase price are the most influential parameters on the intention to buy electric vehicles. Moreover, those who are extremely worried about climate change, do not own a car, and self-identified as being at the top of the climate change stage of change are more likely to buy electric vehicles

Contribution of hydrogen sulfide to the control of coronary blood flow

This study examined the mechanisms by which H2S modulates coronary microvascular resistance and myocardial perfusion at rest and in response to cardiac ischemia. Experiments were conducted in isolated coronary arteries and in open-chest anesthetized dogs. We found that the H2S substrate L-cysteine (1-10 mM) did not alter coronary tone of isolated arteries in vitro or coronary blood flow in vivo. In contrast, intracoronary (ic) H2S (0.1-3 mM) increased coronary flow from 0.49 ± 0.08 to 2.65 ± 0.13 ml/min/g (P□0.001). This increase in flow was unaffected by inhibition of Kv channels with 4-aminopyridine (P=0.127) but was attenuated (0.23 ± 0.02 to 1.13 ± 0.13 ml/min/g) by the KATP channel antagonist glibenclamide (P□0.001). Inhibition of NO synthesis (L-NAME) did not attenuate coronary responses to H2S. Immunohistochemistry revealed expression of cystathionine gamma-lyase (CSE), an endogenous H2S enzyme, in myocardium. Inhibition of CSE with β-cyano-L-alanine (10 µM) had no effect on baseline coronary flow or responses to a 15 sec coronary occlusion (P=0.82). These findings demonstrate that exogenous H2S induces potent, endothelial-independent dilation of the coronary microcirculation predominantly through the activation of KATP channels, however, our data do not support a functional role for endogenous H2S in the regulation of coronary microvascular resistance

Shared decision making in patients with low risk chest pain: prospective randomized pragmatic trial.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the effectiveness of shared decision making with usual care in choice of admission for observation and further cardiac testing or for referral for outpatient evaluation in patients with possible acute coronary syndrome. DESIGN: Multicenter pragmatic parallel randomized controlled trial. SETTING: Six emergency departments in the United States. PARTICIPANTS: 898 adults (aged \u3e17 years) with a primary complaint of chest pain who were being considered for admission to an observation unit for cardiac testing (451 were allocated to the decision aid and 447 to usual care), and 361 emergency clinicians (emergency physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants) caring for patients with chest pain. INTERVENTIONS: Patients were randomly assigned (1:1) by an electronic, web based system to shared decision making facilitated by a decision aid or to usual care. The primary outcome, selected by patient and caregiver advisers, was patient knowledge of their risk for acute coronary syndrome and options for care; secondary outcomes were involvement in the decision to be admitted, proportion of patients admitted for cardiac testing, and the 30 day rate of major adverse cardiac events. RESULTS: Compared with the usual care arm, patients in the decision aid arm had greater knowledge of their risk for acute coronary syndrome and options for care (questions correct: decision aid, 4.2 v usual care, 3.6; mean difference 0.66, 95% confidence interval 0.46 to 0.86), were more involved in the decision (observing patient involvement scores: decision aid, 18.3 v usual care, 7.9; 10.3, 9.1 to 11.5), and less frequently decided with their clinician to be admitted for cardiac testing (decision aid, 37% v usual care, 52%; absolute difference 15%; P CONCLUSIONS: Use of a decision aid in patients at low risk for acute coronary syndrome increased patient knowledge about their risk, increased engagement, and safely decreased the rate of admission to an observation unit for cardiac testing.Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01969240

Design, fabrication, and analysis of a 3U CubeSat platform

The goal of this project is to develop a 3U CubeSat nanosatellite bus capable of short duration technology verification experiments while providing compelling handson student education opportunities. This 3U CubeSat platform has been prototyped by the design team in order to demonstrate its capabilities. This spacecraft, the Unspecified Payload Active Attitude Control Nanosatellite (UPAACN), is designed to perform a 3-6 month technology verification experiment for a NASA test component and an SCU single-axis attitude control system (AACS) in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). This project builds upon the flight heritage of SCU\u27s Robotic Systems Laboratory (RSL) and improves its satellite development capabilities. The 3U CubeSat platform is designed to support any payload that meets basic constraints. This design can be manufactured and assembled entirely at the university level. It allows for a faster design cycle, lower project risk and cost, and the opportunity to launch university payloads

The climate change stage of change measure: vehicle choice experiment

ABSTRACT: Various measures have been proposed and validated to assess environmental motivation and explain peoples’ consumer behavior. However, most of the measures are rather complex, sometimes comprising dozens of items. In order to overcome the associated response burden, the goal of our research is to validate a much simpler measure of environmental motivation, namely the measure of Climate Change-Stage of Change. To do so we analyze data from a discrete choice experiment in which drivers decide to purchase a car with different levels of CO2 emissions and we also measure their environmental motivation with three alternative measures. The results show that environmental motivation assessed with Climate Change-Stage of Change explains the choices in the experiment as well as with more complex measures. Our findings have substantial implications for researchers as they may be able to assess climate-relevant motivation – a significant factor for many consumer choices – with a single question