Research Topic: Rental Housing

Research
Money Is Policy: How Federal Dollars are Spent: The Case for New Priorities (Terwilliger Foundation, 2017)

This Terwilliger Foundation report reveals the striking imbalance of current federal housing assistance, where most of the benefits accrue to higher income households. It notes that the median income of homeowner households ($68,797) is more than double the median income of renter households ($33,784), but renters receive none of benefits of mortgage-related tax expenditures and most of these expenditures go to higher income homeowners.

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Research
Assessment of the New Jersey LIHTC Program (New Jersey Future, 2017)

To evaluate whether those changes had their intended effect, New Jersey Future compared affordable housing projects that received federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) between 2005 and 2012 with projects that received credits between 2013 and 2015, after the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (NJHMFA), which administers the tax credits, made significant changes to the criteria it uses to award them.

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Research
BRIGHT Study Finds Improved Health at Boston Housing Authority’s Old Colony Homes (HUD, 2017)

For more than 15 years, Boston Housing Authority (BHA) has executed efforts to improve residents’ health through changes in environment and behavior. One of these initiatives was the Boston Residential Investigation on Green and Healthy Transitions (BRIGHT) study, a collaborative effort with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Committee for Boston Public Housing to measure the impact of healthy housing features and practices on resident health, satisfaction, and comfort. The study compared the health of residents living in the old housing with residents’ health in new units with healthy housing features and practices. The redeveloped housing included smoke-free housing policies, improved ventilation, and tight building envelopes.

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Research
The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes (NLIHC, 2017)

The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes highlights the critical housing needs of the nation’s lowest income households. More than 11.4 million extremely low income renter households in the U.S, whose income is no greater than 30% of their area median income (AMI) or the poverty guideline, face a shortage of 7.4 million affordable and available rental homes. Nationally, only 35 affordable homes are available for every 100 ELI renter households. A shortage exists in every state and major metropolitan area.

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Research
Paycheck to Paycheck: More than Housing (NHC, 2017)

This research note expands on the Paycheck to Paycheck 2016 analysis and explores the context in which these salaries are being earned by examining household spending on a variety of items. Households must balance their spending on housing with their spending on other key household needs, such as transportation and healthcare. The lowest income households face the greatest challenges in balancing these competing needs.

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