“The Power of the Supreme Court’s Decision in the Fair Housing Act Case”: Read Florence Roisman’s analysis of ICP v Texas, from the forthcoming Poverty & Race.
Online “Section 8” rental listings: In its proposed rule on HUD Section 8 “portability” (which is still pending after more than three years), HUD requested comments on whether “the list of landlords and other parties is helpful for families, or if HUD should remove this requirement….and whether additional information on areas of opportunity or neighborhoods would be more beneficial for families.” Last year, we surveyed a number of public housing agency (PHA) apartment lists for voucher families around the country, and found significant patterns of clustering of apartment listings in neighborhoods that were higher poverty and racially concentrated. One particular trend we noted was the increasing use of online apartment listings by PHAs – and our initial findings are included in a new PRRAC policy brief: Constraining Choice: The Role of Online Apartment Listing Services in the Housing Choice Voucher Program.
Improving the Housing Choice Voucher program: During the past two weeks, we helped to put together formal comment letters on two important Section 8 voucher reform issues: a proposed “Small Area Fair Market Rent” reform for metro areas with particularly high concentrations of vouchers in poor neighborhoods, and a proposed inflation factor adjustment in the housing voucher budget that would make it more difficult for families to make moves out of poverty neighborhoods.
Other resources and upcoming events
Good advice for gentrifying neighborhoods: Changelab Solutions has put together a useful compendium of best practices for preserving affordable housing in gentrifying neighborhoods – an important fair housing complement to housing mobility and desegregation strategies.
“Compelling reasons” to support affordable housing programs: Earlier this week, the MacArthur Foundation released the results of its third annual “How Housing Matters” survey.The survey evaluated the strength of different rationales in support of affordable housing policies. Notably, the highest ranked “compelling reason” generating support for a stronger affordable housing policy was the observation that “chronic stress experienced by families who live in unsafe neighborhoods can negatively affect young children’s mental and social development” (selected by 73% of respondents in the poll). The importance of stable affordable housing for children also ranked very high in the polling.
Building One America National Conference, July 23-24, Washington, DC: Register here.
National Coalition on School Diversity National Conference, September 24-25, Washington, DC: Register here.
July 16 Housing Mobility Conference: We are pleased to report that registration for More Choices for More Families: Sixth National Conference on Housing Mobility, July 16, in Chicago has reopened. Due to the higher-than-expected demand the conference has moved to a larger venue. Click here for event details and please follow the Eventbrite link to register.
