The Housing Crisis and the Working Poor

The Housing Crisis and the Working Poor PDF Author: Casas del Pueblo Community Land Trust
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Housing
Languages : en
Pages : 48

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Book Description
"This paper is about the housing crisis, both the endemic crisis that makes decent affordable housing an unrealizable dream for one-third of all American households, and the housing bubble that burst in 2006 forcing millions of working poor homeowners into foreclosure. It is written from the perspective of the working poor, a perspective that is sorely lacking in the national debate around housing. The information presented is grounded in a thorough review of the academic literature combined with our collective experiences in real life housing foreclosures. Based on calculations by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, we develop a simple formula for calculating the bank costs for the foreclosure/eviction/REO liquidation process. We offer a creative alternative that saves banks money while also stabilizing families and neighborhoods - donation of properties to community-based organizations. Finally, we outline a functioning Community Land Trust and we invite financial institutions to discuss collaborations that can improve the bank's bottom line while also keeping families out of poverty"--Executive summary.

The Housing Crisis and the Working Poor

The Housing Crisis and the Working Poor PDF Author: Casas del Pueblo Community Land Trust
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Housing
Languages : en
Pages : 48

Get Book Here

Book Description
"This paper is about the housing crisis, both the endemic crisis that makes decent affordable housing an unrealizable dream for one-third of all American households, and the housing bubble that burst in 2006 forcing millions of working poor homeowners into foreclosure. It is written from the perspective of the working poor, a perspective that is sorely lacking in the national debate around housing. The information presented is grounded in a thorough review of the academic literature combined with our collective experiences in real life housing foreclosures. Based on calculations by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, we develop a simple formula for calculating the bank costs for the foreclosure/eviction/REO liquidation process. We offer a creative alternative that saves banks money while also stabilizing families and neighborhoods - donation of properties to community-based organizations. Finally, we outline a functioning Community Land Trust and we invite financial institutions to discuss collaborations that can improve the bank's bottom line while also keeping families out of poverty"--Executive summary.

The Housing Crisis and the Working Poor

The Housing Crisis and the Working Poor PDF Author: Tom Hansen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This paper is about the housing crisis, both the endemic crisis that makes decent affordable housing an unrealizable dream for one-third of all American households, and the housing bubble that burst in 2006 forcing millions of working poor homeowners into foreclosure. It is written from the perspective of the working poor, a perspective that is sorely lacking in the national debate around housing. The information presented is grounded in a thorough review of the academic literature combined with our collective experiences in real life housing foreclosures. Based on calculations by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, we develop a simple formula for calculating the bank costs for the foreclosure/eviction/REO liquidation process. We offer a creative alternative that saves banks money while also stabilizing families and neighborhoods -- donation of properties to community-based organizations. Finally, we outline a functioning Community Land Trust and we invite financial institutions to discuss collaborations that can improve the bank's bottom line while also keeping families out of poverty. We draw the following important conclusions: •The working poor, especially people of color, suffered the greatest losses from the current housing crisis, while real estate speculators are the only winners. •The foreclosure/eviction process sentences working poor families to lives of poverty and has negative impacts on entire neighborhoods. •In one-third to one-half of foreclosure cases in low income neighborhoods, banks lose more by proceeding with foreclosure than be simply donating the properties to community groups. In section 4, we outline an alternative to foreclosure -- donation of unprofitable properties to Community Land Trusts. We address several possible concerns about this approach to loss mitigation, and we invite the major financial institutions in the US to discuss with us the donation option as an alternative to foreclosure. This paper is researched and written by members of the Casas del Pueblo Community Land Trust, part of the Centro Autónomo community center located on the north side of Chicago in Albany Park. The Centro Autónomo membership is largely Latino, and Albany Park is a majority Latino neighborhood, though also said to be the third most ethnically diverse neighborhood in the US. The community center is focused on four principal areas that are critical to the lives of working immigrants: education (adult high school, ESL and computer classes, gender workshop), work (women's house-cleaning cooperative), health (community clinic), and housing. Both Casas del Pueblo and the Centro Autónomo are projects of the Mexico-US Solidarity Network, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization registered in the State of Illinois.

Paths To Homelessness

Paths To Homelessness PDF Author: Doug A Timmer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100031281X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
The major theme in this book is that people are homeless because of structural arrangements and trends that result in extreme impoverishment and a shortage of affordable housing in U.S. cities. It explains the economic and historical causes of homelessness with accounts of individuals and families.

Shelter Poverty

Shelter Poverty PDF Author: Michael Stone
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439905894
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
"...the most original--and profoundly disturbing--work on the critical issue of housing affordability...." --Chester Hartman, President, Poverty and Race Research Action Council In Shelter Poverty, Michael E. Stone presents the definitive discussion of housing and social justice in the United States. Challenging the conventional definition of housing affordability, Stone offers original and powerful insights about the nature, causes, and consequences of the affordability problem and presents creative and detailed proposals for solving a problem that afflicts one-third of this nation. Setting the housing crisis into broad political, economic, and historical contexts, Stone asks: What is shelter poverty? Why does it exist and persist? and How can it be overcome? Describing shelter poverty as the denial of a universal human need, Stone offers a quantitative scale by which to measure it and reflects on the social and economic implications of housing affordability in this country. He argues for "the right to housing" and presents a program for transforming a large proportion of the housing in this country from an expensive commodity into an affordable social entitlement. Employing new concepts of housing ownership, tenure, and finance, he favors social ownership in which market concepts have a useful but subordinate role in the identification of housing preferences and allocation. Stone concludes that political action around shelter poverty will further the goal of achieving a truly just and democratic society that is also equitably and responsibly productive and prosperous.

Homelessness Is a Housing Problem

Homelessness Is a Housing Problem PDF Author: Gregg Colburn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520383761
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Baseline -- Evidence -- Individual -- Landscape -- Market -- Typology -- Response.

Poor Housing

Poor Housing PDF Author: Jim Silver
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781552667910
Category : Housing policy
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
"There is, in all of Canada, a severe shortage of decent quality housing that is affordable to those with low incomes, and a great deal of inadequate, and often appalling, housing. This has been the case for many decades. The poor condition of their housing adds to the weight of the complex poverty that poor people endure-their health is likely to worsen, their children's education may be adversely affected, their neighbourhoods may be prone to violence. However, the federal government has almost always been ideologically opposed to public investment in low-income housing, moreso now than earlier federal governments. The irony is that the social costs of poor housing and its attendant complex poverty with which it is typically associated are greater than the costs of investing in subsidized, social housing and associated anti-poverty measures. It is long past time that we set in motion the means by which this problem can finally be solved. Poor Housing examines some of the consequences of the dogged persistence of poor housing for low-income people using Winnipeg as a case study, and it looks at some innovative community-based strategies that have been and are being tried in an attempt to solve at least some aspects of the problem."--

Sunbelt Blues

Sunbelt Blues PDF Author: Andrew Ross
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 125080423X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
An eye-opening investigation of America’s rural and suburban housing crisis, told through a searing portrait of precarious living in Disney World's backyard. Today, a minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment in only 145 out of 3,143 counties in America. One of the very worst places in the United States to look for affordable housing is Osceola County, Florida. Once the main approach to Disney World, where vacationers found lodging on their way to the Magic Kingdom, the fifteen-mile Route 192 corridor in Osceola has become a site of shocking contrasts. At one end, global investors snatch up foreclosed properties and park their capital in extravagant vacation homes for affluent visitors, eliminating the county’s affordable housing in the process. At the other, underpaid tourist industry workers, displaced families, and disabled and elderly people subsisting on government checks cram themselves into dilapidated, roach-infested motels, or move into tent camps in the woods. Through visceral, frontline reporting from the motels and encampments dotting central Florida, renowned social analyst Andrew Ross exposes the overlooked housing crisis sweeping America’s suburbs and rural areas, where residents suffer ongoing trauma, poverty, and nihilism. As millions of renters face down evictions and foreclosures in the midst of the COVID-19 recession, Andrew Ross reveals how ineffective government planning, property market speculation, and poverty wages have combined to create this catastrophe. Urgent and incisive, Sunbelt Blues offers original insight into what is quickly becoming a full-blown national emergency.

Homelessness Is a Housing Problem

Homelessness Is a Housing Problem PDF Author: Gregg Colburn
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520383796
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Using rich and detailed data, this groundbreaking book explains why homelessness has become a crisis in America and reveals the structural conditions that underlie it. In Homelessness Is a Housing Problem, Gregg Colburn and Clayton Page Aldern seek to explain the substantial regional variation in rates of homelessness in cities across the United States. In a departure from many analytical approaches, Colburn and Aldern shift their focus from the individual experiencing homelessness to the metropolitan area. Using accessible statistical analysis, they test a range of conventional beliefs about what drives the prevalence of homelessness in a given city—including mental illness, drug use, poverty, weather, generosity of public assistance, and low-income mobility—and find that none explain the regional variation observed across the country. Instead, housing market conditions, such as the cost and availability of rental housing, offer a far more convincing account. With rigor and clarity, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem explores U.S. cities' diverse experiences with housing precarity and offers policy solutions for unique regional contexts.

Housing America

Housing America PDF Author: Randall G. Holcombe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351514997
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
Housing policy not only aff ects all Americans' quality of life, but has a direct impact on their fi nancial well being. About 70 percent of American households own their own homes, and for most, their homes represent the majority of their net worth. Renters are aff ected by housing policy. Even the small minority of Americans who are homeless are aff ected by housing policies specifi cally targeted to low-income individuals.The government's increasing involvement in housing markets, fed by popular demand that government "do something" to address real problems of mortgage defaults and loans, provides good reason to take a new look at the public sector in housing markets. Crises in prime mortgage lending may lower the cost of housing, but the poor and homeless cannot benefi t because of increases in unemployment. Even the private market is heavily regulated. Government policies dictate whether people can build new housing on their land, what type of housing they can build, the terms allowed in rental contracts, and much more.This volume considers the eff ects of government housing policies and what can be done to make them work better. It shows that many problems are the result of government rules and regulations. Even in a time of foreclosures, the market can still do a crucial a job of allocating resources, just as it does in other markets. Consequently, the appropriate policy response may well be to signifi cantly reduce, not increase, government presence in housing markets. Housing America is a courageous and comprehensive eff ort to examine housing policies in the United States and to show how such policies aff ect the housing market.

In Defense of Housing

In Defense of Housing PDF Author: Peter Marcuse
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1804294942
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
In every major city in the world there is a housing crisis. How did this happen and what can we do about it? Everyone needs and deserves housing. But today our homes are being transformed into commodities, making the inequalities of the city ever more acute. Profit has become more important than social need. The poor are forced to pay more for worse housing. Communities are faced with the violence of displacement and gentrification. And the benefits of decent housing are only available for those who can afford it. In Defense of Housing is the definitive statement on this crisis from leading urban planner Peter Marcuse and sociologist David Madden. They look at the causes and consequences of the housing problem and detail the need for progressive alternatives. The housing crisis cannot be solved by minor policy shifts, they argue. Rather, the housing crisis has deep political and economic roots—and therefore requires a radical response.