Conclusion

Overview: The Need for Low Income Housing

The need for physically adequate shelter has been and continues to be an area of great concern. Many people lack adequate shelter, due to the high costs of housing and lack of financial resources. In the U.S., 13.5% or 43.1 million people are living in poverty (US Census Bureau, 2015).  According to the 30% rule indicating the percentage of income that should be allocated for housing, a family of four that fall within the federal poverty guidelines at 100% earns $24,250 per year. This allows approximately $7,275 per year, or $606 per month, for housing, which falls below the median cost of rent at $847 per month, by more than 25% (US Census Bureau, 2015).  Local governments working together with community development corporations can develop a regional strategy to expand and develop affordable houses (Yaneva and Zaera-Polo, 2015). These  strategies are used to control the crowded living conditions that many low-income individuals face.

Supply and Demand

Traditionally, housing programs have led to the segregation of low-income populations into unsafe neighborhoods. Due to the inability to provide enough safe housing to meet their

needs. When low-income individuals and families are not able to participate with a housing program, they are often forced to choose between basic necessities such as housing, food, and medical care  (Anderson, St. Charles, Fullilove, et al, 2003). Current housing programs are working toward remedying the segregation of low-income populations, by seeking new ways of procuring space for these individuals to buy or rent. This new process is limited, however, by the inability of the program to obtain enough housing in diverse locations within the metropolitan.

There are two main approaches for providing low-income families with public housing, which are the demand-side and supply-side approaches. The demand-side approach relies on the private market to rent to low-income tenants in exchange for a subsidy. Whereas, the supply-side approach includes building public housing units that are overseen by public housing authorities (PHAs), or through tax incentives to private developers (Seicshnaydre, 2016).

Types of Funding

The desire to provide affordable housing in the U.S. began in 1918, in New York, when the Finish Home Building Association purchased and built a co-op. A co-op is a unit building with private rooms and shared common areas; such as an apartment, hotel, or timeshare.  Individuals purchase their share of the co-op and then pay monthly fees to help with maintenance costs.  This type of housing was widely supported by union and ethnic groups, ultimately leading to the New York State Limited Dividend Housing Companies Act of 1927. This was the first relatively large housing program and thirteen co-ops were formed under this act. (Sazama, 2000)

The nationwide housing crisis, after the Great Depression, brought forth the United States Housing Act of 1937.This was the first attempt of the government to address affordable housing issues. The initial objective for government assistance was restricted to only providing temporary rental housing, specifically, for the working poor. The National Housing Act of 1974 introduced many changes in affordable housing policy at the governmental level. (Sazama, 2000)

Today, Tthe Tenant-Based Rental Assistance Program subsidizes the cost of housing secured by low-income households within the private rental market through the use of vouchers or direct cash subsidies. The Section 8 program subsidizes rental costs for families with income below 50% of area median income. Families contribute 30% of their monthly income towards housing costs, and the Section 8 subsidy provides the remainder of the  rental costs, up to a locally defined standard. However, of the people eligible, approximately only 25% receive any type of rental assistance, because of limited funding and long waiting periods (Anderson, 2003).

Lastly, other sources include Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and non-profit companies.  A CBO can be private or non-profit and may include religious entities, which are representative of a community and work to meet the human, educational, and health needs within a community or represented segment of the community.  CBO’s have become increasingly involved in the implementation and planning of affordable housing efforts.  Examples of CBOs  include, organizations like CASA of Oregon, United Way and Habitat for Humanity.

Eligibility and Barriers of Participants

Many labor camps, in California, provide seasonal housing and modestly priced units, as a public subsidy to both workers and employers. However, access has been limited to only families, which excludes the large majority of single male workers, who may be unaccompanied by their families. Many applicants are discouraged to apply, because they, or their families, must submit proof of eligibility; this is often difficult for undocumented immigrants ( Villarejo, 2000).

Rural Community Assistance Corp. and other groups have built several thousand units for low-income rural residents, mostly funded through public sector grants or loans. Many occupants are families who have “settled out” after some years as migrant workers. Although funding targets ‘farmworker housing,’ a lot of the units were not used by farm laborers. For example, in California, there was an endowment of 30 million dollars, to the Agricultural Worker Health and Housing Program, to address farm labor housing.  Unfortunately, this option was not available to most undocumented farm workers (Villarejo, 2000).

Benefits of Pre-move and Post-move Counseling

Pre and post-move counseling has been recommended, by Seicshnaydre, for maximizing the placement of low-income families into more affluent neighborhoods (2016). Through this type of service, households can be assisted in making more informed choices about where to live. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has recommended that public housing authorities (PHAs) provide an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) every five years due to past inequities (Seicshnaydre, 2016). Data helps make these decisions more clear by providing information on unfamiliar neighborhoods, financial literacy, schools, transportation, employment opportunities, and other neighborhood resources. Other problems that pre and post-move counseling may help avoid and/or resolve are racial discrimination and clustering of low-income families into new neighborhoods, which would only instigate the same issue.

Evaluation of Programs

When evaluating low-income housing programs there are a number of possible methods, which can include both quantitative and qualitative measurement. Quantitative measurements can include rates of school completion, teen pregnancies, delinquent behaviors, sexual activity, and youth-on-youth homicide. Social capital, early career development, and child cognitive development are examples of qualitative measurements. While effective in establishing data, these methods can miss the mark when determining the direct neighborhoods effects of low-income housing. Family dynamic influences, nonlocal friendships, and other factors are difficult to measure (de Souza Briggs, 2010).

Often, it is a common assumption that affluent neighbors have a positive effect on families who receive public housing, however, it is important to challenge this belief. Program evaluations should observe the costs, as well as the benefits, of affluent neighbors and the effects of new social contacts along with old ones. Low-income family members who are unemployed may benefit from positive social comparison or they may be hindered by a lack of necessary job skills, transportation, and racism (de Souza Briggs, 2010).

The concept of a neighborhood is both social and spatial; as well as both functional and statistical. Physical proximity is a poor predictor of neighborhoods, due to the diversity of family types that may be present (de Souza Briggs, 2010). De Souza Briggs emphasizes that it is important to relate each outcome to individual and family needs, relate needs to family strategies, and relate strategies to the social and spatial configuration of existing social networks (2010).

Conclusion

Critique

Kirk McClure’s article, “Deconcentrating Poverty with Housing Programs” from the Journal of the American Planning Association, evaluates the role that housing programs have in generating and failing to rectify the problem of concentrated poverty (2008). He also examines various federal housing programs and their ability to assist very-low income households in obtaining housing. This evaluation takes into consideration not only renters, but also homebuyers, and their impact on the concentration of poverty.

The purpose of the evaluation, is to understand the role that housing programs have had in not only resolving housing affordability, but also examining the issue of their facilitation of poverty concentration. The methods that were used utilize data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to assess the role of federal housing programs. It looks at their aide to low-income individuals moving to neighborhoods where less than 10% of the population is below the poverty line. The results indicate that subsidizing housing units is not enough to deconcentrate poverty within a metropolitan area.  McClure recommends that housing planners make more effective use of housing placement counselors, administer programs at the metropolitan scale, lease and broker market-rate housing directly, promote mixed-income Low-Income Housing Tax Credits developments, practice inclusionary zoning, and monitor the impacts of these efforts (McClure, 2008).

This article presents a very clear statement of the purpose, methods, and results in the beginning; making it easy to understand the information available in the following sections. McClure states past findings of other evaluations and compares them to current trends. The article reviews the Low-income Housing Tax Credit program and the Housing Choice Voucher program (primary federal rental housing assistance programs), as well as federal sources of homebuyer assistance. Facts and statistics are presented  to expose areas of improvement, or needed improvement, when focusing on deconcentrating poverty. This is accomplished by providing clear summaries of each program and how they affect the concentrations of low-income individuals in certain locations. Additionally, present in the article, are possible solutions derived from the work of other evaluators and organizations. McClure focused on the overlapping areas of these findings to expose broader applications for future programs.

Utilizing graphs and other visuals would help readers better understand how each program plays a part in the concentration of low-income individuals. They would not only help readers absorb the information, but also give them the ability to keep the information separate, while simultaneously allowing for visual overlapping.

Overall, this article is presented well, because it contains clear and concise information that is delivered with easy to understand language. The problem is clearly defined and backed up by statistical evidence, which is readily available. Since the article focuses on how housing programs are a factor of low-income poverty concentration, several programs are evaluated to demonstrate the need for changes in ongoing and new programs. Overlapping themes are exposed, demonstrating the successes and failures of these programs. This article does a great job of helping housing program planners better understand how they can work to limit low-income poverty concentrations in neighborhoods.