Shelter Shorts

All Out for Affordability

Irvine, a city of 180,000 in conservative Orange County, California, plans to make 10 percent of its housing stock permanently affordable. The city set a goal of putting nearly 10,000 units in a community land trust by 2025. Currently Irvine has 4,400 affordable units from inclusionary zoning and HUD-assisted projects; the city hopes to include these units in the land trust. Housing in the land trust would be affordable to people earning less than 120 percent of the median household income, which was over $72,000 in 2000. Funding for the land trust will come in part from the redevelopment of a former military base as a public park.

Housing advocates are calling on HUD to support renewing the Mark-to-Market program, one of the more successful efforts to address the expiration of Section 8 project-based contracts. The program enables HUD to restructure mortgages on these projects, so that it can maintain rents at levels low-income tenants can afford and keep the projects profitable for landlords. HUD itself has found that Mark-to-Market has preserved 220,000 affordable units since 1997 and saved the agency nearly $2 billion through savings in the Section 8 program. The program will end in September unless Congress extends it. (www.nhtinc.org)

Last year the federal Office of Thrift Supervision weakened the responsibilities of many mid-sized banks under the Community Reinvestment Act by redefining them as small banks. Now OTS has redefined community development to benefit more middle-income people. The agency says banks should get credit for serving “distressed or underserved, nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies.” OTS received over 4,000 comments from consumer groups who said the new language could encourage banks to serve affluent neighborhoods in rural areas rather than low-income people. But the agency acted on positive feedback from about 200 thrifts. (NLIHC)

Alphonso Jackson, HUD’s tough-talking chief, might have spoken a little too bluntly in Dallas in April. Speaking before a gathering of business leaders, Jackson said that he had denied a government contract to an executive because the man mentioned that he disliked President Bush and his policies. Making contract decisions for such political reasons is flagrantly illegal. Jackson later said he had been speaking about an imaginary situation, but we’ll see: HUD’s inspector general is investigating the case.

Boston took a big step this spring to help reintegrate ex-felons into their communities, by easing background checks on potential city employees. The city will not look at people’s criminal records in most cases, but if it does, it will wait until an applicant has proven he is qualified and the city is ready to hire him. If the city changes its mind after looking at the person’s record, the applicant will have the right to challenge the criminal reports’ accuracy. The city’s new policy also applies to private contractors it hires. (NY Times, 3/31/06)

A Texas nonprofit says Fannie Mae doesn’t serve enough people who are low-income and of color in the Dallas-Fort Worth region. After four years of research, the Texas Low Income Housing Information Service found that the government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) buys more single-family mortgage loans for white and upper-income families than other race and income groups. Fannie Mae’s share of loans purchased for African-American and Latino borrowers in the region was 33 percent in 2000. Many people of color who can’t get bank loans supported by Fannie Mae are forced to borrow from subprime lenders at higher interest rates. However, the GSE did serve as many low- and moderate-income people in 2000 as HUD requires, and the GSE doesn’t have to take borrowers’ race into account. (www.texashousing.org)

Copyright 2006

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