Hud what is affordable housing

The Metropolitan Council's Housing Policy Plan defines affordable housing as housing that is affordable to low- and moderate-income families. Who qualifies for affordable housing?

For details on how this is calculated, see the History of Median Income, below. One problem is that that many families try to reduce their housing costs by moving further away from job centers. But this simply increases their transportation costs — so a simple "affordable housing" metric might not capture the whole story.

Another problem is that the concept of Area Median Income AMI can exaggerate the affordability of housing in high-income areas. That means a unit could qualify as affordable for a low income family while still being well outside the price range of a family living near the poverty line.

By basing affordability metrics on the local median income, AMI implies that when housing affordability gets so dismal that lower income people leave, your city has actually increased the affordability of its housing stock.

Since the highest income metro areas in America are often the least affordable, this is a substantial distortion. There are two basic types of policies that could make a large difference in housing affordability:. Governments and political activists are often very interested in using rent control or inclusionary zoning policies to address housing affordability issues.

But those tools only redistribute a fixed supply of housing, and can't actually expand the number of people who can afford to dwell in a particular place. Any approach to housing affordability that ignores the supply side will ultimately run into a problem familiar from the children's game musical chairs — if there aren't enough homes to go around, someone has to lose out.

In an unregulated, unsubsidized market the people who lose out are going to be the people with the least money to spend. Various regulatory measures or subsidies can change that and provide targeted assistance to some households.

But in many areas, the basic problem is that demand for housing is high. The technology boom has caused many people to want to live in Palo Alto, but there aren't enough houses to go around. The renewed fashionability of urban living means that many people want to live in Manhattan, but there aren't enough apartments to go around. For housing to be more affordable, the supply of houses needs to increase.

The term "zoning" is often used loosely to refer to a broad set of regulations that govern the use of urban and suburban land.

It is more strictly used to refer to what's also sometimes called "Euclidean zoning" after the village of Euclid, Ohio not the Greek mathematician which seeks to segregate different kinds of building uses from one another. Under Euclidean zoning, a given patch of land is set aside for residential use, for office buildings, for shopping centers, for light industry, or whatever else. There are also "form-based" zoning codes that regulate the shape of buildings rather than the activities that take place inside them.

Typically either a Euclidean or a form-based zoning code will distinguish between areas where multi-family apartment buildings are allowed and where they are banned.

Other kinds of regulations may or may not be considered zoning by a particular jurisdictions. It is common, for example, to require certain minimum amounts of parking to be included with new construction projects, a rule that often de facto limits the amount of density that is allowed.

Jurisdictions may also have rules about "lot occupancy" how much space must be left unbuilt and reserved for yards or the minimum size of lots. These regulations can all restrict the supply of housing in an area. If houses are legally required to be built on larger lots, fewer houses can be built in a given area. At first blush, a "rent control" law that puts a ceiling on the amount of rent a landlord can charge should make housing more affordable.

Economists often teach in Econ that this is wrong, however. By making it less profitable to build new apartments, the argument goes, rent control laws perversely make housing less affordable by making it scarcer. The Econ argument is certainly possible in theory, but it is unlikely to be a significant factor in the contemporary United States. In the markets with the worst affordability problems, it's usually zoning rather than rent control that is restricting the supply of housing.

Massachusetts, for example, entirely scrapped rent control in But that hasn't led to a surge of high-rise construction near Harvard Square — despite rising housing prices — for the simple reason that high-rise construction violates the zoning code. Inclusionary zoning IZ ordinances have become increasingly popular affordable housing measures in recent years.

This is an effective tool for maintaining economic diversity in a rapidly developing neighborhood, but its impact on the overall affordability of a city or a metropolitan area is ambiguous. When IZ is used as part of a larger political process aimed at increasing the amount of construction that's allowed in a desirable area "upzoning" it can be a very potent tool for affordability.

But if IZ isn't paired with upzoning, it has an ambiguous impact on affordability. A small number of households will end up getting a home they couldn't otherwise afford. But everyone else will be left with a smaller pool of market rate units to bid on. Different people mean different things by "gentrification," but typically it refers to a process by which higher-income people and retail outlets that cater to them move into a neighborhood previously dominated by low-income households, artsy Bohemian types, immigrants, people of color, or some combination of the above.

The PHA will also rely on direct verification from your employer, etc. You will be asked to sign a form to authorize release of pertinent information to the PHA. An HA must provide written notification. If the HA determines that you are eligible, your name will be put on a waiting list, unless the HA is able to assist you immediately.

Once your name is reached on the waiting list, the HA will contact you. If it is determined that you are ineligible, the HA must say why and, if you wish, you can request an informal hearing.

If you are offered a house or apartment and accept it, you will have to sign a lease with the HA. You may have to give the HA a security deposit. You and the HA representative should go over the lease together. This will give you a better understanding of your responsibilities as a tenant and the HA's responsibilities as a landlord. Sometimes there are. Raphael Bostic, professor and chair for the Department of Governance, Management and the Policy Process at the University of Southern California, highlighted how housing supply constraints and lags, declining or stagnating household incomes, or a combination of those conditions can result in housing costs that are high relative to income.

Painter noted that in some areas, high housing cost burdens may result from stable housing costs coupled with declining household incomes, whereas in other areas, high housing cost burdens may be driven by housing costs increasing more quickly than household incomes. When the costs of available housing options in an area are high relative to household income, households may need to make tradeoffs, says Painter.

In an effort to curb high costs, households may choose housing that is far from employment centers and would require long commutes or share housing with other households, which could lead to overcrowding. Alternatively, households might reduce spending in other areas, such as transportation, health care, food, and education, to offset high housing expenditures.

Accurately understanding housing cost burdens is essential to determining the scope of housing needs and ensuring that families can afford other nondiscretionary costs, but defining affordability in terms of a percentage of household income creates challenges.

According to Painter, housing costs reflect more than just the price of housing units alone; these costs also account for neighborhood school quality, public safety, and access to jobs and amenities.

The percentage of income standard for housing affordability may not fully consider the effects of housing and neighborhood quality. Housing that may appear affordable based on cost alone, for example, might be far from employment centers, increasing the percentage of income a household dedicates to transportation.

A household may also choose a low-quality housing unit or a low-opportunity neighborhood to reduce housing costs. As a result, the conventional measure of affordable housing may underestimate the number of households who are burdened by combined housing and transportation costs as well as the number of households in need of quality affordable housing. For example, households with higher incomes may voluntarily choose more expensive housing, which makes their housing costs appear less affordable, whereas households with lower incomes may do the opposite, choosing housing that is smaller, further away from employment centers, or less well maintained, which makes their housing costs appear more affordable.