New Metro Regulated Housing Report: Count of ALL Units Affordable Below 60% MFI Up by 4,000+ Units, But That is NOT the Actual Net Supply Increase.

Metro (in January) released the latest regulated housing report HERE; it covers production and preserved units through CY 2017. [I played an early role encouraging Metro to produce this reoccurring report, but was unsuccessful in getting Metro to link affordable housing production and preservation to local transportation and other funding under Metro's control). 

My December 2016 post HERE has information from the report that captured production through 2015. My post HERE reported on the first report through 2011 (Linked files in that earlier post no longer work).

As before, this year I requested from Metro the data used to compile the report and Metro staff promptly provided that data and I am appreciative of their prompt response.   

For this post I want to focus on the distribution of all regulated units below 60% of MFI, the LIHTC limit.  

In the PDF graph and table I created HERE, I show unit counts and percentages of totals for all units below 30% MFI, all units below 50% MFI, and all units below 60% MFI. (Each count is cumulative--including units in the lower income categories).  The graph shows the City of Portland share of units at 30%, 50%, and 60% of MFI for both the four county and three county area. 

Note that this PDF does NOT include 2018 and 2019 projects (1,526 regulated units in those projects are shown in Table 7 of the 2017 Metro report; not all of them will be below 60% MFI). 

As of 2017 Beavercreek, Boring, West Linn, Banks, and Cornelius all have zero reported regulated units affordable below 60% MFI. (The note at the bottom of Table 2 of the Metro 2017 report lists all areas that had NO regulated units).

Observations

1. Unit Count by Affordability Level: Better Reporting of Affordability Levels, But Problems Remain. 

50% MFI 
I count 16,421 units affordable to those below 50% of MFI in the four counties in the 2017 report; the City of Portland had 69% of the total units in the four counties and 77% of these units in the three counties.

Below 50% MFI- Regulated Supply Gap of 115,829 Units
HUD 2011-2015 CHAS data shows there were 132,250 rental households below 50% of MFI in the 4 county region, so there was a supply gap of nearly 116,000 income restricted (aka regulated) rental housing units for households below 50% MFI. (132,250-16,421= 115,829). [This of course does NOT factor in the private market supply of units affordable below 50% MFI, nor does it factor in the use of HUD housing choice vouchers)

And I calculate that for every 1,000 renter households below 50% MFI there was a supply of 124 units income restricted to those below 50% MFI.  (16,421/132,250 X 1,000).  Note also that income restrictions generally apply at admission only, so not every tenant in an income restricted unit is currently below the income restricted level. 

(The gap may decrease and the rate per 1,000 may increase if more complete and accurate affordability information is entered into the database). 

60% MFI

I dug more deeply to count of ALL units affordable below 60% MFI and the count of those units INCREASED by 4,127 units from the Metro 2015 report to the Metro 2017 report. (From to 30,882 to 35,009 units in my tally). 

But there are issues.  

The 4,127 increase in units affordable below 60% MFI is NOT the result of a net increase in total regulated units (they only increased by 2,315 units from 41,322 in 2015 to 43,637 according to my tally. [Metro's 2017 regulated total in Table 1 and Table 2 of their 2017 report is slightly higher at 43,956, but their count of regulated units is also shown as 42,430 in their first page narrative).

Those minor differences in 2017 counts notwithstanding, the increase in affordable units is clearly the result of more reporting of affordability levels from those supplying the data and also SOME net increase of new units vs. units that were in projects whose affordability expired. 

Three related items to note:
1. Metro says (at the top Table 4 of their PDF) that fully 10% of regulated units still do NOT have a reported affordability category.
2. Washington County had a BIG reported increase of 1,946 units affordable below 60% MFI, Multnomah an increase of 1,860 units [with the City of Portland accounting for 1,629 of that increase], Clackamas County had a reported decrease of 2 units , and Clark county a reported increase of 323 units. 
3. In the 2015 and 2017 data sent to me Clackamas County had multiple single family homes, including scattered site public housing units, that were shown at 80% MFI . While perhaps technically accurate actual public housing resident incomes are closer to 20% % of MFI. 

I think it is clear error to show public housing units at 80% affordability as the reality is that they house households much closer to 20% of MFI. 

With possible exception of HOME projects 30% or 50% affordability categorization makes much more sense to me for ALL HUD project based assistance, and I suspect is the level at which public housing units in Multnomah County are shown in the report.  

For Clackamas county this is important as they plan to dispose of their public housing and new replacement housing affordable at 80% MFI will not match the incomes of the current (or future) residents.

I also note that the field for HUD assisted units is entered sporadically, if at all, in the database. 

The upcoming tracking of new Regional Bond measure housing production should drive improved quality and consistency of reporting on the affordability of units in regulated projects. 

2. Vouchers: $131 Million in Annual Subsidy; Up 1,185 Units Since 2011. 

Metro noted that HUD vouchers were up 417 from 2015 and I tally that they are up by 1,185 from the Metro 2011 report. 

At $8,000 in HUD subsidy per year 1,185 additional vouchers would bring $9.46 million in additional ANNUAL rent subsidy. [Note that the recent Metro bond target for units affordable below 30% MFI (a typical income for voucher families) is 1,600 units].

Using the Metro count of 2017 vouchers (16,395), the stream of HUD voucher subsidy funding would be $131+ million ANNUALLY. 

Note: A significant share of income restricted units below 60% are occupied by households with HUD housing vouchers. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.