4 Day Series of Stories on Metro Portland Location of Affordable Housing /Fair Housing Begins in Sunday Oregonian.

PDF of full front page of Sunday Oregonian is HERE with snip of above the fold pasted to the left. 

Initial story in 4 day scheduled "Locked Out" series of stories is now posted on Oregonian website HERE.    

Their web page HERE also has links to all stories in the series, scheduled to run through Wednesday (4 currently posted):

Part 1, Failure to support Fair Housing Act leads to subsidized segregation
Part 2, Portland’s Section 8 clients are shifted east of 82nd
Part 3, Low-cost housing shut out amid riches of Lake Oswego and West Linn
Part 4, Homebuilders block efforts by Washington County leaders to include affordable housing

I will likely have comments once I get a chance to read and fully digest stories, and also look at print copy of the Sunday Oregonian. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog. 

Metro MPAC April 11 Meeting Has Long Delayed Affordable Housing Supply Report, with Correctable Flaws.

Metro staff were kind enough to provide me with a link to the Metro MPAC materials HERE for the Wednesday April 11th MPAC meeting. 

Included in that meeting is a long delayed report on Affordable Housing supply, a requirement of the Metro Functional Plan. (Link to Metro letter suspending reporting beginning in 2007 is HERE).

Housing Authority Directors for Clackamas, Washington, and Multnomah counties are included on the MPAC agenda for that discussion, likely the first time that has EVER happened.

I have begun to look at the Metro housing supply report and can see that it has a number of flaws, that could and should be corrected.  

More about that later, but for now I just wanted to provide a heads up to readers that Metro is finally advancing the ball on this long delayed report and that PHA Directors will have opportunity to present to MPAC for the first time. 

BTW: Metro candidates housing forum is the day BEFORE this presentation, so will be interesting to see their take on the affordable housing supply report. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

New Excel Tool: Side by Side Comparison of 2010 State Values and Rankings From NLIHC Rental Supply and Affordability Report.

In my recent post HERE I highly recommended the recent NLIHC report on the state by state supply of affordable and available rental housing and severe cost burdens. 

Thanks to help from NLIHC staff in supplying the underlying data, I was able to construct a new Excel workbook HERE which allows the user to select up to 5 states and, side by side, compare their values AND rankings on 9 different rental housing supply and affordability metrics for three different income groupings. 

To see the comparisons all the user has to do is to simply select from a pull down list the state of choice in up to 5 columns; the workbook automatically fills in the 18 pieces of data for each state selected [9 values, and 9 rankings]. 

(The worksheet has been password protected to prevent inadvertent data entry). 

Excel Downloading Tip:This workbook was created in Excel 2007/2010 format. Some users report they cannot directly view Excel files in this format from within their browser and/or that Excel files they save end up with a compressed .zip file extension. My suggestion is to RIGHT CLICK and save the file to your PC. Then navigate to the file you downloaded and look at its file extension. IF it appears as .ZIP extension, change the .ZIP extension to an Excel 2007/2010 extension (.xlsx), and THEN open the file with Excel 2007/2010.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

New NLIHC Report on Declining Affordable AND Available Rental Housing Supply; Oregon Worse Than National Average.

Click to Enlarge

NLIHC has published a new HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Housing Spotlight report HERE showing by state and key income levels the percentages of rental units that are 

1. Affordable and,
2. Affordable AND available.

My Observations:

1. A significant share of rental units with rents affordable to lower income renters are NOT available to them because other renters with higher incomes already live in the unit. 
2. At the national level, the NLIHC data show that for every 100 extremely low income renter households (<30% MFI) there was a supply of 56 units that had rents that were affordable to those renters. However, the data shows that only 30 of these affordable units were actually available to these extremely low income renters because 26 otherwise affordable units are occupied by higher income renters.
3. In Oregon the problem is even more pronounced. NLIHC estimates that there was a supply of 42 affordable rental units for every 100 extremely low income renter households. However, because 20 of these affordable units were occupied by higher income renters, only 22 of these units remain both affordable AND available to extremely low income renters.
4. The affordable and available rental housing supply gap drops as incomes increase. Nationally, at 80% MFI the estimate is that there were 98 affordable AND available units for every 100 renters at that income level, while in Oregon the estimate is that there were 95 rental units affordable and available to every 100 rental families at 80% of MFI. 
5. When the supply of affordable and available housing is less than the need, families end up spending more than 30% of their income for rent (AKA, they are "Cost Burdened"; the NLIHC report shows the rate of "severe cost burden", households paying more than 50% of their income for rent).
6. Nationally, 76% of extremely low income renters have a severe cost burden; Oregon is worse than the national average with 81% of extremely low income renters paying more than 50% of their income for rent. 
7. Project Based Rental Assistance and income restricted housing is a key way to solve the housing affordability problem for low income renters as it insures that this supply of affordable units remain available to lower income families.
8. Vouchers help solve the "affordablity" problem. However, unless project based, they cannot solve the affordable and available affordable housing supply problem as they can only be used if a unit is available.

A blog post HERE from NLIHC has more background on this report. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Lake Oswego CY 2012 City Council Goals Do Not Include Any Affordable Housing Goals.

The Lake Oswego City Council recently met to consider goals and work plans for CY 2012.  As part of that process I met with the Mayor and shared with him a minimal set of affordable housing goals [HERE] and my suggestions were shared with members of the City Council prior to and at the Council work session on the work plan. 

I was not able to sit in on that meeting but I heard after the meeting that the City Council choose not to adopt any of my suggested affordable housing work items.  

In looking at the materials (HERE) for the City Council meeting on Feb.7th, I don't see any affordable housing items included in the Council CY 2012 goals or work plan. 

The only goals that could impact affordable housing are the planned development of Urban Renewal plans for Lake Grove and Foothills. 

I wish I could be more optimistic  but unfortunately:

1.Council has yet to act on the 2005 Affordable Housing Task Force recommendation the the LO urban renewal agency establish

  " a minimum percentage of affordable units in all developments that receive ... assistance [of the urban renewal agency]"  (I repeated this item in my suggested affordable housing work plan items)

2. The Lake Oswego Review said in a recent story that the Mayor " isn’t sure publicly supported housing belongs in Foothills..." [Note that Foothills would expand total LO rental housing stock by about 1/3rd].

All of this leads me to continue to wonder:
If not now, when?
If not in Foothills/Lake Grove UR areas, where?

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.