Important Stuff: First Update in Decade of Oregon County "Affordable AND Available" Housing Supply by Income Brackets.

NLIHC has recently published statewide profiles of affordable and available housing supply HERE; state level data is found on page 5 . This required major data crunching from NLIHC and I am very appreciative of the amount of work that went into producing this data.

HUD has yet to update their CHAS (Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy) data in a user friendly format for 2010, so useable local HUD CHAS data on the supply of affordable and available housing remains stuck in a 2000 time warp. (National and regional "Affordable and available" housing supply is a key component of periodic HUD Worst Case Housing Needs Reports sent to the Congress; the 2009 report is HERE).

Why the concept of "Affordable AND Available" Housing Supply is So Important.

1. The count of a supply of units with market rents that are “affordable” to lower income families does NOT mean that those units are available or occupied by lower income households--a significant share of units with rents affordable to extremely low income and very low income renters are occupied by households with HIGHER incomes. 
2. As income increases, the "affordable AND available" supply of rental housing increases. In many cases there is a gross surplus of units affordable to households at 80% of median income, and only a very small deficit of affordable AND available units at that income level. That is one of the key reasons that subsidies for rental housing are NOT usually targeted at higher income levels.
   
3. For the lowest income families part of the solution is to create/preserve a universe of income restricted affordable housing that is reserved exclusively for use by extremely low income (less than 30% MFI) and very low income renters(less than 50% MFI)---"Project based assistance" of some kind. 
4. The graph pasted below uses 2010 Oregon data to illustrate how affordable AND available supply increases as income increases. In 2010 the Oregon estimate is that there were only 22 affordable AND available units for each 100 extremely low income (less than 30% MFI) renters, vs 95 for each 100 low income (less than 80% MFI) renters.  

PDF and Excel Versions
First Updated Oregon Affordable and Available Housing Supply Data In a Decade:
Included in a related NLIHC Oregon housing profile HERE is a map that includes county level affordable and available housing percentages (Housing profiles for Oregon Congressional Districts from NLIHC are also available HERE). 

Fortunately, I was able to obtain from Neighborhood Partnerships, a state partner of NLIHC, the Excel workbook that was used to create the county map in the NLIHC Oregon housing profile.(Tip of the hat to Janet Byrd, NP XO for providing Excel file within hours of my request).

I am posting the Excel workbook I received from NP with two additional worksheets added:
1. A worksheet with the statewide total from the NLIHC report for Oregon, along with the graph posted above.
2. A statewide and county summary by income group showing, per 100 renter households, the
A. Number/supply of units that would be affordable to that income group.
B. Number/supply of units that would be both "Affordable AND Available".

This second worksheet also includes a series of three graphs that visually show that data for households with incomes below 30%, 50%, and 80% MFI thresholds. (graphs are to the right of the summary table).

The 4 page PDF file I created HERE has only the statewide and county summary table and the three graphs that I created in the second worksheet. 

The Excel file/workbook, which contains the summary and graphs, AND all of the data for Oregon counties from NLIHC and NPF can be viewed/downloaded directly HERE and is also embedded below:



IMPORTANT NOTE: Estimates for Gilliam, Sherman, and Wheeler counties should be used with caution. These are counties with less than 100 renter households in an income category, less than 100 affordable units, or a high margin of error.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Oregon FHA Loan Volume Drops by 32% in CY 2011 but Still Tops 13,000 Families, $2.3 Billion.

I recently completed an analysis that showed that the total number of FHA loans in Oregon in CY 2011 was down 32% from the records set in CY 2010.  

The decline for home purchase loans was less, at 25%. This means that the share of all FHA loans that were for home purchases increased to 61% from the 55% in CY 2011.

Even with the volume decrease there were 13,659 FHA loans insured in Oregon in CY 2011, representing a commitment of $2.369 Billion.  

In addition to the drop in loan volume the average FHA insured loan amount decreased by 5.7%, from $209,412 to $197,558. 

My statewide CY 2010-CY 2011 summary and county level CY 2011 data is available in the PDF file I created HERE. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Oregon Counties: 2008 HUD Vouchers Per 100 Occupied Rental Housing Units Updated with 2010 Census Data.

My post just prior to this one includes an Oregon census tract level map showing the rate of HUD housing vouchers per 100 occupied rental units, using 2008 HUD voucher counts and counts of occupied rental units as of 2000.

I thought it would be useful to aggregate and update this data to make comparisons at the county level.   So I prepared a ranked table HERE that shows the rate of vouchers per 100 occupied rental units, with breakouts and rankings that use Census 2000 and Census 2010 data. Note that this table does NOT include any project based HUD subsidized projects or public housing, it ONLY includes HUD housing choice vouchers. It also includes only vouchers where  a census tract geocode was available; other HUD databases might include additional vouchers without geocodes, but those are likely to be relatively small numbers of vouchers.

Some observations

1. Statewide from 2000 to 2010 , the rate of HUD vouchers per 100 occupied rental units declined from 6.5 to 5.4 because the number of Oregon occupied rental units increased by 20.5%/97,781 units from 2000 to 2010. (The actual rate in 2000 was likely somewhat less than 6.5 since the count of vouchers in 2000 was somewhat less than it was in 2008).
2. Using 2010 Census data, the average rate for three Portland metro counties of Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington was 4.4 HUD vouchers per 100 occupied rental units; the average rate of 6.3 vouchers per 100 occupied rental units for all other counties was 43.6% higher than the combined average for these three counties. (The 6.3 average rate for the rest of the state outside the 3 county Portland metro area was 17.2% higher than even Multnomah County, which had a 2010 rate of 5.4 vouchers rate per 100 occupied rental units). 

TWO TAKE AWAYS:  

1. HUD vouchers outside of the Portland metro area help a larger share of the rental housing market than they do in the three Portland metro counties ;
2. The share of the total rental market helped by HUD vouchers statewide declined from 2000 to 2008/2010.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

FHA Oregon Loan Volume by County, 1st Qtr CY 2011: $894 Million, 4,100+ Loans.

I have prepared HERE a 2 page legal size formatted summary of FHA single family loan activity for the 1st Quarter of CY 2011, by county.  It includes counts, dollar volume, and average loan amounts by loan type:  home purchase, refi, and HECM (reverse equity). 

Some observations

1. Purchase loans (2,048) were 49% of total loan numbers (4,121).
2. Statewide average loan amount for home purchase loans was $189,935; average loan amounts for HECM loans was much higher at $264,005.
3. The three county Portland Metro Oregon counties accounted for about 51% of total statewide total loan numbers, but only 30% of HECM loan numbers.
4. Multnomah County had the largest county loan totals with $200+ million /903 total FHA loans.
5. Average statewide daily FHA loan volume per workday in the first quarter was 68 loans, $13.9+ million. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Oregon Population Change Excel Lookup Tool Includes Minority and Ethnic Pop Change Data.

I have constructed a powerful new Excel 2007 look up tool as a workbook HERE. (To allow maximum columns, file is formatted as landscape, legal size; file is called a look up because it extracts correct values for selections you make in each row from a hidden list of more than 3,800 possible values).

This tool focuses on Oregon county level population CHANGE from 2008-2009 and from 2000-2009, INCLUDING change by race and ethnicity; this is a subset of the consolidated Oregon county population table that I just posted as a 16 page PDF file (my prior post about that file is HERE).  

(NOTE: This new tool was created in Excel 2007 format.Some users report when they save Excel 2007 files they 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 Excel 2007 extension (.xlsx), and THEN open the file with Excel 2007. [Please, no whining about not using Excel 1997 format, peeps, Excel 2010 is coming out this week!]).

My READ ME worksheet in this workbook explains what this tool can do, and the source of the data:

1.This workbook allows easy comparisons of Oregon County level population CHANGES from 2008-2009 and from 2000-2009.                   
2.Users can select ANY combination of race and county in first two columns and values for Total Population Change, Hispanic Population Change, Non Hispanic Population Change, and Hispanic Share of Total Population are then returned in the columns to the right.          
3.Default selection is for Oregon metro counties, first for "All Races", and then for "White alone", but the user may substitute for the default selections ANY combination of race and counties, in ANY order of their choosing.
4.Except for selection of race and county workbook values in first two columns the look up worksheet is password protected to prevent inadvertent data entry. The data source is a June 2010 Census release of 2009 county population estimates.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Counties and The Foreclosure Crisis Piece Features HUD Sims Q and A.

From National Association of Counties County News , new article, Counties and the Foreclosure Crisis, is HERE.

Includes a question and answer with HUD Deputy Secretary Sims, a long time county official.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Oregon and Oregon County Property Tax Rates.

With property tax assessments starting to appear in our mailboxes, it is good time to compare Oregon and Oregon county property tax rates to the rest of the country, using ACS 2007 data.

The PDF I prepared HERE does this. Using rounded figures It shows:

1. Oregon has a 32% higher median property value than the U.S. average, but a 2% lower median homeowner income.
2. Oregon has a 16% lower ratio of median property taxes to median home value than the U.S. (.8% Oregon vs 1.0% U.S.) but it has a 15% higher ratio of property taxes to median homeowner income.(3.3% Oregon vs. 2.9% for U.S.)
   
3. Most Oregon counties also have a lower ratio of median property taxes to median home value than the U.S. average, but very few have a lower ratio of property taxes to median homeowner income than the U.S average.
   

(I got all the data in the tables from the Tax Foundation website; links appear at the bottom of each table. County information is not available for all counties in the ACS, only those with population of 65,000 or more--a total of 788 counties are in the 2007 ACS).