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Journal Article
PHFA Takes Pro-Active Steps in Loan Servicing to Keep Borrowers in Their Homes
The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA) was created 40 years ago by the state legislature to expand affordable housing options for the state?s residents. It does so through a number of programs that include funding the construction of multifamily rental units, providing affordable home mortgages, supporting housing counseling at no cost to prospective homeowners, and engaging in foreclosure prevention efforts. This article focuses on the PHFA?s servicing of its home purchase mortgages to Pennsylvania residents and the pro-active steps taken by the agency to help keep borrowers in their ...
Discussion Paper
Can Community Development Improve Health? Emerging Opportunities for Collaboration between the Health and Community Development Sectors
The two sectors of community development and health have long worked in the same neighborhoods, but they have not always worked together. This is starting to change, due in part to a growing recognition among health experts of the social, economic, and environmental factors that drive health outcomes. These social determinants of health have become the basis for new collaborations between community development and health professionals. This paper introduces professionals in both sectors to this emerging area of practice through a series of case studies of innovators in the southeastern United ...
Discussion Paper
Rental Housing Affordability in the Southeast: Data from the Sixth District
Housing data are available for most large metropolitan regions in the Atlanta Fed's Southeast region. However, many midsized metropolitan, micropolitan, and nonmetro areas lack detailed data on rental housing affordability and housing supply needs by income level. These data are important for state and local governments, affordable housing developers, and housing advocates to inform housing policy. Therefore, the Atlanta Fed partnered with the Shimberg Center at the University of Florida to analyze census data using a methodology developed for Shimberg's periodic Rental Market Study for the ...
Discussion Paper
Bank Regulation and Bank Complexity
U.S. Bank Holding Companies (BHCs) currently control about 3,000 subsidiaries that provide community housing services?such as building low-income housing units, maintaining shelters, and providing housing services to the elderly and disabled. This aspect of U.S. BHC activity is intriguing because it departs from the traditional deposit-taking and loan-making operations typically associated with banks. But perhaps most importantly, the sheer number of these subsidiaries makes one think about the organizational complexity of U.S. BHCs. This is an issue that has generated much discussion in ...
Briefing
Rental Affordability and COVID-19 in Rural New England
Although a shortage of affordable rental housing is often framed as an urban-area issue, rural communities also suffer from this problem. On average, rural and urban renters spend similar shares of their income on rent and have comparable rates of housing-cost burden. Years of slow income growth and skyrocketing rents, particularly during the 2000–2010 period, have eroded slack in household budgets that may have gone toward other expenses or toward savings. The coronavirus pandemic likely has exacerbated affordability problems by putting many rural residents out of work. The share of jobs ...
Discussion Paper
Declines in Low-Cost Rented Housing Units in Eight Large Southeastern Cities
From the last quarter of 2012 to the last quarter of 2015, median rents rose 23.4 percent in the South, according to the Census Bureau. Accordingly, an increasing number of households in the South are cost-burdened, which is defined as a household spending more than 30 percent of its income on housing. A growing number of households spend over 50 percent of their income on rent, making them severely cost-burdened. The percentage of such severely cost-burdened households with incomes below $35,000 reached 80 percent in 2014 in eight central cities in the Southeast (Atlanta, Birmingham, ...
Discussion Paper
Developing Inclusive Communities: Challenges and Opportunities for Mixed-Income Housing
Over the past decade, housing costs have risen faster than incomes. The need for affordable rental housing has well outpaced the number of available units as well as funding allocations at the federal level. Local regulation and land use policies that increase the cost of subsidized, mixed-income housing construction and preservation have contributed to the affordability problem. {{p}} To meet the affordable housing needs in U.S. communities, innovation, creativity, and "out of the box" thinking may be required, particularly as it relates to reducing the rapidly increasing costs of ...