Multi-family Affordable Housing Developments Research Paper

Multi-family Affordable Housing Developments - Research Paper Example Before analyzing several studies that indicate these findings, it is important to take a look at the background of the problem. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the United States was in an era of previously unknown prosperity. Per capita income, stock prices and unemployment rates were at their best levels in the country's history; however, there was not enough affordable housing for those sectors of the population that needed it. Victoria Basolo wrote, â€Å"Because of cuts in federal spending on housing, paired with spiking home values in major cities due to the period of prosperity, those at the poorest end of the spectrum began to suffer† (445). Prices for rent soared; certainly, the poorest suffered the most as leases came up for renewal, which altogether led to a major housing affordability crisis (Basolo 451). According to Ma Thi Nguyen, â€Å"[a]stounding numbers of extremely low- and very-low-income households having 'severe housing problems'...spurred a plea to the building community to look beyond making a profit† (Ma Thi Nguyen 16). Another factor in this crisis was the opposition that began to build in communities throughout the nation toward the construction of new affordable housing units. ... What this meant that people who needed affordable housing were not able to find the shelter they deserved, even though they were willing to work hard and contribute to the economy. Before going into detail on some of the studies, it is worth taking the time to discuss the meaning of the term â€Å"affordable housing.† This can have many different connotations, but when it comes up in the context of the decline of property values and the â€Å"NIMBY† issue, the aesthetic considerations of the unit, or the physical structure, come into question. For those who oppose affordable housing, they think of it as a separate form of living space. However, within the academic community, when the term â€Å"affordable housing† comes up, it has much more to do with the ability of people to afford to live in that house. According to HUD, housing is affordable if a household does not have to pay more than 30 percent of yearly income to live there. This term has some fluidity, th ough, as there are people at many different points on the socioeconomic spectrum who pay more than 30 percent of their income for rent or mortgage payment, and so there must be some combination between that 30 percent line and having a low income. Several different types of studies have looked at this issue. The earliest studies that analyzed the effect of affordable housing on property values utilized a test versus control area methodology, and took place in the late 1980s. This paradigm involves finding neighborhoods that have units of affordable housing and comparing them with neighborhoods that are similar in terms of a number of characteristics but do not have affordable housing units. The relative property values are calculated to determine