Refining%20Indicators%20Finding%20the%20Best%20Measures%20for%20Improvements%20in%20Urban%20Housing

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Refining IndicatorsFinding the Best Measures for
Improvements in Urban Housing

• Michael Barndt
• Neighborhood Data Center Program
• Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee
• mbarndt_at_nonprofitcentermilwaukee.org
• Community Indicators Conference
• Reno, Nevada March 2004

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Where Im Coming From

• Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee Capacity building
  for nonprofits
• Neighborhood Data Center a clearinghouse
  defined by a Data/GIS Services mission
• Focus on neighborhood program decision-support
  work is demand driven retail services
• Rich data environment in Milwaukee especially
  in housing
• Rich technology environment program staff of 9
• 6 are apprentices from local universities
• Member National Neighborhood Indicators
  Partnership and Making Connections Initiative

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There are two kinds of people in the world

• Those who think that we can all come together and
  find through consensus that we are all alike
  that there is one common view
• Those who see differences that perhaps . there
  are three kinds of people
• Academic syndrome - Closure problems
• Confirmed by market driven service
• Continually new, diverse requests
• Well beyond a set of indicators and reports

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Talking Points

• Multiple contexts for viewing a subject
• Indicators should not be oversimplified their
  contents change as they are unbundled
• Place/time/sub-communities matter
• Use of data is more than creating indicators
• We still are not able to measure much of what we
  would really like to know

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Varying Perspectives

• Housing Markets
• Housing Preservation
• Resident Benefits
• Equity and Justice
• Quality of Life

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Varying Perspectives Housing Markets

• Values increase, investment attracted, quality
  maintained
• Home ownership, equity through appreciation
• Development rewards
• Strong, safe, organized neighborhoods
• Attractiveness, demand, value

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Varying PerspectivesHousing Preservation

• Loss of housing stock may trump housing
  production
• Housing condition enforcement
• Resources to maintain and restore
• Predatory behavior
• Landlord behavior
• Program mix appropriate to needs

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Varying PerspectivesResident Benefit

• Affordability supporting access, reasonable
  costs for housing
• Ownership as asset wealth building
• Choices for renters ability to be effective
  consumers
• Place/ People Gentrification
• Homeless

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Varying PerspectivesEquity and Justice

• Segregation
• Market perception
• Institutional behaviors
• Access to resources
• Political will to respond
• Spatial isolation within region
• Race, income, political jurisdiction

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Varying PerspectivesQuality of Life

• Much more than housing
• Mobility
• Unstable Transitions
• Urban Village
• Safety
• Community
• Collective local action
• Economically viable
• Services
• Role in region

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Parsing Indicators

• Ownership
• Value
• Equity (ownership/value)
• Housing Supply
• Condition
• Investment
• Equality

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Ownership Definition and measurement

• Census /city approach
• Data accuracy
• Homestead effects
• Land contract sub-market
• Rate of ownership
• Capacity factor

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OwnershipWho owns?

• Life Cycle patterns the Elderly
• Transition of property
• Late interventions
• Owner renter fault lines
• Bi-modal characteristics income, race,
  mobility, children, participation, multiple
  problems
• Persistence of renters
• Policy biases toward ownership
• Investor owners// slum lords
• Patterns/ Practice

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OwnershipGetting at the large term

• Responsibilities of ownership
• Investment
• Order
• Neighborhood upkeep
• Organizations Block clubs

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ValueTracking Sales data

• Sales
• Limited numbers of transactions
• Affected by type
• Affected by circumstance arms length
• Sales perspectives
• Volume
• Value/ changing value
• Within a market

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ValueTracking Assessment

• Model
• Quality
• Comparable Zones
• Amenity effects
• Implementation
• Effect of volume of information
• Data limitations quality/ condition
• Pace sensitivity choices
• Administrative effects

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ValueUnbundling the Indicator

• Differential markets duplexes
• Shifting housing stock base
• Consider a resident owner perspective
• Flipping distortions in market information

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ValueEffects of perception

• Changing expectations
• Speculation effects
• Investment/ commodity
• Effects on investment/ maintenance decisions by
  owners
• Effects on lending decisions

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EquityOwnership as Wealth Building

• Common assumption
• Equity deteriation
• Use of equity loans
• Effects of predatory lending
• Value of bootstrap programs
• Difficulties measuring resident experience
• Wealth other than income
• Debt and factors affecting debt
• Credit worthiness Access to primary financial
  systems

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Housing SupplyVacancy

• Hard to measure vacant units
• Especially those ready for occupancy
• Some units taken off market duplexes
• Vacant land
• Understated
• Government ownership

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Housing supplyInterpretation

• Abandonment as a stage
• Threshold for investment decisions
• Triage has come to mean public abandonment of
  certain neighborhoods
• Relationship to population change
• Did public leave first?
• Or did housing condition/options drive them out
• Regional growth often reinvents neighborhoods
  beyond basic needs for supply

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Housing supplyUse

• Residents like vacant lots
• Are lots effective open space?
• Are lots used for other purposes?
• Gardens
• Tot lots
• Are lots appropriate for redevelopment?
• Assembly issues
• Land-banking as a policy
• Holding action
• Obsolete footprints
• Bias against infill

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InvestmentHMDA

• Investment patterns
• Lending packages for slumlords
• Sub-prime lending
• Predatory lending

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InvestmentForeclosure

• Tax foreclosure
• Mortgage foreclosure
• Patterns of concentration
• A subset - elderly
• Resident owner/ Investor owner
• Recent policy effects
• Patterns of return of property to the market

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Investment Maintenance/ Improvements

• Costs to maintain
• The back side to bootstrap options
• Lending limits when costs exceed value
• Costs do not vary by geography
• Incentives
• Disincentives
• Effects of lax enforcement

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InvestmentPrograms

• Mix of options and resources
• Running out of funds
• How well are options marketed
• Is there capacity to implement
• Especially local
• Who does not fit the options?

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InvestmentAccess to capital

• Affordability
• Work-income comes first
• Costs of new investments
• Public Policy
• Public policy stresses increasing middle income
  participation/ or removing lower income
  concentrations
• Failure of trickle-down
• Tax structure subsidizing wealth
• Costs
• Increasing burden - of income spent on housing
• Risks associated with bootstrap approaches

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EqualityDiscrimination by race

• HMDA lending / refusal patterns
• Importance of testing
• Debate over measures of segregation
• Extent of transitory integrated neighborhoods
• Extent of unstable integrated neighborhoods

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EqualityDiscrimination against persons

• Who cares about low income housing supply
• Renter programs
• Homeless programs
• Employment wages/ stability
• Low income solutions in the past
• Public housing ghettos
• Weeding out
• Felons
• Transitional services
• Homeless linking to the full cycle

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EqualityLending practices

• From trust
• Racial effects
• Community connections local lending
• To formulas
• What is the bias in these?

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EqualityDiscrimination against place

• Redlining
• Regional equity
• Taxing resources
• Schools
• Public policy
• Local capacity
• For self help
• For locally driven development
• Public/ nonprofit partnerships

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EqualityRedefining place

• Destroy a village to save it
• Eliminate old housing stock
• Recreate a community, but for different people
• Gentrification