Nine out of 10 of the households surveyed indicated that workers should be able to live in the communities where they work, said Cary Overmeyer, a research analyst for Atlanta-based TNS NFO. “Americans value having these people as their neighbors,” he said.
The survey also found that U.S. households are just about evenly split in their support for higher housing densities as a means of reducing housing costs, said Overmeyer, but 72% indicated support for neighborhoods with mixed housing types. Fifty percent of those polled said that companies should provide stipends and other economic assistance to enable their employees to find affordable housing, and 55% indicated that there was a role for the local government in this endeavor.
Seventy-two percent of those surveyed said they believed that affordable workforce housing should be a concern of politicians.
Affordably Priced Housing Limited in Top 25 Metro Areas
A second NAHB study released in conjunction with the symposium — “Where Is Workforce Housing Located?” — found that workers who provide vital services to the community face an uphill battle to find affordable housing in the nation’s top 25 metropolitan areas. For the most part, essential workers can find housing they can afford in less than half of the areas in those cities, said David Crowe, NAHB's Senior Vice President for Federal Regulatory and Housing Policy.
Crowe identified a general pattern of affordable housing: “In the middle of the metro area is an affordable ‘doughnut hole,’ an area of housing affordability that is often small and is adjacent to, or incorporated within, the traditional business center of the city. Around this affordable central core is a large ring that contains housing that is not affordable to low- and moderate-income families. On the urban fringe, far from many employment centers, is a distant ring that contains affordable housing.”
Overall, the study found that median-income teachers could afford housing in 44% of all the census tracts in the 25 metro areas studied. A median paid nurse could find affordable housing in just 11% of Denver’s census tracts; police officers were limited to about 25% of the neighborhoods in Miami; and retail workers were priced out of 97% of the tracts in the 25 cities, the study found.
“The data leads you to fairly strongly conclude that places where it is most affordable for people like firefighters, police and teachers to live tend not to be the highest caliber neighborhoods,” Crowe said.
HUD Secretary Jackson Committed to Ambitious Housing Goals of Bush Administration
Opening the symposium, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson outlined several initiatives his department is pursuing to provide homeownership opportunities for the nation’s working families, including the elimination of regulatory barriers that drive up costs.
Jackson, who is reviewing all of his agency’s rules and policies to ensure that they are not impeding the production of affordable housing, voiced support for reducing paperwork in Federal Housing Administration programs and he was sharply critical of “exclusionary zoning and gold-plate development standards that limit the ability of developers to build homes. These barriers must come down.”
For more on Jackson's remarks, click here.
As part of the Bush Administration, which he noted is remarkably committed to expanding housing opportunity at a time when the nation is at war, Jackson said he will be working to realize the President’s goal of creating seven million additional affordable homes in the next decade and to enact an FHA single-family zero downpayment mortgage program that would enable 140,000 families a year to achieve homeownership.
In a free-wheeling discussion on housing challenges facing the nation, Jack Kemp and Henry Cisneros, HUD secretaries during the Bush and Clinton Administrations respectively, agreed that workforce housing is a cause that will engage both Democrats and Republicans in the new Congress, and they suggested a number of approaches that should yield positive results. (For complete story in this issue of NBN, click here.)
Freddie Mac Stepping Up Affordable Housing Initiatives
Richard Syron, chairman and CEO of Freddie Mac, said that the institution he heads is stepping up its efforts to expand affordable rental and homeownership opportunities at the end of a four-year period in which home builders constructed more than 7 million new homes, mortgage lenders originated more than $11 trillion in home loans, Freddie Mac financed homes for more than 17 million families and Realtors® and others sold more than 31 million homes, bringing the U.S. homeownership rate to an all-time high.
“But as today’s symposium makes clear, our best has not been enough,” Syron said. “Because our job is far from being done. That is especially true in the emerging market — minorities and new immigrants — that as you know will be the source of most of our growth in the coming years.”
Syron said that Freddie Mac has launched a major “Project Greenlight” initiative geared to expanding mortgage products, lifting more families out of the subprime market and reaching out to expand the pool of potential home buyers.
Another new undertaking, “Home Possible,” will make loan terms more flexible “so our affordable housing programs can include more of the families they’re supposed to serve.” He said the program would serve hundreds of thousands of families, and he added that Freddie Mac automated underwriting decisions are now good for six months rather than four. “This will give home builders extra time to put the finishing touches on a new home without risking the loss of a qualified buyer,” he said.
Syron also said that providing prospective home buyers with counseling would be a key element of Freddie Mac’s efforts to ensure that new home owners make decisions that will enable them to live in their homes without eventually having to default on their mortgages.
As to the reform efforts for housing’s government sponsored enterprises that the next Congress will be pursuing, Syron said that he welcomes them as long as they strengthen the nation’s housing finance system and its commitment to low-cost homeownership, rather than weakening them.
For Syron’s complete remarks to the symposium in this week’s Housing Forum, click here.
Panelists were also on hand to discuss specific aspects of the workforce housing problem:
Click on the bulleted items above for complete coverage of these presentations in this issue of NBN.
For more information on the Workforce Housing Symposium, e-mail Blake Smith at NAHB or call him at 800-368-5242 x8583.
Photos by Herman Farrer
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