Nicola Clayton’s Post

🚨 Affordable Housing Crisis Alert 🚨 A recent report by the Affordable Housing Advisory Board (AHAB) reveals that Washington State needs over a million new homes in the next 20 years to address the critical shortage of affordable housing. Nearly half of these homes must be accessible to families earning less than 50% of the area median income. The shortage is causing homelessness, housing instability, and rising costs for low- and moderate-income families. The AHAB Five-Year Housing Advisory Plan outlines over 50 recommendations to remove barriers to affordable housing, including increased funding, streamlined processes, and support for homeownership. The report also features personal stories highlighting the impact of housing insecurity. 📊 Dive into the report for more insights: https://lnkd.in/g_fJD96Z

Commentary: Tackling the affordable housing crisis in Baltimore County 🏡 "As the affordable housing crisis continues to plague Baltimore County, it's time for action. We must come together to find solutions that provide safe and stable housing for all residents. Let's demand that our local government prioritizes this pressing issue and works towards creating more affordable housing options. #AffordableHousing #BaltimoreCounty #CommunityAction 💪🏽🏘️" This commentary sheds light on the urgent need for affordable housing in Baltimore County. Let's use our voices to bring attention to this important issue and push for change. Every resident deserves a place to call home. Let's work towards a more equitable future for all. #HousingCrisis #CommunitySupport 🏘️🌎 via @afronews

Great to read Tia Boatman Patterson, Esq. at California Community Reinvestment Corporation perspective on a housing crisis in CA and how to address the "missing middle" and middle-income housing access with widening gap of available units #missingmiddle #housingcrisis #affordablehousing #attainablehousing -

The Housing Crisis Laid Bare - report from the People's Commission led by Professor Nicole Gurran from Architecture, Design and Planning - University of Sydney and the Henry Halloran Research Trust and former Labor senator Doug Cameron - reveals the crushing consequences of homelessness, housing stress and insecurity in Australia. "The evidence they provided is an indictment on decades of failed housing policy, government inaction, and buck passing." The full report is available via this link Greta Werner Linda Wang Dallas Rogers University of Sydney #housingcrisis #housing #research https://lnkd.in/gki-BGaM

This is a very good read from Ms Boatman. But readers should not confuse "middle income" housing with "missing middle" housing. The former is about incomes served while the latter is about housing product type/design. The two issues are linked. However, a discussion of middle-income housing (which she defines as households up to140% AMI) somewhat obscures the underlying problem of housing undersupply. Her comments validate three points I often make about how we do affordable housing and why its not working. 1. Nationwide, our financing approach is essentially taxpayer funded grants of equity to developers that does not recycle nor result in public ownership 2. We finance single family homes and multifamily apartments, but very little of the housing product in between (Missing Middle) much of which we have made regulatorily infeasible to develop 3. We are income exclusive in approach (we income target housing development to 80% AMI and below) rather than an income inclusive, housing for all approach (middle income up to 140% AMI) There is not enough housing product of the appropriate design for middle-income earners. Irrespective of how you tinker with LIHTC, that tool only finances multifamily apartment housing product. You cannot build anything else with it. We need missing middle housing to provide the range of housing product types (duplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, live/work, courtyards) that is both attractive to modern day households and is affordable. It is pervasive housing undersupply that is the core issue for middle-income families. We do not have a demand issue, we have a supply issue.

Cincinnati named in top ten of fastest growing rental markets by Redfin. Interesting article about “Shared Housing” as a possible solution for some experiencing homelessness.

The headline here is that affordable housing providers are contributing to our state's housing crisis by evicting families at record levels. But the story behind the headlines is that our publicly-funded housing system is unable to respond as a true system. Instead, we have a set of individual assets capitalized under a faulty premise of self sufficiency by one set of funders, and we have the folks living in those buildings with limited access to a patchwork of support systems funded by a mostly different set of funders. It isn't a true system and lacks the alacrity needed to prevent the very outcome all the players are missioned to prevent - homelessness and housing insecurity. We have not yet built a true system that is designed to sustainably provide housing to all our people - whose needs and means typically fluctuate over time. So our affordable housing - the asset side - cannot respond efficiently and equitably to rising expenses, resident and organizational challenges and to an always threatening and changing economic landscape for low wage families in America. Our services and prevention measures are funded separately in a patchwork way that people cannot always easily access. Neither system - capital nor housing stablization services - is funded as an entitlement to ensure housing access and eviction prevention to everyone who qualifies and needs them. While we are trying to shelter our unsheltered homeless, our affordable housing - the best permanent solution we know of to homelessness - is left to shuffle the cards on who it can serve and for how long, leaving our homeless response system overtaxed by a new wave of people threatened with homelessness and the trauma of eviction - people who had already secured permanent affordable housing. We need to redesign how we invest in and support affordable housing over the long haul and across changing circumstances and cost escalations we can expect. We need to reinvest in upstream eviction prevention so people do not lose their affordable housing it often took them years of waiting to secure. City, County, State must come together quickly - this is a solvable problem amidst many that defy easy solutions.

Housing as a human right - well done

This is not an issue that can be put on the “backburner” to be solved for another day. We only have one future, one opportunity to get this right . . . let’s not mess it up by squandering it on the status quo. Let’s take a leap of faith and a bold move of courage in working together to tackle the existential crisis of housing! #utah #housing #housingaffordability #housingcrisis #housingforall https://lnkd.in/gUgvBGyA

7 Creative Solutions to Affordable Housing in California. We’ve learned a lot over the years about how to solve California’s housing crisis. The solutions below are proof that, yes, it can happen. https://lnkd.in/esu_H-HR Communities are stronger when everyone has a safe, stable and affordable place to call home! 🏡 Check out these orgs advancing innovative housing solutions. #affordablehousingmonth