Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Martin D. Abravanel on Cities and Metropolitan Regions

HOPE VI supports demolishing large, dilapidated public housing and replacing it with smaller-scale, more appealing properties. What makes this feasible (mixed financing; private-sector entities; and mixed-income, mixed-tenure complexes) also creates conditions that challenge and can undermine long-term sustainability. Sustainability has not yet been assessed and whether it should or can be assessed has been questioned. With input from housing practitioners and insight from a trial exploration of two HOPE VI redevelopments, this report demonstrates the need for, and feasibility of, conducting an assessment that can assist both private owners and public agencies in sustaining this valuable resource.

This report "What Happens to Victims? A Research Guide for Disaster-Response Studies" provides a starting point for research and evaluation studies. It provides a series of "checklists" of outcome and service quality indicators, and related information, considered pertinent to studying emergency services responses for a range of critical service areas and covering a wide array of conditions likely to be important to disaster victims. The intent is to establish starting points for assessments of the extent to which victim services needs are met during and following disasters.

The Urban Institute's Center on Metropolitan Housing and Communities has just released two major reviews of research on the HOPE VI experience to date that offer five fundamental lessons for the next generation of public housing revitalization. The research record strongly supports continuing a flexible investment initiative like HOPE VI. But HOPE VI (or a successor) can and should be substantially strengthened based on lessons learned to date. In addition, the HOPE VI experience has broader applicability to the public housing program as a whole.

This research examines the results and performance of loans to private businesses made by state and local governments through their own lending programs using HUD program funding. Relying on examination of nearly 1,000 loan files in 51 communities, researchers found that although default rates are somewhat higher than those of private-sector lenders, substantial amounts of new economic development money could be raised on a secondary market without undermining the policy goals of the federal programs that supply the funds. HUD could help arrange secondary market sales by accumulating and disseminating information and setting standards for loan underwriting, servicing, and documentation.

This paper focuses on low-income federal housing policy and assesses the potential role and effects of current U.S. efforts on urban design, social capital, and residential mobility. Following a brief historical background, the paper identifies important concurrent policy trends likely to affect how future low-income housing will be provided. Topics discussed include concern with containing federal costs, a tendency to rely on market forces and discipline, and an interest in expanding deregulation and devolution. A description of recent federal initiatives that are more holistic in their framework than traditional federal housing programs is also included.