Housing Markets and Choice

NeighborhoodInfo DC, a partnership between the Urban Institute and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, held the second dialogue on the foreclosure crisis facing the Greater Washington region to answer these questions. The panel discussion on Banking and Servicer Solutions featured Jennifer Murphy from Center for New York City Neighborhoods and their innovative program to work with servicers.

The National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership is a network of local civic groups and university institutes in 32 cities that operate neighborhood-level data systems. This report documents the results of a project that challenged three of these groups to apply their data creatively to enhance local responses to the foreclosure crisis in a one year time frame. All had an impact. The Atlanta group developed neighborhood data on foreclosure trends region-wide and presented it at several major convenings that motivated stakeholders for the first time to work toward a coordinated regional approach to response planning. In Chicago, the group linked the client database of a major housing counseling organization to records on foreclosure outcomes and helped the agency examine outcomes for the households they counseled. The Washington D.C. team also analyzed a mix of neighborhood indicators area-wide (e.g., foreclosure risk, market strength, and access to transportation) and worked with the Council of Governments to use the analysis as a basis for targeting resources more effectively in Neighborhood Stabilization Planning.

Despite substantial progress since passage of the Fair Housing Act four decades ago, neighborhoods remain highly segregated by race and ethnicity. This paper summarizes existing research evidence on both the costs of segregation and the potential benefits of neighborhood diversity. It uses decennial census data to show that a growing share of US neighborhoods are racially and ethnically diverse, but that low-income African Americans in particular remain highly concentrated in predominantly minority neighborhoods. Because the dynamics that sustain segregation today are complex, strategies for overcoming them must address not only discrimination, but information gaps, affordability constraints, prejudice, and fear.

Neighborhoods likely to be the hardest hit by foreclosure impacts in 2009 are those that experienced the highest densities of subprime (high-cost) lending during the peak 2004-2006 period. This brief examines patterns of such lending in the 100 largest metropolitan areas. The very highest subprime densities were found in minority neighborhoods that were, interestingly, at the higher rather than the lower end of the income spectrum. But there was considerable variety in characteristics among the most troubled. Of the fifth of census tracts that ranked highest in subprime density, 35 percent had predominantly white populations and 60 percent were in the suburbs.

Every parent recognizes the inextricable connections between where we live and the quality of our children’s education. Although public policies have historically contributed to disparities in both neighborhood affordability and school quality, federal programs focused on affordable housing rarely take public schools into account and school officials typically assume that they have no influence over housing patterns. This paper focuses on four principles regarding the vitality and performance of schools and communities, discussing opportunities for constructive policy interventions, summarizing what we know about their likely effectiveness, and recommending next steps for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education.