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Urban Institute: Housing
Urban Institute reports on: Housing - The Urban Institute is a nonprofit nonpartisan policy research and educational organization established to examine the social, economic, and governance problems facing the nation.

• Quality Schools, Healthy Neighborhoods, and the Future of DC
  Over the last decade, the District of Columbia implemented bold steps to improve its public schools while also experiencing population growth, property value increases, and strong city fiscal health. But its child population (0-17 years old) remained essentially the same and a dwindling share of the city's children was attending the public schools. This policy report summarizes analysis from the Quality Schools and Healthy Neighborhoods: Research Report that describes the relationships between education, housing, and neighborhood development in the District, as well as provides policy recommendations for how to make the District of Columbia a more family-friendly city.
• Quality Schools and Healthy Neighborhoods: A Research Report
  Over the last decade, the District of Columbia implemented bold steps to improve its public schools while also experiencing population growth, property value increases, and strong city fiscal health. But its child population (0-17 years old) remained essentially the same and a dwindling share of the citys children was attending the public schools. This research report describes in-depth the relationships between education, housing, and neighborhood development in the District of Columbia, and it is the basis for the subsequent policy research report, Quality Schools, Healthy Neighborhoods, and the Future of DC, which outlines recommended policies to make the District a more family-friendly city.
• Beyond Ideology, Politics, and Guesswork: The Case for Evidence-Based Policy (revised 2008)
  U.S. public policy has increasingly been conceived, debated, and evaluated through the lenses of politics and ideology. The fundamental question--Will the policy work?--too often gets short shrift or even ignored. A remedy is evidence-based policy -- a rigorous approach that draws on careful data collection, experimentation, and both quantitative and qualitative analysis to determine what the problem is, which ways it can be addressed, and the probable impacts of each of these ways. Examples of how evidence informs good policy and lack of evidence can invite bad include health insurance coverage, welfare reform, sentencing policy, and redress for housing discrimination.
• Making Work Pay Enough : A Decent Standard of Living for Working Families
  One-third of America's families with children are low income, meaning their incomes fall below twice the federal poverty level. Although four in five of these families work, many don't bring home enough to cover the everyday costs of living. In this essay, Acs and Turner outline their proposals to enhance low-income families' purchasing power and reduce unusually high housing costs through a package of reforms and policy initiatives that tackle both the income side and expenditure side of family budgets.
• Making Work Pay Enough - Summary
  One-third of America's families with children are low income, meaning their incomes fall below twice the federal poverty level. Although four in five of these families work, many don't bring home enough to cover the everyday costs of living. In this essay, Acs and Turner outline their proposals to enhance low-income families' purchasing power and reduce unusually high housing costs through a package of reforms and policy initiatives that tackle both the income side and expenditure side of family budgets.
• Review of "Making Work Pay Enough"
  This paper is a response to New Safety Net Paper 1, "Making Work Pay Enough: A Decent Standard of Living for Working Families" by Gregory Acs and Margery Austin Turner.
• Using the Housing We Have
  This paper is a response to New Safety Net Paper 1, "Making Work Pay Enough: A Decent Standard of Living for Working Families" by Gregory Acs and Margery Austin Turner.
• What It Will Take to End Homelessness in D.C.
  In this commentary for The Washington Post, researchers Martha Burt and Sam Hall recommend, among other things, that Washington, D.C., offer permanent supportive housing to those who have been homeless the longest or have the most severe forms of disability. Making major changes in its data system would help the city have real-time information regarding homeless people.
• Subprime Mortgage Lending in the District of Columbia : A Study for the Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking
  This report, commissioned by the D.C. Department of Insurance, Securities, and Banking, examines the extent of subprime lending in the District of Columbia and the resulting impacts on residents and neighborhoods. The study found that subprime lending was concentrated in predominantly African-American, moderate-income neighborhoods, areas that are now experiencing a sharp rise in home foreclosures. The report recommends a number of actions to protect the city's homeowners and neighborhoods, including stronger monitoring of mortgage lenders, better outreach and education for home owners and home buyers, and creation of a loan fund to help persons refinance out of bad loans.
• The Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration : Developing a New Model for Serving "Hard to House" Public Housing Families
  The Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration is an innovative initiative designed to meet the challenges of serving the Chicago Housing Authority's (CHA) "hard to house"; residents. It involves a unique partnership of city agencies, service providers, researchers, and private foundations, all with a deep commitment to finding solutions for the most vulnerable families affected by the CHA's Plan for Transformation. The rigorous evaluation allows for continuous learning and mid-course corrections, and helped the team develop a validated model that other housing authorities can use. This report highlights the lessons learned during the first year implementation of the Demonstration.
• Foreclosures in the District of Columbia : Testimony Before the Council of the District of Columbia, Committee on Public Services and Consumer Affairs
  This testimony discusses recent data, compiled by NeighborhoodInfo DC, on foreclosures in Washington, D.C. Foreclosures have almost doubled since 2005, and data for the first quarter of 2008 show that the problem continues to worsen. With additional adjustable-rate, subprime loans scheduled to reset over the next two years, the situation is especially serious for homeowners in wards and neighborhoods where foreclosures are concentrated.
• The Experiences of Public Housing Agencies That Established Time Limits Policies Under the MTW Demonstration
  Recipients of housing assistance under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Public Housing and Housing Choice Voucher programs can keep their benefits as long as they remain income eligible and abide by program requirements. Under HUD's MTW demonstration, however, a small number of housing agencies that administer these programs chose to impose time limits on various program benefits, including housing assistance. This report documents their rationale for doing so, companion policy and programmatic changes they made in conjunction with time limits, their design decisions and implementation experiences and, to the extent knowable, effects on recipients and housing agencies.
• The Community Partnership and the District of Columbia's Public Homeless Assistance System
  This report, the first of three completed under contract to the D.C. Department of Human Services to assess the District of Columbia's homeless assistance system, examines seven functions that The Community Partnership manages for the District. These include contracting for emergency shelter; orchestrating the District's Continuum of Care; managing and monitoring contracts between homeless service providers and DHS, HUD, and DHCD; quality assurance and program monitoring; rule setting related to provider and client rights and obligations; data collection and analysis; and performance standards and client outcomes. Findings feed into and helped shape the final recommendations offered in the second and third reports.
• Transforming the District of Columbia's Public Homeless Assistance System
  This re