Studies Advocate Regional Affordable Housing Policies

The Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute's new report, "Rethinking Local Affordable Housing Strategies: Lessons from 70 Years of Policy and Practice," "makes the point that since housing markets are regional, affordable housing policies should be regional as well." According to the report, "Enabling low-income families to live closer to employment centers...will also help reduce commute times, meet employer needs for workers and ameliorate other negative consequences associated with current metropolitan growth patterns." The report also highlights the fact that "federal housing policies have contributed to long-established patterns of residential racial segregation, [and] that ignoring that reality will undermine nondiscriminatory housing policies." A second report, "Vacating the City: An Analysis of New Homes vs. Household Growth," argues that "regional trends in residential construction can lead to abandonment in cities nationwide, [or that] when a surplus of housing is created in a region, the older, more deteriorated units are the ones that wind up being empty."