New Updates on PD&R Edge

PD&R Edge, an online magazine, provides you with a snapshot view of our newly released research, periodicals, publications, news, and commentaries on housing and urban development issues. Stay informed on current topics and check back frequently, as our content is routinely updated.

Featured: Evolving Challenges in Housing Supply

On October 25, 2024, Fannie Mae and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted an event, “Workshop on Changing Demographics and Housing Demand,” at which researchers shared new findings concerning the nation’s housing supply. Participants discussed how trends vary by geography and how the growing role of institutional investors in real estate has yielded efficiency-related cost benefits to many renters while creating challenges felt by homebuyers.

PD&R Leadership: What’s Next for Construction Innovation at HUD?

An important part of HUD’s mission is to build the evidence base for innovative construction technologies that can boost the affordable housing supply and lower costs for builders, homeowners, and renters nationwide. In this Leadership Message, Tanaya Srini, senior advisor for innovation at PD&R, discusses these efforts over the past year. In 2024, HUD has published numerous studies on technologies that can improve a home’s livability, conducted field studies to learn how practitioners deliver innovations in their communities, and hosted the annual Innovative Housing Showcase in Washington, D.C. Moving forward, HUD can continue to support innovation by exploring how regulatory frameworks can be updated to better allow for innovative construction methods, continuing vital research and data-related activities, and convening relevant government entities to accelerate innovation uptake.

PD&R Leadership: HUD Attends the World Urban Forum

In this Leadership Message, Cindy Campbell, director of PD&R's International and Philanthropic Affairs Division, discusses the biennial World Urban Forum (WUF), the premier global conference on urban issues hosted by the UN-Habitat branch of the United Nations. The most recent WUF was held in Cairo, Egypt, in November 2024, with 182 countries participating. HUD representatives participated in and attended numerous sessions and bilateral meetings to encourage ongoing information exchange and civil society participation in meeting the world’s developmental and urban needs.

In Practice: Preserving Affordability Through Acquisition: King County’s Site-Based Strategies

In Washington State, the King County Housing Authority (KCHA) uses site-based affordability strategies that involve approaches that enhance access to existing and emerging opportunity neighborhoods, mostly by preserving affordable housing through the acquisition of hard units in these areas. Over the past three decades, these strategies have preserved or made available thousands of additional affordable units in high-resource sections of KCHA’s service area. These strategies include acquiring and preserving workforce housing, purchasing smaller apartment complexes to convert to public housing, and layering project-based voucher subsidies onto regional nonprofit development.

Trending: Local Innovations To Increase Affordable Housing

While federal investments are the largest funding source for addressing housing affordability challenges, local governments are innovating ways to stretch and supplement those resources to meet housing needs. Notable recent innovations in this vein include revolving housing production loan funds, leveraging public land for affordable housing development, creative uses of federal programs such as HUD Section 108 funding and Pathways to Removing Obstacles (PRO) Housing, and office-to-residential conversions.

Research: Perspectives on Direct Rental Assistance: Summary of Public Comments

In recent years, various innovative programs, such as direct rental assistance (DRA), have emerged that provide simple, flexible assistance to low-income individuals. On July 22, 2024, HUD published a Request for Information (RFI) to solicit public comment on the DRA concept, and the agency received 226 responses by the August 30 deadline. The RFI respondents anticipated a wide range of potential benefits from DRA, including the potential to empower tenants, create less administrative burden than other forms of housing assistance, and make obtaining assistance easier and faster for tenants; potential risks respondents identified include participants leasing substandard units, making rental payments unreliably, or using DRA funds for non-rent spending. Additional research is needed to understand better the benefits and risks of DRA approaches to housing assistance, with pilot programs key to any large-scale adoption of this method of housing assistance.

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