17 December, 2024
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Please send your comments
and
suggestions to
editor@huduser.gov.
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HUD USER | P.O. Box 23268, Washington, DC 20026-3268
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1-800-245-2691 | TDD:
1-800-927-7589
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