11.945 Katrina Practicum Session 7 Student Presentations (From Session 6) 1. Housing Options a. Transitional Housing i. Private Units ii. Rent generally on sliding scale based on income 1. charged but not enough to cover the services iii. Usually targeted toward specific populations 1. This is different – targeted toward people who were displaced iv. Temporary v. Includes on-site services (case management, housing search assistance, etc.) vi. Target Population: depends on what service to provide and to whom 1. probably for people who want to live in Treme who were from the neighborhood vii. Advantages: 1. More people can move in immediately 2. Serves a large number of people per unit or building (as people move in stages) 3. Multiple dwelling types a. Residential b. Apartment Building c. Hotel 4. Fills gap of disrupted social services viii. Disadvantages 1. Management a. Managing transitions of residents in an uncertain time i. Will there be somewhere else for them to go? ii. Managing actual building needs and social services 2. Only temporary housing 3. Labor intensive 4. May be no appropriate multi-family dwellings for this 5. If it were a large facility, what happens to it when the neighborhood becomes more stable?a. How do you transition the building to another use? 6. Long history of litigation on community preference: a. Community preferences have been struck down in the past by the courts. ix. Costs: 1. Get numbers from Board of Housing Management to get numbers on cost, ratio of direct housing/social services 2. Varies depending on housing type and services x. Phil contacted by someone running a program for felons to be released during the day to build housing in the city. xi. Camfield Estates: good material on making transitional housing work 1. Churches in NO trying to think this through b. Community Land Trusts i. Private, nonprofit corp.’s create a pool of permanently affordable housing ii. Land leased to homeowners through long-term renewable leases iii. Innovative sources of funding iv. Target neighborhoods: 1. new investment, rapidly rising real estate values 2. disinvestment v. Advantages: 1. residents have a high degree of control over land use and real estate development a. flexible community development options: i. economic development 2. Resale value determined by CLT’s formula, not by market a. Determined contractually b. Limits the cost of the housing 3. Lease fees are often less than taxes paid on the land if owned. 4. Land trust boards are made up of community members and any donor organizations a. It is a community-run organizations b. The community has a greater degree of control vi. Disadvantages: 1. Rely heavily on local government for funds to develop projects 2. The idea is difficult for many people a. Marking/resale can be difficultb. In NO, where the idea of losing land is so poignant, giving it up to a land trust might not be attractive c. Not possible for individuals to build equity through land ownership 3. Limited by the market a. They are more effective when they are larger and have a greater ability to acquire land b. The market can make land prices volatile 4. Marketing/education can be difficult/expensive (Continued Session 7) c. Rental Housing i. Owned by a landlord, occupied by tenants ii. 34% of housing units in US are rental 1. Much higher in Treme iii. Target Pop: 1. Lower income families/individuals 2. Families and individuals in earlier life-stage 3. Mobile families/individuals 4. Seniors (esp. in low-income communities) 5. Can have a similar role to transitional housing iv. Advantages: 1. Lower transaction cost of moving 2. Tax-deferment effect for landlords a. If you own a house that is rented for someone else, you can trade the house for another asset of equal or greater value, and no taxes will be owed on the gain i. Are there any major advantages or disadvantages related to this that the organizations should know about? 1. Does this create incentives for landlords to speculate on rental housing? ii. Anything presented to the community partners must be framed in terms of its relevance to their work v. Disadvantages: 1. Rental payments are taxable income 2. Lower housing quality a. Because short-term tenants do not care about retaining the value of their asset and overuse the resources b. This is a very controversial idea. In Treme, people who own their own houses cannotnecessarily afford to maintain them, so owner-occupied housing is sometimes lower quality than rental. i. Read Rachel Blatt’s work. She makes the opposite argument. ii. Present both sides of the controversy c. Lower-level participation in the community i. In communities with a mix of owners and renters, the voice of tenants is not always ii. Tenant participation is most directly associated with how long they have been there iii. Another controversy: Actually, people who are transitory are less involved 1. Historically, homeowners used to be more stable 2. That is no longer true – people buy and sell over short periods of time. 3. Does length of residency vary between owners and renters in Treme? 4. Issue that homeowners are most active around are exclusionary: keeping out undesirables. a. The kind of participation matters. d. Renters do not have the same right to stay in one area as owners i. Possible to negotiate tenant residency tenure rights into the sale agreement when you develop a property to be sold to landlords for rental units. ii. What would you want in a bill-of-rights for tenants/landlords? d. Limited Equity Co-ops i. Selection criteria for who gets the units 1. Housing Authorities have selection critieria ii. Business corporations 1. Members own a share in corporation that owns/controls the building/property 2. Every month, shareholders pay share of maintenance expenses 3. Limit the initial sale and resale values within the bylawsiii. Example: what might happen over a ten-year period in limited-equity coop vs. another home-ownership situation iv. Does Louisiana have laws that would make this model difficult to implement? 1. Tests for inclusion in presentation: a. Is it important for the clients to know the information? i. Will this provide important benefits over time? b. How simple can we make it? i. Can we find good illustrations/good graphics to make it digestible? c. If we can’t simplify it, but we think it is important, we need