Housing the Nation - a Singapore Policy Story

Housing the Nation - a Singapore Policy Story
Author: Kim Hin / David Ho
Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2020-12-17
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1543762492

Chapter 1 takes a close look at a unique and state-of-the-art dynamic, structural public housing macroeconomic model (DSPHM), based on an open economy for several key macroeconomic variables, actual and expected, as well as the demand for new HDB flats sold. This Chapter readily adopts the DSPHM for simulating two scenarios, namely a “no change” first scenario and a public housing “deregulation” second scenario. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between several economic factors and the demand for public housing in Singapore and Hong Kong, deploying the innovative and versatile system dynamics model, to shed better understanding on the policy implications of assisted ownership housing. The Chapter assesses the demand for new flats of the Singapore and Hong Kong economies, under certain macroeconomic policy changes, suitable for their unique situations. Chapter 3 is concerned with the underlying structural relationships that affect Singapore’s public housing policy to potentially privatize the HDB concessionary-rate mortgages for HDB homebuyers. Such a potential privatization infuses and sustains price competitiveness among the domestic private banks in Singapore, and lead to improved efficiency among them as well as the Singapore economy at large. Chapter 4 is concerned with the binomial option-pricing model, proposed by Cox, Ross and Rubinstein (1979), which is appropriate to represent the movement of the underlying HDB resale flat prices, subject to private market forces in HDB’s large scale public housing secondary resale market. The HDB Main Upgrading Program (MUP) is a heavily subsidized and highly targeted public housing policy. Since its inception in 1992, the HDB has budgeted some S$3 billion to finance the MUP policy. Chapter 5 recognizes housing affordability to be always an issue of concern to many Singaporean homebuyers because shelter forms one of the basic life necessities. The corresponding private residential market in Singapore offers quality and premium private residential accommodation for homebuyers, who prefer the private residential market. The appropriate affordability model is a multi-factor housing affordability index (HAI) model, which considers the ability to provide down payment and to service the mortgage taken up. Lastly, Chapter 6 offers the book’s conclusion.

Fixer-Upper

Fixer-Upper
Author: Jenny Schuetz
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 119
Release: 2022-02-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 081573929X

Practical ideas to provide affordable housing to more Americans Much ink has been spilled in recent years talking about political divides and inequality in the United States. But these discussions too often miss one of the most important factors in the divisions among Americans: the fundamentally unequal nature of the nation’s housing systems. Financially well-off Americans can afford comfortable, stable homes in desirable communities. Millions of other Americans cannot. And this divide deepens other inequalities. Increasingly, important life outcomes—performance in school, employment, even life expectancy—are determined by where people live and the quality of homes they live in. Unequal housing systems didn’t just emerge from natural economic and social forces. Public policies enacted by federal, state, and local governments helped create and reinforce the bad housing outcomes endured by too many people. Taxes, zoning, institutional discrimination, and the location and quality of schools, roads, public transit, and other public services are among the policies that created inequalities in the nation’s housing patterns. Fixer-Upper is the first book assessing how the broad set of local, state, and national housing policies affect people and communities. It does more than describe how yesterday’s policies led to today’s problems. It proposes practical policy changes than can make stable, decent-quality housing more available and affordable for all Americans in all communities. Fixing systemic problems that arose over decades won’t be easy, in large part because millions of middle-class Americans benefit from the current system and feel threatened by potential changes. But Fixer-Upper suggests ideas for building political coalitions among diverse groups that share common interests in putting better housing within reach for more Americans, building a more equitable and healthy country.

Missing Middle Housing

Missing Middle Housing
Author: Daniel G. Parolek
Publisher: Island Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2020-07-14
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1642830542

Today, there is a tremendous mismatch between the available housing stock in the US and the housing options that people want and need. The post-WWII, auto-centric, single-family-development model no longer meets the needs of residents. Urban areas in the US are experiencing dramatically shifting household and cultural demographics and a growing demand for walkable urban living. Missing Middle Housing, a term coined by Daniel Parolek, describes the walkable, desirable, yet attainable housing that many people across the country are struggling to find. Missing Middle Housing types—such as duplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts—can provide options along a spectrum of affordability. In Missing Middle Housing, Parolek, an architect and urban designer, illustrates the power of these housing types to meet today’s diverse housing needs. With the benefit of beautiful full-color graphics, Parolek goes into depth about the benefits and qualities of Missing Middle Housing. The book demonstrates why more developers should be building Missing Middle Housing and defines the barriers cities need to remove to enable it to be built. Case studies of built projects show what is possible, from the Prairie Queen Neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska to the Sonoma Wildfire Cottages, in California. A chapter from urban scholar Arthur C. Nelson uses data analysis to highlight the urgency to deliver Missing Middle Housing. Parolek proves that density is too blunt of an instrument to effectively regulate for twenty-first-century housing needs. Complete industries and systems will have to be rethought to help deliver the broad range of Missing Middle Housing needed to meet the demand, as this book shows. Whether you are a planner, architect, builder, or city leader, Missing Middle Housing will help you think differently about how to address housing needs for today’s communities.

A World of Homeowners

A World of Homeowners
Author: Nancy Kwak
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2018-09-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 022659825X

In Latin America, Scandinavian housing experts explained that "housing is too important a commodity to be subjected to the same general market conditions as other goods", but the Americans ridiculed such a stance. The Cold War was fought with bricks and mortar, not just small, hot wars in poor places and the threat of nuclear Armageddon. Privatisation began in Malaysia in the 1940s; in West Germany, Taiwan, Burma and South Korea in the 1950s; India in 1964; Jordan in 1965; Brazil in 1966; Guatemala and Nigeria in 1967; and the Philippines (again) in 1968. In the 1960s, the US granted loans to expand the private housing sectors in Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. They began housing projects in Rhodesia, Zambia and Mali. They moved into Senegal in 1972, Botswana in 1973, Tanzania in 1974 and Kenya in 1975 - all the while spreading the American dream.

A Nation of Home Owners

A Nation of Home Owners
Author: Peter Saunders
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 461
Release: 2021-03-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000318869

Originally published in 1990, and re-issued in 2020 with an updated Preface, this book shows how the UK has become a nation of home owners, and the effect it has had on people’s lives, the impact which it has had on British society and the implications for those who have hitherto been excluded. The book briefly charts the history of the growth of owner-occupation in Britain and considers the evidence on the popularity of owning as opposed to renting. The question of whether and how owner occupiers accumulate wealth from their housing is discussed and the evidence on the political implications of the growth of owner-occupation examined. The influence of buying a house on the way that home is experienced is analysed and the sociological implications in regard to the analysis of social inequalities in Britain discussed. The research for the book was based on in-depth interviews with home-owners and tenants in Burnley, Derby and Slough.

Race for Profit

Race for Profit
Author: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469653672

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST, 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally. The disaster that ensued revealed that racist exclusion had not been eradicated, but rather transmuted into a new phenomenon of predatory inclusion. Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners. The federal government guaranteed urban mortgages in an attempt to overcome resistance to lending to Black buyers – as if unprofitability, rather than racism, was the cause of housing segregation. Bankers, investors, and real estate agents took advantage of the perverse incentives, targeting the Black women most likely to fail to keep up their home payments and slip into foreclosure, multiplying their profits. As a result, by the end of the 1970s, the nation's first programs to encourage Black homeownership ended with tens of thousands of foreclosures in Black communities across the country. The push to uplift Black homeownership had descended into a goldmine for realtors and mortgage lenders, and a ready-made cudgel for the champions of deregulation to wield against government intervention of any kind. Narrating the story of a sea-change in housing policy and its dire impact on African Americans, Race for Profit reveals how the urban core was transformed into a new frontier of cynical extraction.

A Right to Housing

A Right to Housing
Author: Rachel G. Bratt
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781592134335

An examination of America's housing crisis by the leading progressive housing activists in the country.

Permanent Supportive Housing

Permanent Supportive Housing
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2018-08-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309477042

Chronic homelessness is a highly complex social problem of national importance. The problem has elicited a variety of societal and public policy responses over the years, concomitant with fluctuations in the economy and changes in the demographics of and attitudes toward poor and disenfranchised citizens. In recent decades, federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, and the philanthropic community have worked hard to develop and implement programs to solve the challenges of homelessness, and progress has been made. However, much more remains to be done. Importantly, the results of various efforts, and especially the efforts to reduce homelessness among veterans in recent years, have shown that the problem of homelessness can be successfully addressed. Although a number of programs have been developed to meet the needs of persons experiencing homelessness, this report focuses on one particular type of intervention: permanent supportive housing (PSH). Permanent Supportive Housing focuses on the impact of PSH on health care outcomes and its cost-effectiveness. The report also addresses policy and program barriers that affect the ability to bring the PSH and other housing models to scale to address housing and health care needs.

Affordable Housing in New York

Affordable Housing in New York
Author: Nicholas Dagen Bloom
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2019-12-31
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0691207054

A richly illustrated history of below-market housing in New York, from the 1920s to today A colorful portrait of the people, places, and policies that have helped make New York City livable, Affordable Housing in New York is a comprehensive, authoritative, and richly illustrated history of the city's public and middle-income housing from the 1920s to today. Plans, models, archival photos, and newly commissioned portraits of buildings and tenants by sociologist and photographer David Schalliol put the efforts of the past century into context, and the book also looks ahead to future prospects for below-market subsidized housing. A dynamic account of an evolving city, Affordable Housing in New York is essential reading for understanding and advancing debates about how to enable future generations to call New York home.