Volume 4 Number 1
December/January 2007

In this Issue
Action Plan Achieves Objectives and Promotes Energy Efficiency
Research Partnerships Forge Bonds Between Communities and Universities
Exploring New Housing Information
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• By the mid-1990s, HUD was sponsoring research to establish ways in which the homebuilding industry adapted innovations in its practices and the materials it used. We’ll examine the course of pertinent research HUD has supported, beginning with a 1998 attempt to identify innovations used in affordable housing. The story will bring us to a 2006 exploration of differences in how larger and smaller homebuilders embrace innovation.

• Housing Impact Analysis (HIA) is a recently developed method for quantifying the effects of a new regulation on the cost and affordability of housing. We’ll examine this method, look at its purpose, and review a demonstration of its use in weighing the costs and benefits of more stringent wind standards for manufactured homes.

• For more than 30 years, HUD’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program has provided funding to municipal and county governments to carry out affordable housing, economic development, social services, public works, and other programs. We’ll highlight the diverse and innovative public and private partnerships that CDBG grantees have developed to carry out their community development activities. This discussion shares the findings of a recent HUD study that closely scrutinizes the elements of a successful grantee-subrecipient relationship.

• HUD-assisted multifamily housing stock includes more than 22,000 properties with more than 1.5 million units. We'll review the kinds of decisions that assisted property owners are making about keeping these properties in, or withdrawing them from, housing assistance programs. The author relates the impact of these decisions on the affordable housing stock in light of a recent research project described in Multifamily Properties: Opting In, Opting Out, and Remaining Affordable.