Martha's Vineyard is a 100-squre mile island located south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. With its pristine views and relaxed seaside pace, the island is well known as a vacation getaway for the powerful and affluent during the summer months. Comprised of six towns, the island's estimated year-round population of 15,000 residents swells to more than 75,000 in the summer months. Rental rates skyrocket between May and October, making it difficult for renters who live and work on the island. Realizing that essential workers such as police officers and paramedics are being priced out of the island, the town of Chilmark, Massachusetts has moved forward with the island's first-ever affordable housing development.
Beginning in June 2010, HUD and the U.S. Department of the Treasury have jointly issued monthly "scorecards" on the nation's housing market. These scorecards have incorporated key national housing market indicators to show the depth of the housing crisis historically and have highlighted the effects of the administration's unprecedented efforts to stabilize the housing market and aid its recovery.
The inaugural American Housing Survey (AHS) Users Conference in March 2011 provided researchers with an opportunity to explore innovative uses of AHS data. Presenters Ingrid Gould Ellen, Keren Horn, and Katherine O’Regan used data on recent occupants from the AHS and neighborhood data from the decennial census to explore pioneering residential decisions in which higher income households choose lower income neighborhoods.
Geographic information systems (GIS) allow policymakers to analyze data that is referenced to a geographic location. Part of what makes GIS useful is its ability to both analyze and display data at various geographic scales (neighborhood, municipality, and county levels, among others) and to highlight patterns among interacting social, economic, and environmental variables. Information can be layered and presented simultaneously, to uncover expected and unexpected relationships among various phenomena.
When disaster strikes, such as the multiple-vortex EF5 tornado that struck Joplin, Missouri in May 2011, two groups of HUD staff — Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) analysts at HUD's headquarters and Economic and Market Analysis Division (EMAD) field economists located around the nation — know they will likely provide needed analyses of the local economy, housing market, and households affected by the disaster.
Housing indicators for the first quarter of 2011 continue to portray a fragile recovery in the housing market. In the production sector, the number of single-family housing starts, permits, and completions all declined. In contrast, multifamily building permits and starts rose, although completions fell slightly. In the marketing sector, sales of existing homes rose, but sales of new homes dropped slightly. The Standard and Poor’s CaseShiller ® national seasonally adjusted (SA) repeat-sales house price index, which is reported with a lag, recorded a 2.1-percent decline in the value of homes in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared with the third quarter and a 4.1-percent decline from year-earlier levels. The less volatile Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) purchase-only repeat-sales index, also reported on a lagged basis, estimated a 0.8-percent (SA) decrease in home values in the fourth quarter of 2010 and a 4.0-percent decline from year-earlier levels
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Regulatory Barriers to Manufactured Housing Placement in Urban Communities
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