Affordable Housing Institute : US

          
“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Henry VI, Part 2: Act iv, scene ii.

Of whose state, so many had the managingThat they lost France, and made his England bleed
 
While the total scale of the global credit compression hasn’t been fully measured, most of that disruptive wave is behind us, as demonstrated […]

A while back, I posted on When top-down doesn’t work as it applies to affordable housing policy.  The Blogger Communications Commission has requested equal time for the opposing view – an exposition of when top-down does work.
 

I’m a spokesman and don’t you dare oppose my views
 
One theme unifies the examples below – and that is […]

 Should policy be driven top-down (large units of government creating the program and distributing resources) or bottom-up (local units of government inventing independently)?

It’s a puzzle, Batman
 
If you ask around the world, the great body of experts will tell you that programs have to originate nationally first.  In the last few years I’ve become much […]

 
Does the cash I receive from a rental subsidy count as income when calculating my rent as a percentage of income?
 
Many housing assistance programs, most notably Section 8, are means-tested – the resident’s contribution is a percentage (in Section 8, 30%) of income, with the subsidy paying the difference between the resident share and the […]

All legislation is carefully stored in labeled blue plastic bins
 
Since affordable housing policy is always an output of the government factory, I have over the years become fascinated by the complex ways in which legislation is created, how elected officials use their political capital, and how they use many things (including political vaporware) to manufacture […]