Housing

I was critical of sociologist Matthew Desmond in my last two columns, but I do appreciate that he based his research in Milwaukee. The Midwest is often overlooked in discussions about homelessness. Journalists more often write about California, home to about half of all unsheltered homeless people in the U.S., and New York, flush with immigrants. “Housing First” became a familiar slogan partly because of journalistic near-sightedness: High housing prices in some coastal cities make it easy for coast-based reporters to argue that finances are central to the homelessness problem — but the middle of the country looks very different. Fact: 60 U.S. cities with more than 100,000 residents — many in the north central sector stretching from Buffalo to Read More ›

The academic who’s gained the biggest rewards for writing about homelessness is Harvard and Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond. An above-average writer, Desmond received in 2015 a MacArthur “genius grant” of $625,000 and, following publication of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, a 2017 Pulitzer Prize. The prize came with this explanation: “For a deeply researched exposé that showed how mass evictions after the 2008 economic crash were less a consequence than a cause of poverty.” Desmond deserves credit for living in two poor areas of Milwaukee as he researched his book, but discredit journalistically because he mentions that “the names of tenants, their children, and their relatives, as well as landlords and their workers, have been changed to Read More ›

Seattle’s nonprofit affordable-housing providers are finding themselves in deep water. According to an Alex Fryer column in the Seattle Times, the City of Seattle has recently given $14 million in emergency funding to affordable housing nonprofits and developers in an attempt to stabilize them and mitigate their losses. The article reports the financial losses of several nonprofit housing providers due to non-payment of rent, costly evictions, vacancies, and behavioral challenges with tenants. However well-intentioned the efforts to finance nonprofit housing have been, the properties have been plagued by policies that strip tenants of accountability at the cost of landlords and a legal system that seemingly stonewalls attempts to remove non-paying or destructive tenants. But the problem isn’t isolated to urban Read More ›

The number of registered rental properties in Seattle has declined consistently since 2019.  This according to a December 2023 audit by the Seattle City Auditor titled Understanding Seattle’s Housing Market Shift from Small to Large Rental Properties. The audit was performed at the request of several councilmembers in hopes of explaining a decrease in rental properties registered with the city. The audit relied on data derived from the Rental Registration and Inspection Ordinance (RRIO) passed in 2012, which requires all rental properties to register with the city and undergo regular inspections to “ensure basic safety maintenance requirements are met.” Although the inspection goal evidently isn’t being met, RRIO provides useful data on rental market trends in Seattle. [1] Ironically, the Read More ›

The Washington State Affordable Housing Advisory Board recently released a “Housing Advisory Plan” to address what it describes as an “urgent crisis” of needed affordable housing options in the state. According to the plan, there is only one affordable housing unit available for every five households in need (for those at or below 50-percent of median family income (MFI)). To illustrate the scope of the problem, the plan notes that in 2023, there were 453,423 renter households in the 0-50% MFI bracket and a supply of only 155,214 subsidized units. Drawing on the additional need in higher MFI brackets and the expected population growth, the plan’s authors claim that Washington “needs to add more than a million new homes” in Read More ›