Housing for People with Special Needs - Essay Example

Housing for People with Special Needs – Fair Housing and Income Mixing This memo summarizes the differentareas of affordable housings especially associated with the low-income households. The areas covered in this memo include special housing needs of elder and disabled households, discriminatory behaviors and the fair housing programs, homeownership and income integration, and the level of funding for affordable housing across different sources including federal, state and government level. Housing for Elderly and Disabled Households Funding of affordable housing differs for those families which come under disabled and elderly population than that of low-income households. Federal level funding for the affordable housing need has been shifted to state and local level for the low-income people however, for the elderly and disabled households, federal government still provides sufficient funding to assist them in their housing needs. The special kind of needs of the elderly and disabled households have been duly recognized such that the regular subsidy programs are incapable of serving the needs of those households, governments at every level have developed special housing programs to serve the needs of those elderly and disabled households. In most of the cases, a combined subsidy program is also established with the support services. On political grounds, less opposition is faced for the providing special subsidy programs particularly for the elder people and generally for the disabled households. Yet the supply is well short of the need for assistance in terms of housing subsidy program to serve the elderly and disabled households similar to the case of low-income households. Fair Housing and Discriminatory Behaviors In the real state and mortgage market of US, the discriminatory behavior has been convicted as illegal by the federal government at all levels. Certain legislations have been made in this regard which demonstrate the illegality of the discriminatory practices in the real estate and the mortgage market including Supreme Court decision of 1948, Fair Housing Act of 1964 and lastly, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. With the passage of time, most of the kinds of discriminatory patterns and behaviors in these markets are declared as illegal after enforcement of such legislation by the federal government. The enforcement of fair-housing legislation although has remained inconsistent such that discriminatory behaviors have not been total disappeared, yet there are evidences which show a real progress in this regard. The evidences reveal that in real estate housing market, there has been a significant reduction in the discriminatory behavior in relation to house purchasing and renting in 1990s. Similar kinds of evidences are found in the mortgage market, where the Whites are left way behind than Blacks and Hispanics in relation to home-purchase. Even though there have been quite better experiences after the enforcement of fair housing acts such that discriminatory behaviors are reduced to a significant level, yet there are evidences in which discriminations have been made to the minorities. Minorities are still discriminated the in home purchasing and renting this rate has not been declined in every category. In the mortgage market, although the denial rates for the Blacks have reduced to a substantial level, yet this discriminating behavior with other minorities still exits. There has been the emergence of new forms of discriminatory behaviors especially in the mortgage market. Although, the minorities and Blacks are provided more opportunities to avail the mortgage credit until 2007, the mortgage market collapsed just after that. Still the minority borrows and neighborhoods are not provided the high cost mortgages as compared to the Whites and their neighborhoods. Homeownership and Income Integration The concept of embracing the homeownership and income integration among various policymakers state it as a core purpose of providing housing programs to low-income households, yet it cannot be understood clearly as to what extent these housing programs have remained successful in helping the low-income households. Till now the evidences found in the researches do not provide concrete support that homeownership and income integration, provide certain types of benefits to the low-income households. The assumption that low-income families are provided healthy housing support with the promotion of homeownership and income integration is still untested. Still, most of the families prefer to own their houses irrespective of their earning level. There are programs that have done the wonders to the low-income families including mixed-income housing, inclusionary zonings and the different kinds of mobility programs. Yet, the supporters of homeownership and income integration would have to wait until they contribute something towards economic advancements. Risks involved in Homeownership These approaches do have some serious risks and shortcomings involved in it. After the debacle of mortgage market in 2007, the likelihood of low-income families going to be bankrupt increasing as they would be burdened under higher level of debts. Another risk involved in homeownership is that the accumulation of asset depends upon where the property is located. Normally those properties which are located in the minority neighborhood areas have lower chances of appreciation in comparison with other neighborhoods. In nutshell, it can be summarized that homeownership and income integration possess various kinds of risks due to which they are unable to provide affordable housing especially to the low-income households. Evaluation of Funding Sources for the Low-income Households Public housing is one of the greatest needs of the low-income families as they deserve more subsidies in this regards as compared to other income groups. The US federal of government however does not seem to pay more attention towards providing more subsidy programs to the low-income families whether Republicans rule the government or Democrats runs the power. Same case also rests with the state and local governments as they are also not expected to provide subsidized housing to the low-income families due to lack of sufficient funds. There are very rare evidences which show that low-income families have never been the true beneficiaries of the funds raised by state and local government. Even though, there is a large shift in the transfer of the funds from the federal government level to the state and local government level, yet this benefit has not passed to the low-income families in the intended way. States are not interested in targeting the needy people lower than what the federal government previously specified. On the other hand, local government is unable to target the needy people due to two major reasons: for redistributive purposes, the inability of the local government to raise the significant amount of funds and the contrary stance of the middle-income people not to sit with the affordable housing right next to their neighborhood. It would be better not to anticipate wonders in terms of creating more resources of housing funds at the local level, a more careful approach in this regard would be to use the funds provided at the federal level more effectively, since most of the funds available at local level are actually provided by the federal government. There are also evidences which prove that some states somehow are able to create mandates in generating local action, however, the quantity of those states creating effective mandates are negligible. References Schwartz, Alex F. Housing Policy in the United States. Second edition, New York: Routledge. 2010. Print. Mueller, Elizabeth J., and Alex Schwartz. Reversing the tide. Journal of the American Planning Association. 74, 1., 122-35. 2008. Print. Read More