New Updates on PD&R Edge

PD&R Edge, an online magazine, provides you with a snapshot view of our newly released research, periodicals, publications, news, and commentaries on housing and urban development issues. Stay informed on current topics and check back frequently, as our content is routinely updated.

Featured: Housing Affordability Challenges of High Interest Rates

At the National Housing Conference’s Solutions for Affordable Housing convening, one panel discussion examined the role that elevated interest rates play in shaping the U.S. housing market and the consequences this has for housing affordability and municipal budgets and services. Panelists discussed the feedback loop of inflationary housing costs, elevated interest rates in response, and a consequent pullback in building activity that perpetuates the high cost of housing. Rapid changes over the past few years in work patterns, living preferences, and interest rates have shaken housing markets in the United States, underscoring the need for broad, responsive policy solutions to prevent the calcification of widespread housing affordability and ongoing housing inequity.

PD&R Leadership: Reflecting on Cityscape’s Most Cited Articles

In the Leadership Message, Mark Shroder, associate deputy assistant secretary for research, evaluation, and monitoring, discusses some of the most impactful articles published in Cityscape, a scholarly journal published by PD&R since 1994. Among the topics covered by the most cited articles in the journal’s history have concerned the cost of land use regulations, the role of cities in adapting to and exploiting technological change, and the effects of neighborhood change on low-income families.

PD&R at 50: Tenant-Based Rental Assistance

Tenant-based rental assistance provides a housing subsidy directly to tenants rather than tying subsidies to individual units as traditional public housing does. With funding from the Model Cities program, HUD tested the tenant-based model in Kansas City, Missouri, before a more widespread effort, the Experimental Housing Allowance Program, which ran from 1970 to 1981. Since then, HUD has tested numerous innovations to tenant-based rental assistance to ensure that HUD-assisted families can access safe, stable housing in opportunity-rich areas.

In Practice: Affordable Housing Development Becomes First Project To Use Funding From Dedicated Municipal Bond in Charleston

Bulls Creek Apartments, in Charleston, South Carolina’s West Ashley neighborhood, is a 57-unit affordable housing development geared toward families. Opened in August 2022, Bulls Creek was the city’s first project completed using revenue from its dedicated $20 million affordable housing bond, which voters overwhelmingly approved in 2017. Bulls Creek Apartments represents a promising step toward resolving Charleston’s affordable housing shortage, with officials estimating that the city needs to add over 16,000 new housing units.

Trending: Self-Reported Long COVID-19 Among HUD-Assisted Adults: Preliminary Findings from the Household Pulse Survey (HPS) Linked with HUD Administrative Data

Emerging evidence shows that some people can experience long-term adverse health effects after being infected with COVID-19. This condition, commonly referred to as long COVID, includes a range of ongoing symptoms that can last weeks, months, or longer. Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, PD&R analysts’ preliminary results suggest that relatively high rates of HUD-assisted adults report experiencing long COVID symptoms. Specifically, among HUD-assisted adults, those aged 18 to 40 and those living in households with children reported the highest rates of long COVID. The presented research represents the start of an ongoing effort to track and understand symptoms of long COVID among HUD-assisted households.

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