Renting and Affordable Housing
http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/jchs_americas_rental_housing_2013_1_0.pdf
This study is really fascinating, I would recommend skimming it (since it’s really really long). Here were some crazy points:
1.There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of renters from almost every age group (the exception being people over 70).
2. Depending on the pace of immigration, this number is likely to increase by between 4 and 4.7 million in the next ten years.
3. One in five households that were in their 30s in 2001 switched from owning to renting at some point in
2001–11, as did nearly one in seven of those in their 40s.
4. Contrary to the stereotype, families with children are nearly as likely to rent their homes as singles.
5. Assuming current rentership rates, the aging of the baby-boom generation will lift the number of renters over age 65 by 2.2 million in the ten years to 2023, generating roughly half of overall renter growth.
6. As the number of low-income renters have grown, the likelihood of assistance (i.e rent subsidies) have diminished.
This study was quoted in a CNN OpEd on affordable housing. http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/28/opinion/rubinger-affordable-housing/
Also in that article was a study done by NYU Furman Center: according to them, more than 45,000 existing lower-cost homes will return to market value by the end of De Blasio’s first term. http://furmancenter.org/files/publications/NYChousing_Preservation.pdf
The statistics that most fascinated me were the ones about the changes from home ownership to rentals. The only reason I can think of for families investing in ownership and then switching to rental would be due to mortgage payment problems. This is probably due to monetary issues caused by the financial crisis and the inability to sustain a sufficient living. With rents being raised across the city I wonder how much better rent will be to those who switched from home ownership.
I think that the change in rates of home ownership are not necessarily due to the same families changing from owning to renting. Can you think of what else accounts for the decline? Hint: the city does not have closed borders, nor is housing stock constant (things get built, demolished, rezoned, etc.) .
I also think that in part it does have to do with people moving from one state to another because I have seen more and more people do that in the last 5 years. That is, owning a home in New York is much more expensive than it is to do so in say South Carolina or Texas. At work there is a little boy who is moving to Texas because he said his parents want to buy a home. The amount of money it takes for them to buy an APARTMENT in NYC is enough to buy them a HOUSE elsewhere