The latest perspectives, news, success stories and resources from around the organization.
The release of 2020 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data provide an opportunity to look at the local mortgage lending environment – trends in loan volume, the kinds of loans being made, where loans are made, how efficiently different groups can access credit, and how key features of originated mortgages vary across different racial groups in Philadelphia.
Since April 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and the evictions moratorium have drastically reduced Landlord-Tenant court activity, allowing Philadelphia renters to stay in their homes during a period when an eviction would subject them to risk of contracting and spreading the virus.
Fair housing law is an essential tool to achieving racial and economic integration and realizing the attendant benefits for all types of communities. This brief draws on structured interviews conducted by Reinvestment Fund and the University of Pennsylvania with former officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), local housing officials in New Orleans, Houston, Kansas City (MO), Indianapolis, and Philadelphia, and fair housing experts and advocates.
Reinvestment Fund’s research report provides new insight into how many Black and Hispanic renters in Philadelphia face an eviction filing compared to other racial and ethnic groups. While previous research has documented the persistent, statistically significant effect of Census tract-level racial composition on filing volume, this is the first look at the racial and ethnic characteristics of the universe of residential eviction defendants.
In 2019, the city of Mount Vernon partnered with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Tolemi, and Reinvestment Fund through the Cities for Responsible Investment and Strategic Enforcement initiative (Cities RISE) to begin implementing a strategic code enforcement system guided by robust data and market analytics.
In 2019 Policy Solutions partnered with Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA) to conduct a study of historical patterns of homeownership rates for different racial/ethnic groups throughout the 21st century. The study findings highlight the ongoing persistence of gaps in White and non-White homeownership throughout Pennsylvania.
Reinvestment Fund completed a study of the City of Cleveland’s residential tax abatement program. The study examined 15 years of abatement activity to identify patterns of where abatement activity has been most concentrated, to understand the fiscal impacts the abatement has had on local tax revenues, and to identify opportunities to update the program in response to contemporary market conditions in the city.
Each year, the federal government releases a comprehensive database on mortgage lending activities across the US based on activity reported by lending institutions under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). This year, there were a number of changes to the database; some changes from 2015 revisions expanded what we can know about mortgage applications (e.g., the age of borrowers) and other 2017-era changes limited that knowledge (e.g., suppressing applicant credit information). Read the report to see what the data reveals about mortgage lending activity in Philadelphia.
In 2020, Policy Solutions co-authored an article for a What Works in Community Development Volume that presents a case study about how to create mixed-income neighborhoods through affordable housing preservation.
A newly released study by Reinvestment Fund details the volume and geographic distribution of eviction filings in the city of Philadelphia. The study updates our 2017 Evictions in Philadelphia research brief.
Throughout its history, the Pennsylvania’s HEMAP has received great acclaim for its design and impact. HEMAP is a program that was designed to provide temporary assistance to families who, through not fault of their own, were seriously delinquent with their home mortgage. Reinvestment Fund released a Research Brief titled “What if Pennsylvania Had Not Had HEMAP?” in 2012. At the time, Pennsylvania, like much of the United States, was climbing out of the throes of one of the most significant recessions in our nation’s history.
Across the United States, communities are struggling with the challenges associated with neighborhood decline. Practitioners and policymakers are beginning to realize that the task is oftentimes more difficult when the communities facing these challenges are in older suburban areas where: (a) poverty is an increasingly prevalent issue; and (b) the resources and expertise to manage issues associated with poverty and disinvestment that exists in cities are less prevalent.
From 2009 through 2016, Philadelphia was one of the most active reverse mortgage lending markets in the nation. With support from the City of Philadelphia, Reinvestment Fund collected and analyzed data on the frequency, terms and geographic distribution of reverse mortgages. This lending analysis was supplemented with in-depth interviews conducted with Philadelphia homeowners, and their heirs, who obtained a reverse mortgage and subsequently experienced a foreclosure – something they never thought possible. Interviews focused on borrowers’ experiences, from the moment they first contemplated a reverse mortgage through the point that they experienced a foreclosure filing, and then through the resolution of that foreclosure process. This work is part of a larger investigation into the potential fair housing implications of reverse mortgage lending in the Philadelphia metropolitan area.
Each year, lending institutions across the country report their mortgage lending activity under a law known as the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). Enacted by Congress in 1975 and amended several times since, HMDA data are a critical resource to understand how dollars flow into communities to support home purchasing, refinancing mortgages, or making home improvements. Regulators use HMDA for various purposes, which include assessments of lenders’ community reinvestment obligations and adherence to civil rights laws.
The 2016 HMDA data were recently released providing an opportunity to look at the local mortgage lending environment – trends in loan volume, the kinds of loans being made, where loans are made, how efficiently different groups can access credit, what entities purchase the home loans once made, and what lenders are originating mortgages in Philadelphia.
Middle neighborhoods are neither the poorest nor the wealthiest neighborhoods in a city, typically experiencing neither precipitous decline nor rapid appreciation. In many cities, they account for a significant share of residents and are reasonably affordable to middle income households. This research brief examines conditions and trends in Philadelphia’s middle neighborhoods differentiated by their racial, ethnic, and national origin makeup. A deeper understanding of the dynamics at play in different types of middle neighborhoods can help guide policy and investment approaches to shore up the inherent strength in these areas, and also head off decline that could potentially diminish not only residents’ financial health and neighborhood quality of life, but also Philadelphia’s overall wellbeing.
Mortgage application data, released under reporting requirements in the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), are a fascinating source of information for cities and communities. These data help us understand where residents are applying for mortgages to purchase new homes or refinance their existing home.
Policymakers often struggle with the fact that policy options are seldom visualized on a map. Indeed policy decisions depend upon a multitude of variables that are rarely tied to geographical boundaries. Yet, it is often at the geographic level that policymakers want to see an impact. Thanks to the Market Value Analysis (MVA), it is possible to identify the housing market intervention policies that will be the most effective based on geographic characteristics.
In 2016, Matthew Desmond published his truly extraordinary study of evictions in Milwaukee, WI titled Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Inspired by Desmond’s work we at Reinvestment Fund decided to examine the eviction issue in Philadelphia, PA. This brief includes an overview of select housing market data in Philadelphia followed by a summary of the eviction filings: rates, patterns and areas for further inquiry into the eviction issue in the city of Philadelphia. Eviction filing records for this brief cover the period 2010-2015, inclusive, and originate with Philadelphia’s Landlord-Tenant Court (LTC).
A study by Reinvestment Fund and May 8 consulting to understand how the scattered site rehabilitation of more than 1,100 affordable housing units has impacted the West Philadelphia neighborhoods in which they are located, and determine whether the approach offers cost efficiencies or revitalizing impacts that differ from developments that produced a similar number of affordable units on a single site.
Reinvestment Fund contributed to a new book titled On the Edge: America’s Middle Neighborhoods. Published by The American Assembly, a collection of authors present new evidence indicating that a category of neighborhoods exists in many cities and surrounding areas that planners and policymakers have neglected. These “middle neighborhoods” are generally affordable neighborhoods with acceptable levels of public safety and schools, but they are in danger of falling into decline if left to market forces.
In 2015, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) created a new requirement that jurisdictions conduct an Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) planning process in support of the Fair Housing Act’s mandate to “affirmatively further fair housing.” Policy Solutions—along with Enterprise Community Partners, Abt Associates, and PolicyMap—was part of the technical assistance team that aided the City of Philadelphia with data and analysis to inform the local AFH. The MVA was a critical tool in this effort and I wanted to share just a few of the ways that the City incorporated the MVA into the AFH: https://goo.gl/lmkMnL
A reflection on St. Louis’ journey to embed neighborhood market types into our private sector community development practice and a summary of our journey to date, while unfinished, is at the following link: https://goo.gl/NWRFnn.
One commonly held view among housing practitioners and policymakers is that building homeownership is essential to building strong communities. Home equity has historically helped build wealth, and homeowners are stabilizing forces, who are more likely to invest in home maintenance. However, our experience building MVAs suggests that rental markets can also be sources of opportunity and strength, especially when they are near job centers, transportation hubs, or other amenities.
“Middle Neighborhoods” or middle markets are an important focus for many of the cities in which we have conducted MVAs. These areas fall somewhere on the MVA spectrum from relatively strong to showing only modest levels of distress. They are home to many city residents, oftentimes the majority of a city’s population, and they tend to be more racially integrated than other parts of cities. But they are generally not places where federal programs or philanthropic attention is focused.
Back in May, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a conference titled “Gentrification and Neighborhood Change.” Other sponsors of the event were the NYU Furman Center, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and HUD. There were several pieces of research presented on topics related to gentrification. (Conference website: http://bit.ly/2bqazKE)