When a conference on housing involves lots of discussion of promoting relief for problem mortgages and a “daunting” influx of funding to weatherize houses, you can assume there is trouble in housing and in the broader economy, and such was the case at the Pattern for Progress Housing the Hudson Valley Conference.
But conference attendees weren”™t just doom-saying. They discussed strategies to help the housing market reemerge and heard projections of trends that might shape planning for housing in coming decades. Reinvigorating housing in cities, for example, was cited as a promising strategy particularly for meeting the needs of a wave of baby boomer senior citizens who seek to stay in the Hudson Valley, but won”™t need large homes.
The third annual conference at Marist College June 12 was attended by Dutchess County Executive William Steinhaus among about 200 others who heard from an array of experts, including state Housing and Community Commissioner Deborah VanAmerongen on challenges state officials face in staving off foreclosures and helping set up a framework for consumers and lending institutions to rework problematic mortgages. Â
VanAmerongen highlighted data learned from the fact-finding tours state officials are taking with concern for the housing market.
She noted that the foreclosure problems are significant, but vary by region, and said the state is setting up frameworks to get people to mandatory settlement conferences, and into discussions with lenders. She said there is a need for education to homeowners, lenders and even to train judges in the programs that are being interpreted and administered differently in different areas of the state. “We want to make sure judges have an understanding of how the program is supposed to work,” she said, especially involving restructuring options consumers have with mortgages.
VanAmerongen said, “Affordability of course is an issue that is identified,” and said that since much of the action in building homes in the Hudson Valley involves second homes, there is a problem finding resources for affordable housing. She also cited a NIMBY syndrome for communities in this region and statewide, who equate affordable housing with children who will need to be schooled, thus raising already burdensome property taxes.
The state has funded 2,700 affordable housing units in the nine counties of the Hudson Valley since 2007, but VanAmerongen was among several speakers at the conference who noted that many affordable housing projects were funded using financial institutions which received tax credits to invest in them. “Well, guess what?” she said, “You need to have profits to make a tax credit program attractive to you.” Thus, she said few corporations are providing any funding for affordable housing.Â
The state has begun rehabilitating existing affordable housing. This trend toward rehabilitation will gain steam for the foreseeable future, she said, since the federal stimulus money provided the state $400 million in weatherization funding, up from $60 million in the previous year. “All of a sudden we have $400 million,” said VanAmerongen. “I would never turn down money, but it”™s a little but daunting.”Â
She said the state will initially make use of the existing weatherization programs spread throughout New York, since those programs were functioning well and need only be ramped up. New RFP”™s will likely be issued, especially for programs to weatherize multifamily units. And, she said, the work will create jobs, so VanAmerongen said there is a need for programs for creating trained workers.
“I think we all know this huge subprime mess led us into this economic mess we”™re in now,” Judith Calogero, CEO of the New York Housing Conference and former state housing commissioner, said during a panel workshop. “So we”™ve come to believe it”™s the only housing problem out there, but it has led to other problems.”
She echoed VanAmerongen”™s concern about the federal housing tax credit program saying that in the downturn, “It really has been crippled. It is difficult if not impossible to find investors.” She said the problem was particularly acute for multifamily and rental housing in general, where solutions are more complex. She said that lack of insight about multifamily units amounts to a missed opportunity.
“We”™ve become obsessed as a society about suburban living and maximum square footage and that”™s unfortunate,” Calogero said. “The greater density that multifamily housing allows makes sense socially and environmentally and is certainly more sustainable then endless sprawling development.”
Robert Burchell, co-director of the Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University, said, “I”™ll affirm many of the trends as morose and as dismal as they are,” he said, but added that there are positive signs emerging amid a complicated national mix of housing trends. Housing prices nationally seem to have stabilized at a rate some 22 percent lower than pre-recession, but he said it is unclear if housing prices have stabilized in New York; he said indications are they have not.
Florida, Burchell said, has nearly three-quarters of single-family homes in at least some trouble meeting mortgage payments, while in San Francisco, the housing “problem” was that realtors were receiving only a dozen bids for properties where they had become accustomed to receiving twice that number.         Â
But he noted another oft-overlooked trend, “Much of the United States”™ not growing has nothing to do with recession.” He said of the some 3,000 counties nationally, growth and sprawl are focused in some 600 largely in the South and Southwest and he said swaths of the Northeast and Midwest are stagnant or losing population.Â
He said in coming decades he envisioned this will set the stage for revitalizing inner cities, as Baby Boomers retire. He said 70 percent are projected to “retire in place,” perhaps not in their exact community, but in their home region and seek an “interesting central place” where they can stay active.
