Prof. Iyer: Invest in City - and Solve Its Housing Voucher Problem
November 2, 2016
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Phone: 410.837.5739
Seema D. Iyer, associate director of the University of Baltimore's Jacob France Institute and head of its Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance, writes in an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun that a large-scale public investment could resolve the city's vast number of unfulfilled vouchers for housing.
"In Baltimore, we have roughly 10,000 households with a housing voucher, and 15,000 households on a wait list for a voucher. Because the voucher has the same value anywhere in the city, households with a voucher are welcomed by property owners in neighborhoods that would typically command an equal or often lower rent on the private rental market—the same households those on the wait list are seeking to rent," Iyer writes.
"According to the latest Vital Signs report, the top three neighborhoods in Baltimore with high housing voucher use also have the highest percentage of renters spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent, which means even these lower-priced units are unaffordable for many," writes Iyer, whose BNIA-JFI organization produces the annual Vital Signs series of reports on the various ways that Baltimore's neighborhoods are measuring up.
"We at BNIA-JFI were inching toward the policy recommendation of housing vouchers for all who qualify, eliminating the wait list, when 2015's civil unrest took place in Baltimore. We put together some discussion points on the housing problem—the data, the pros of adopting such a policy, the back-of-the-envelope costs of accommodating 15,000 more households. The estimate is about $225 million.
"It's fair to say that in order to implement bold solutions, locally or nationally, we need to be well-organized and multi-sectored to make our case. Local leaders, foundations and housing advocates are not yet coalescing around this idea as a policy outcome, however.
"The good news is that I believe we can get to political agreement, based on the economic impact such a move would have."
Read the Baltimore Sun op-ed. Learn more about BNIA-JFI and Prof. Iyer.