Housing Issues Of Housing Policies

For an HDB flat (except one-room flats), there is a minimum occupation period whereby the seller must physically occupy the flat before he would be eligible to sell the flat. For a flat bought directly from the HDB or a resale flat bought with a CPF housing grant, the seller must physically occupy the flat for five years before he can sell

A housing policy can be thought of as the efforts put in by a given government to transform a housing market(s) for the purposes of achieving social objectives. In most cases, a housing policy is meant to ensure that the general population has access to a home that is affordable. For instance, the British Conservative/Liberal Democratic coalition’s housing policy is aimed at increasing the number of affordable housing units; fostering homeownership; making social housing flexible; tackling homelessness (especially for the

Local authority stock levels have been decreasing each year since the 1980s. This is mainly due to tenants buying their homes under right to buy coupled with a decline in the number of new local authority dwellings being built, as well as community ownership programmes whereby a public authority transfers either all or part of its housing stock and management function to RSLs.

The intent was to open up the ability for the average American to purchase homes for the first time (Adelman, 2003). What was also introduced by the government underwriters was a national appraisal system. The national appraisal system unfairly tied race, loan eligibility, and property values together, which resulted in minorities and mixed neighborhoods receiving low ratings and being denied loans, while all white neighborhoods received the benefits of a higher rating and the low cost loans backed by the government (Adelman, 2003). As a result of this system of appraisal, less than two percent of the one hundred and twenty billion in loans went to nonwhites (Adelman, 2003). This resulted in an unfair advantage in

Within each service area there is a host of many options available. Specifically, under the Public and Indian Housing is the Housing Choice Voucher Program, commonly referred to as Section 8 Housing. Section 8 is the federal government's major program for access to very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford suitable, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market. Housing choice vouchers are administered by the local public housing agencies (PHAs). The

The Los Angeles County Board has allocated $25 million dollars to spend on new programs that promote social justice. I have developed a proposal to allocate the money to create affordable housing complexes in communities within the city. The communities selected for housing developments are Boyle Heights, Watts, Chinatown, Pico-Union and Elysian Park. The proposal includes spending all $25 million in five developments of affordable housing. Each housing development will have twenty five 2-bedroom apartments. A total of one hundred low income families will benefit in total. My proposal includes asking each family to pay a monthly rent of 1/4 of their monthly earnings. The monthly rent collected from tenants can be used to maintain the developments,

As stated by Turkington and Watson (2015), in 2000, the Labour Government introduced the Decent Homes Programme, which aimed to provide a minimum standard of housing conditions to houses in the public and private sector. The scheme was deemed as a success by a committee and was commended for providing a positive effect on the living conditions of the vast majority of social housing tenants. However Turkington and Watson also argued that although nearly three quarters of homes had met the minimum standards, over a quarter – roughly 6 million homes - had failed to meet them.

Last but not least, this policy brief suggests the government should remove the stamp duty – tax imposed on property purchases - for the first home buyer to enable their access to the housing market. Stamp duty often discourage people from buying and selling property. Thus, removing stamp duty would improve the supply of housing, as well as reducing a range of adverse impact on the housing market (The Treasury, 2009). Recently, the NSW Government has announced the decision to abolish the stamp duty for the properties worth up to $650,000 (targeting first home buyers) and it would save them up to $24,740 (NSW Government, 2017). This reform does bring a positive impact on housing affordability as it will help first home buyers to access the housing market at an affordable price in comparison to the past.

According to Jones (2008), protected tenants within the regional authority increased reduction in right to buy their homes by means of the Housing Act 1980. Previous to this act, regional authorities sell their homes along with governmental permission in 1936. Chaney (2000) mentioned that about 7,000 houses were sold in UK in 1970, which were exceeded to approximately 46,000 within 2 years. Stephens (2012) demonstrated that right to buy housing policy offers

Selling of council houses is becoming an increasing issue in the UK as people and even businesses are buying the house out. This means hundreds of family homes are now owned by private landlords or individual people. As a consequence, families are finding it difficult to find family-homes to live in.

Affordable housing has become the paramount issue of cities and dense urban areas. San Francisco is the posterchild of an unaffordable city that regardless of immense investment from blue chip firms like Google, Facebook, and their ilk of startups evaluated at $1 billion or more, policymakers and elected officials must wrestle with the housing affordability crisis that is considered endogenous to swaths of homelessness and record statistics on crime. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has made affordable housing the centerpiece of his legislation and championed the cause as a social justice issue—neighborhoods must remain affordable to maintain diversity for all races, ethnicities, and low-income families. A small sample of 827 New Yorkers by the NY1-Baruch College City Poll found the main concern of respondents was affordable housing while crime, jobs, and homelessness were peripheral problems (Cuza, 2016). The public discourse on how to address housing across the United States has pointed to negative externalities that surround rent-regulation and homeownership. Conversely, for this essay I will present various cases in order to illustrate the housing crunch is influenced less by housing and land regulations, or antagonistic homeowners but is induced by global market forces.

The Public Policy Institute states that Section 8 project-based rental assistance contracts involving HUD and for-profit owners contracting private multifamily housing, which is made available by HUD to low-income households who qualify for housing assistance. The subsidy is such that pays the difference "between 30 percent of the household's income and the contract rent; the subsidy is paid by HUD to the landlord." (AARP Public Policy Institute, 2002) In addition, HUD has Dispersal programs for renters of Section 8 housing due to the desire of the public to avoid to concentration of poverty-level residents in urban areas. This is because there is a general consensus that Section 8 subsidized housing tends to drive down the market prices of property in the same area. There are various challenges that are faced by the Section 8 subsidized housing program as it assists low-income households obtain appropriate housing through the provision of rental assistance.

Affordable housing in the United States describes sheltering units with well-adjusted housing costs for those living on an average, median income. The phrase usually implies to applied rental or purchaser housing within the financial means of lower-income ranges specific to the demographics of any given area. However, affordable housing does not include those living in social housing owned by government and non-profit organizations. More specifically, the targeted range for housing affordability sets below 30 percent of a household's annual income, including all applicable taxes, utility costs and home owners insurance rates. If the mean income per household breaches the 30 percent mark, then the agreed status becomes labeled as

In essence, “leases” are created between landlords and tenants as contracts to grant exclusive possession of the land for a defined period of time, in exchange of rent from tenant. Leases give contractual interests to tenants, while at the same time creates proprietary interests in the land by granting exclusive possession, which elevates a tenancy into an “estate/interest in land”. It can therefore be understood and has been suggested by commentators that leases are of dual nature and should “be characterised as something of a hybrid”[1]: a hybrid of contract and estate in land. In the landmark case of Bruton v London and Quadrant Housing Trust[2],

It provided for an interest-free loan to assist eligible households to meet the down-payment on a small to medium-sized domestic flat in the private sector (La Grange, 1997, p. 75-76). Sale of Flats to Sitting Tenants Scheme (SFSTS) was introduced in 1991. The proposal states that about five-year-old flats were to be considered for sale to overcome the two major barriers to home ownership: the high price of private sector dwellings and the limited stock of HOS/PSPS flats relative to demand (La Grange, 1997, p. 77). Tenants Purchase Scheme (TPS) was another scheme announced in December 1997, offering tenants an opportunity to buy their units at deeply discounted prices, reduced public housing tenants' bids for private homes. However, this adversely affected home transactions. Moreover, the Housing Department started to contract out estate maintenance management services to Property Management Agents in private sector from 1987.