NYU Furman Center

State and local policymakers around the country are working to address America’s severe housing shortage, by considering, and implementing, a wide range of policies in the hopes of increasing housing supply. The NYU Furman Center, with funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts, published a series of seven papers in 2021 that show how specific land use reforms have affected outcomes on the ground, especially in residential areas. “This is a moment of ferment—and experimentation—in land use policy,” writes Noah Kazis, former Legal Fellow at the NYU Furman Center and Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, in the series introduction to “Learning from Land Use Reforms.” “There are no silver bullets here – as there so rarely are.” Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all solution to the nation’s housing shortage, this series of papers reviews and evaluates the outcomes of an array of policy options for promoting housing production, in locations ranging from a quiet suburb in New York to state-wide policies in California. By examining areas across the country with varying local characteristics, the papers offer insights into how a range of policy options have played out in the real world. Read more here via the NYU Furman Center’s Ben Hitchcock: https://lnkd.in/gxRPchiu

Year after year, homelessness continues to rise in the United States. Last year, over 650,000 people experienced homelessness on a given night, 28 percent of whom resided in California. Not surprisingly, homelessness is ballooning in and around San Francisco. These alarming trends highlight the urgent need for new, effective pathways to help low-income families maintain stable housing. Collaboration between researchers and practitioners — like in our recent basic income project, It All Adds Up — is key to identifying and scaling these pathways. It All Adds Up, also known as the Bay Area Thriving Families study, is an ambitious, Google.org-funded randomized evaluation (also known as an RCT) providing 450 families who recently experienced homelessness with either $50 or $1,000 in unrestricted cash assistance each month for one year. Currently underway in the Bay Area, the project is a collaboration between our teams at Compass Family Services, Hamilton Families and NYU Furman Center Housing Solutions Lab to study the impact of cash assistance on housing stability for families exiting housing services. Our partnership is a direct response to two trends we’ve observed in our work as homeless service providers and housing researchers. First, while research has shown that programs like rapid re-housing can successfully house families, we know that some families reenter the shelter system after their subsidies — which are often intended to be short-term — end. Second, a growing body of research suggests that direct cash transfers (sometimes known as “basic income”) can positively affect myriad outcomes for low-income families, ranging from child brain development to emergency room visits. Randomized evaluations and robust research partnerships like ours require a combination of technical research skills and a firm understanding of the practical, ethical and equity considerations essential to any policy intervention. Collaborations between providers and researchers therefore enable us to answer policy-relevant research questions using methods that are simultaneously rigorous, equitable and inclusive Read the op-ed that Martha M. Galvez, executive director of the NYU Furman Center’s Housing Solutions Lab co-wrote with Christopher Constantine and Kendra Froshman for Next City here: https://lnkd.in/gWce8nk2 

Did you miss the NYU Furman Center’s Housing Solutions Lab #ClimateWeekNYC Oct. 2 webinar on different city-level strategies to utilize housing policy for climate action? You can now watch the conversation here https://lnkd.in/eWApwNuk  Claudia Aiken; Director of New Research Partnerships, NYU Housing Solutions Lab and Aisha Balogun; Special Projects Associate, NYU Housing Solutions Lab were joined by Wilson Kimball; President and CEO, The Municipal Housing Authority for the City of Yonkers, and K. Dana Sjostrom, CFM; Planning and Programs Manager, Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development to discuss how governments can meet both housing and climate goals. As cities around the country continue to face damage from severe climate events and the demands of meeting housing supply needs, localities will need to approach meeting their needs through integrated and interconnected efforts and policies. However, few small- and mid-size cities today are pursuing and aligning their climate and housing in tandem, missing key opportunities to advance critical goals. Tune into the conversation to learn more:   https://lnkd.in/eWApwNuk 

Job alert❗ ❗ The NYU Furman Center is hiring. The NYU Furman Center is looking for a Director of Data Strategy & Operations to help us conduct vital research on some of New York City’s most pressing urban policy challenges. The Director will join our dynamic team as a thought leader, and be responsible for identifying, updating, cleaning, visualizing, and analyzing a number of datasets related to housing, zoning, real estate, health, education, and other urban policy-focused issues. An ideal candidate will have at least three years of full-stack data experience, as well as leadership, creative problem-solving, effective team-building, and mentoring skills. Apply here ➡ https://lnkd.in/eZFJSKGp #jobs #datajobs #researchjobs #housingjobs #academicjobs #housing #data #research

In case you missed the NYU Furman Center’s Oct. 9 Policy Breakfast, you can now watch the livestream of our panel discussion here: https://lnkd.in/eeYpnnhd  The conversation, moderated by NYU Furman Center's Executive Director, Matthew Murphy, explored the potential benefits and challenges of New York City and New York State taking a more active role in multifamily housing development, with a focus on mixed-income financing models that blend public and private investments. He was joined by Nicole Ferreira, President, CPC Mortgage Company, RuthAnne Visnauskas, Commissioner, New York State Homes & Community Renewal, Sherry Wang, Managing Director, Goldman Sachs, Urban Investment Group, and Stockton Williams, Executive Director, National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA).

Happening tomorrow! Don’t forget to register for a joint webinar hosted by the NYU Furman Center and its Housing Solutions Lab on Publicly-Driven Housing Development Models in the U.S. and Globally on October 24, at 1 P.M. ET. The webinar co-hosted by Claudia Aiken, Director of New Research Partnerships, Hayley Raetz, Policy Director, and Tony Bodulovic, Data and Policy Analyst at the NYU Furman Center’s Housing Solutions Lab will discuss The Emerging Spectrum of Government-Led and Publicly-Owned Housing Development Models. The new brief analyzes nine cases spanning eight states in which state or local governments act as developers, investors, or long-term owners to drive government-led housing development: https://buff.ly/3NcaVVo Joining us will be a panel of experts and policymakers with direct experience with publicly-driven housing development, including: - Matt Bedsole, Director of the City of Atlanta’s Housing Innovation Lab - Emily Gallagher, New York State Assemblymember for District 50 - Marc Jahr, Senior Advisor at Forsyth Street and former president of the New York City Housing Development Corporation - Zachary Marks, Senior Vice President of Real Estate at Montgomery County, Maryland’s Housing Opportunities Commission  - Zach Martinez, Legal Counsel and Policy Advisor at Colorado’s Gary Community Ventures Register to join the live session, where you will be able to ask the panelists your questions: https://lnkd.in/emGKe7UV 

In the past decade, luxury apartment complexes have sprouted up around Pittsburgh like mushrooms, popping up between the century-old row houses with their boxy exteriors often decked out in gray or beige cladding and adorned with banners promoting websites that boast about all of the amenities that lie within their walls, reports WESA’s Jakob Lazzaro. But if these buildings didn’t exist, your rent would be higher. Why? Supply of more housing, even if it’s just luxury apartments, decreases pressure on the overall market. “Adding supply either decreases rents or slows the growth of rents,” said Vicki Been, a New York University School of Law professor and faculty director of NYU Furman Center. And that’s not from just one study — it’s a consistent finding from recent research, according to Been’s 2023 paper “Supply Skepticism Revisited.” Read the story here https://lnkd.in/enHtf57e

While the New York City Council continues a second day of hearings on Mayor Eric Adam’s “City of Yes” proposal, NYU Furman Center’s Executive Director Matthew Murphy said in prepared testimony that it is essential to remove unnecessary obstacles that prevent New York City from adding the affordable and market-rate housing it urgently needs. The city’s severe housing shortage threatens its ability to support its existing population and sustain its economic vitality and diversity. High housing costs and lack of options will continue to constrain the city’s growth, driving away current residents and deterring new talent from coming to New York, which has long thrived on attracting people from across the country and the world. COYHO takes a significant step in addressing these challenges by eliminating key barriers to housing development, creating a path for both affordable housing and market-rate housing in every neighborhood to meet rising demand and ensure New York can remain a place of opportunity for all. To respond to this critical issue, which is central to New York City’s future, the city needs to make it easier to build affordable housing and market-rate housing. COYHO tackles these issues with a comprehensive set of provisions that, collectively, aim to increase both affordable and market-rate housing by eliminating long standing impediments to multifamily development. As a package, COYHO would make better use of New York City's limited land, help slow the increase in development costs, and unlock the potential for more housing across all neighborhoods. Importantly, it includes measures designed to address the uneven distribution of housing growth that has exacerbated inequality in recent years. Read the rest of Matthew Murphy's testimony here ▶ https://lnkd.in/eZR-Ckw4 #newyorkcity #housing #affordablehousing #research #testimony #cityofyes #zoning #landuse

New forms of public housing, including the type of mixed-income developments becoming trendy in other states, could help improve Rhode Island home affordability, a new report says. However, state housing officials remain cryptic about whether they intend to propose a public developer program of their own. The report from NYU Furman Center advises Rhode Island leaders to investigate new government-owned and developed housing models like the one pioneered by Montgomery County, Maryland. "Models of public development and ownership show promise for delivering new housing because they provide a package of financial resources and regulatory allowances that are designed to develop multifamily housing that includes some mix of affordable housing," the report said. Read The Providence Journal story on the NYU Furman Center's report and recent testimony by Executive Director Matthew Murphy https://lnkd.in/eGiK3bhd

As the New York City Council begins hearings today on Mayor Eric Adams’s “City of Yes” proposal. If it passes, it will amend the Zoning Resolution throughout the city to allow for the construction of more housing units to ease New York City’s housing shortage. Efforts to build more housing supply in high-demand areas continue to face backlash. Often supply skepticism is at the heart of the pushback over fears that new market-rate housing developments will hinder rather than help with affordability. NYU Furman Center’s faculty directors Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen, and Katherine O'Regan published last year “Supply Skepticism Revisited,” which tackles the important questions supply skeptics raise. How does new housing supply impact housing affordability, including local rent prices? Does new market-rate housing development contribute to local gentrification and/or displacement? How much, and when, does new market-rate housing “filter” down to support affordability for those at lower income levels? And when localities implement changes to their local land-use, such as through upzoning, does that even lead to increases in housing supply? While the latest research shows that policies to increase housing supply require nuance and attention to local conditions, the evidence continues to make clear that increasing housing supply is an important step towards tackling our country’s affordability crisis. Read the NYU Furman Center paper for more https://lnkd.in/esGpz9yc