When it comes to local affordable housing trends, University Neighborhood Housing Program, a nonprofit based on the Grand Concourse, is usually the first to spot them. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the group identified the disturbing lending practices of Freddie Mac, the quasi-federal mortgage outfit that didn’t seem to care or notice that the landlords it financed were taking on a lot more debt then they could pay back. The result: a pattern of foreclosure and neglect that scarred our northwest Bronx neighborhoods.
UNHP also pointed out the problems of sub-prime mortgages and foreclosure rates long before the current national media obsession.
On Tuesday, at Fordham University, UNHP issued its latest report, “Shrinking Affordability: Housing Prices, Quality & Preservation in the City’s Last Expanse of Affordable Private Rental Housing,” which documents, among other trends, how rents are rising while the people moving in are getting poorer and the housing stock itself is increasingly in disrepair. The well attended Fordham forum featured feedback on the report from bankers, city officials and real estate industry representatives.
We’ll have more to say about the report in our print edition, but we hope to strike up a conversation right here on these important issues (just click the comment button below). Check out the report. We, and UNHP, look forward to the discussion.