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 Research, Planning, and Design: Market-Rate & Affordable Housing Assignments
- For the Philadelphia Housing Authority, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, and the Housing Authority of New Orleans, AREA developed AREA Rents™, a rental housing database and associated pricing model that determines rents for units using Housing Choice certificates and vouchers. AREA will provide annual updates to keep the Philadelphia and Los Angeles databases current.
- The Chicago Department of Housing commissioned AREA to assess the housing situation for the city's senior residents. Our exhaustive research—accompanied by surveys, focus groups, and interviews—led to major policy recommendations and suggestions for innovative financing mechanisms.
- AREA was part of a team assembled by The Urban Institute to investigate the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. AREA interviewed staff of HUD and of credit-allocating agencies to learn how LIHTC is being combined with other HUD programs to produce viable housing developments.
- AREA was the prime contractor on a two-year nationwide analysis of housing for persons with disabilities in federally subsidized Section 202, 162, and 811 projects.
- AREA helped assess the nationwide portfolio of over 15,000 HUD-insured apartment properties to ascertain the financial viability of converting these properties from subsidized to market-rate use.
- AREA developed affordable housing strategy for the City of Seattle in response to escalating housing costs. The policy goal was to reduce the housing burden for moderate-income households without diverting resources from programs that assist households in the lowest income categories.
- Other selected market-rate & affordable housing analyses
Research, Planning, and Design:
Public-Housing-Related Projects
- AREA has produced a major report on the "Experiences of Public Housing Agencies that Established Time Limit Policies under the MTW Demonstration."
Recipients of housing assistance under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Public Housing and Housing Choice Voucher programs can keep their benefits as long as they remain income eligible and abide by program requirements.
Under HUD's Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration, however, a small number of housing agencies that administer these programs chose to impose time limits on various program benefits, including housing assistance.
This AREA report documents their rationale for doing so, companion policy and programmatic changes they made in conjunction with time limits, their design decisions and implementation experiences and, to the extent knowable, effects on recipients and housing agencies.
- Public housing authorities across the country use
AREA Rents™, AREA's rent reasonableness model.
- AREA has provided financial analyses and crafted development strategies for rental and for-sale housing in HOPE VI development efforts throughout the country. Among them are projects in Cincinnati, Ohio; Decatur, Illinois; and Alexandria, Virginia.
- The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) engaged AREA and The Laubacher Company to prepare an overview of the Chicago regional and inner-city housing market—to help determine the prospects for market absorption of CHA's proposed developments and to develop a framework for evaluating developers' costs (both acquisition and total development costs).
- Working with various teams, AREA performed market studies for the Section 202 viability assessments required by HUD. Analyses involved determining whether the neighborhood around the public housing is a viable setting for residential redevelopment for both low- and moderate-income households.
- Other selected public-housing-related analyses
Research, Planning, and Design:
Home Health Hazards Research
- AREA is assisting Westat, Inc., in the design of the American Healthy Homes Survey, which will track changes in lead and other analytes over time.
- AREA reviewed Seattle's HomeWise Program and recommended program design and procedural changes to increase the effectiveness of this housing rehabilitation program.
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