AFFORDABLE HOUSING IN KENNEBEC COUNTY

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Affordable Housing in Kennebec County

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines affordable housing as a household paying no more than 30 percent of its annual income on housing. That is, families who pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing are considered cost burdened and may have difficulty affording necessities such as food, clothing, healthcare, and transportation. This project focused on Kennebec County, Maine. Between 1990 and 2000, market demand for housing increased at a faster rate than did the supply of housing. Despite the addition of 6,719 homes, the average home price increased faster than average household income. This raises the question of just how many households in Kennebec County are facing unaffordable housing. Using shapefiles and data provided by the US Census Bureau, a map was created with ArcGIS to illustrate the percentage of households, down to the Census Block level of detail, that are paying more than 30 percent of their income to housing. By looking at this information I was able to get a better picture of the housing situation and where in the county households are having the hardest time meeting their needs. The results indicate that households in the more urbanized sections of the county are more likely than rurally located households to be facing unaffordable housing. Namely, Waterville and Augusta held the highest percentage of households paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing.

Housing development in Latin America and the Caribean, its measuring and its determinants

This text briejly describes the Housing Development lndex (HDI). Following a concise introduction on the reasons for this research, HDI's methodology, characteristics, properties and databases supporting its calculation are discussed. Next, the third part presents, analyzes and compares the HDI's figures for Brazil and some other Latin American countries. The part that follows shows HDI figures for all states in Brazil and points out the regional differences and the indicator 's recent growth. Then, this paper analyses the injluence of some social and economic variables on the HDI and, finally, it makes some considerations on HDI.

Modelo para avaliação do custo burocrático do FCVS (Fundo de Compensação de Variações Salariais) : um estudo de caso

In 1964, year of the military coup, the Brazilian government established a housing finance system with the intention of reducing the housing shortage that had been going on for decades. In order to reach this goal, the government created the Housing Finance System (acronym in Portuguese ¿ SFH), a set of rules which intended to set up a regulated market through standardized contracts and compulsory sources of funds. The system survived for some time, due to the state control of prices and salaries in the authoritarian regime. However, the increasing inflationary pressure obliged the government to adopt a populist subsidy policy, which left as a consequence outstanding balances at the end of the contracts that very often exceeded the value of the financed units. The solution adopted was to create a fund to settle these residual balances. Such fund should be capitalized by the government and by compulsory contributions from borrowers and financial institutions. Since the government did not make such contributions, the debt of this fund increased on a yearly basis, reaching around 3,5 % of Brazil¿s GDP in December 31, 2006. Due to the decline of private investments in the housing finance system, this debt concentrated mostly on public and state-owned companies, government agencies and public funds. The outcome of this policy was the Salary Variations Compensation Fund (acronym in Portuguese ¿ FCVS), which has a negative net equity of 76 billion reais and costs 100 million reais per year to be managed, and whose main creditor is the Federal Government itself.

Indicadores de housing affordability para o mercado brasileiro

A análise da evolução dos indicadores de housing affordability permite acompanhar o comportamento do poder de compra de um imóvel. A metodologia utilizada nesta dissertação, ao considerar toda a distribuição da renda domiciliar e do preço dos imóveis, uma vez que as mesmas possuem assimetrias diferentes, possibilita analisar estes indicadores para diferentes segmentos da população. A aplicação desta metodologia para o mercado brasileiro possibilitou observar que a capacidade de compra se reduziu nos últimos anos devido, principalmente, ao aumento do preço dos imóveis a uma taxa maior do que a variação da renda combinada com a flexibilização das condições de credito imobiliário.

Do Brazilian courts contribute to the implementation of the right to housing?

The objective of this paper is to try to understand the Brazilian’s Courts role in the implementation of the Right to Housing. In order to do that, I analyzed three lawsuits (Favela Olga Benario, Favela Fiat/Vila Esperança and Pinheirinho I) in which the Right to Housing collide with the Right to Private Property. I claim that in spite of the adoption of the Social Function of the Ownership Principle and the formal inclusion of the Right to Housing among social rights protected by the Constitution, Brazilians Courts adopt a very conservative conception of the Right to Private Property and because of that, they tend not to enforce the Right to Housing.

Credit borrowing constraints in a DSGE framework: income vs. housing

Credit market in Brazil distinguishes from advanced economies in many aspects. One of them is related to collaterals for households borrowing. This work proposes a DSGE framework, based on Gerali et al.(2010), to analyse one pecularity of Brazillian credit market: payroll-deducted personal loans. To original model, we added the possibility to households contract long term debt and compare to differents types of credit constrains: one based on housing and other based on future income. We callibrate and estimate the model to Brazil, using Bayesian technique. Results show that, in a economy where credit constraints are based on income, responses to shocks appear to be stronger, at first, but dissipate faster. This occurs because income responds quickly to shock than housing prices, so does amount available to loans. In order to smooth consumption, agents compensate lower income and borrowing by increasing working hours, restoring loans and debt in a shorter time.

The life-cycle effects of social security in a model with housing and endogenous benefits

This article develops a life-cycle general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents who make choices of nondurables consumption, investment in homeowned housing and labour supply. Agents retire from an specific age and receive Social Security benefits which are dependant on average past earnings. The model is calibrated, numerically solved and is able to match stylized U.S. aggregate statistics and to generate average life-cycle profiles of its decision variables consistent with data and literature. We also conduct an exercise of complete elimination of the Social Security system and compare its results with the benchmark economy. The results enable us to emphasize the importance of endogenous labour supply and benefits for agents' consumption-smoothing behaviour.

Regional subsidies and industrial prospects of lagging regions

Large and sustained differences in economic performance across regions of developing countries have long provided motivation for fiscal incentives designed to encourage firm entry in lagging areas. Empirical evidence in support of these policies has, however, been weak at best. This paper undertakes a direct evaluation of the most prominent fiscal incentive policy in Brazil, the Fundos Constitucionais de Financiamento (Constitutional Funds). In doing so, we exploit valuable features of the Brazilian Ministry of Labor's RAIS data set to address two important elements of firm location decisions that have the potential to bias an assessment of the Funds: (i) firm “family structure” (in particular, proximity to headquarters for vertically integrated firms), and (ii) unobserved spatial heterogeneity (with the potential to confound the effects of the Funds). We find that the pull of firm headquarters is very strong relative to the Constitutional Funds for vertically integrated firms, but that, with non-parametric controls for time invariant spatial heterogeneity, the Funds provide statistically and economically significant incentives for firms in many of the targeted industries.

Energy subsidies and WTO dispute settlement: why only renewable energy subsidies are challenged?

Over the past few years, renewable energy subsidies have become one of the main sources of trade disputes in the WTO. A total of six cases have been initiated against renewable energy subsidy programs since the first of such disputes was brought by Japan against Canada’s Feed in Tariff (FIT) program in 2010. Yet not even a single case has so far been initiated against the much larger and environmentally harmful fossil fuel subsidies. The main objective of this paper is to examine what makes renewable energy subsidies vulnerable to WTO dispute, as compared fossil fuel subsidies.

Deregulation and The 2007-2008 Housing/Debt Crisis Analysis of the Housing/Debt Crisis of 2007-2008 and its impact on the Financial Strength and Vulnerability of the United States and Global Economy

One looming question has persisted in the minds of economists the world over in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 American Housing and Debt Crisis: How did it begin and who is responsible for making this happen? Another two-part question is: What measures were implemented to help end the crisis and what changes are being implemented to ensure that it will never happen again? Many speculate that the major contributing factor was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 that prompted a virtual feeding frenzy among the banking community when new calls from Capitol Hill encouraged home ownership in America as well as the secondary mortgage market which skyrocketed thereafter. The Glass-Steagall Act will be among many of the topics explored in this paper along with the events leading up to the 2007-2008 housing/debt crisis as well as the aftermath.

The trajectory of social housing policy in Brazil: From the National Housing Bank to the Ministry of the Cities

This paper discusses social housing policy in Brazil since the 1990s by analyzing government programs’ institutional arrangements, their sources of revenues and the formatting of related financial systems. The conclusion suggests that all these arrangements have not constituted a comprehensive housing policy with the clear aim of serving to enhance housing conditions in the country. Housing ‘policies’ since the 1990s – as proposed by Fernando Collor de Mello, Itamar Franco, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and ´ Luis Inacio Lula da Silva’s governments (in the latter case, despite much progress towards subsidized investment programs) – have sought to consolidate financial instruments in line with global markets, restructuring the way private interests operate within the system, a necessary however incomplete course of action. Different from rhetoric, this has resulted in failure as the more fundamental social results for the poor have not yet been achieved.

Análise e monitoramento geoambiental da praia de Genipabu/RN

Issues concerning coastal regions, especially the beaches have sparked quite complex because studies are there that most people in the world has secured housing, mainly from the half of the last century, without concern for the natural dynamics of these environments, which have complex interactions of continental and oceanic, coastal responsible for changes in locations that can be perceived in a few years and sometimes even a few days or hours. The search took as main goal, analyze the Genipabu Beach, in the municipality of Extremoz/RN, fragile environment and rapid momentum, which has been occupied in a disorderly and unplanned. Carried out a beach monitoring through profiles beach environments: defined stages morphodynamics; realization of characterize hydrodynamic processes; identification of changes in the landscape. To this end, made necessary a survey from the bibliographic collection for theoretical and conceptual rationale. An empirical step for conducting the environmental characterization of hydrodynamics, leveling and topographic analysis of sediments (in laboratory), for observation of changes in features, influenced, and natural dynamics, anthropic action that increasingly comes taking the characteristics from the natural landscape. Underlines therefore the importance of academic studies in several areas in these environments, for setting up a coastal zoning giving public subsidies for managers for managing and planning the use and occupation of the coast in their areas