Addressing the Affordable Housing Crisis for Vulnerable Renters: Insights From Broward County on an Affordable Housing Acquisition Tool

Abstract

South Florida is experiencing an affordable rental crisis that is especially burdensome on those most vulnerable in society, low-income households. Rapid urbanization has resulted in inequitable land-use patterns that are a barrier to housing for the poor. As a solution to the crisis, local housing agencies seek to expand their affordable housing stock for vulnerable renters in opportunity-rich neighborhoods, but there is no standard framework for identifying properties for acquisition. Broward County serves as a case study to develop a housing acquisition tool. Using a combination of spatial statistics and principal components analysis, neighborhoods in which housing agencies may consider acquiring property are identified through the creation of an affordability surface in ArcGIS. Affordability is overlain by an opportunity surface derived from neighborhood quality and accessibility rankings. The results identify neighborhoods in Broward County that are both affordable and opportunity-rich, to better serve the county's most vulnerable renters.

Keywords:

• acquisition
• rental housing
• low-income
• neighborhood
• geography of opportunity

Notes

^1. In this study, housing agencies refers to local housing authorities and non profit affordable housing providers in Broward County, as identified in the Study Area section of this article.

^2. Use codes denote the use of the property (residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, institutional, governmental, or miscellaneous).

^3. Although the median was the preferred method for the dissolve, ArcGIS does not provide an option to dissolve based on median, and therefore mean cost per square foot was used. Given the large sample size of transactions in each block group, the use of the mean in the dissolve does not appear to skew the results of the overall spatial distribution of affordability throughout the county. However, the median was used to calculate the historical sales transaction history since the number of residential properties purchased by each housing agency was substantially smaller.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebecca Walter

Rebecca J. Walter is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the College of Architecture, Construction, and Planning at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research interests include affordable and assisted housing and the geographies of inequality and opportunity.

Aaron Evans

Aaron Henry Evans received his Ph.D. from the College of Science, Department of Geosciences at Florida Atlantic University. His research interests include GIS, remote sensing and spatial data analysis.

Serge Atherwood

Serge Atherwood is a planning consultant with research interests in urban housing and local economic development.