Plus: A nightmare squatting situation in Washington, D.C.
Hope your Tuesday is off to a good start, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. With Labor Day on the calendar, this edition comes in a touch shorter than usual.
Our coverage this time includes a piece about the hopeful note to be found in reports of vacancies at federally subsidized affordable housing projects, alongside another alarming squatter case in Washington, D.C.
The Silver Lining to Empty Subsidized Apartments
A recent story from the Associated Press highlights double-digit vacancy rates among federally funded units set aside for low-income renters.
Rent Free Newsletter by Christian Britschgi. Get more of Christian's urban regulation, development, and zoning coverage.
All of this sounds like trouble in the wrong city, where 12% or 16% of subsidized units sit idle. One might assume that housing priced below market would be in high demand.
The AP piece points to two linked reasons why so many affordable units remain vacant.
Stringent income-verification requirements deter applicants who would otherwise qualify for the subsidized homes. In Austin, Portland, and Denver, tenants are choosing to skip the paperwork and instead pay slightly higher market-rate rents.
That dynamic could be viewed as a form of silver lining within the broader narrative.
Qualifying tenants are also finding that market rents in some areas are affordable. Austin, for example, has seen a construction boom that has helped temper prices.
When private development lowers costs, more people are comfortable foregoing state assistance (and the accompanying constraints) in order to secure housing. Fewer individuals needing public aid means less burden on taxpayers, allowing residual aid to be directed toward those in the greatest need.
The extraordinarily high housing costs in many U.S. metros have led some policymakers to doubt whether the market can ever adequately serve working-class renters. The empties in Austin hint that this conclusion may be premature.
Squatters Strike in D.C.
Fox News has a new report about a Washington, D.C., property owner’s nightmare with squatters.
Tatyana Day Velasquez owns a three-unit rowhouse in the Columbia Heights neighborhood. According to Fox, the basement unit has allegedly been seized by uninvited squatters who have since barricaded themselves inside, with claims of drug use and other criminal activity linked to the space.
The D.C. police told Fox that the route to ejecting squatters runs through the city’s housing court, a process that can stretch for months. Meanwhile, the occupyers remain, damaging the property and intimidating neighbors.
Velasquez’s predicament is, unfortunately, not isolated. As I noted in a recent feature for Reason, a frequent path for property owners facing squatters is to pursue civil litigation to remove the intruders.
That arrangement isn’t inherently unreasonable. Law enforcement often encounters ambiguity about whether someone is a trespasser or a rightful occupant, and courts sometimes must decide who is allowed on the premises.
The real problem arises when the court process to remove squatters drags on for months or even years. That enrichment of the squatters’ ability to stay rent-free for extended periods can heighten the owner’s damages and frustration.
As squatting gains prominence, states are revising their laws to criminalize it and to create faster avenues for removal so owners don’t have to endure lengthy court battles just to reclaim their property.
D.C. has recently overhauled its tenant laws to permit quicker evictions of nonpayment and tenants accused of serious crimes. Yet these changes have not fully resolved Velasquez’s ongoing squatting ordeal.
Quick Links
- Texas’ new rule allowing residential development in commercial zones is working a bit too effectively for some municipalities. Frisco officials are urging state lawmakers to narrow the scope of the measure.
- Another day, another land-use clash over a data center, this time in Montana.
- City Journal on New York’s post-9/11 resilience.
- Matt Yglesias on the unknowns surrounding the data-center debate.
- The Real Deal on the truth behind New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “transfer” of distressed rent-stabilized properties.
