I found the Housing Matters website (Housing Matters: An Urban Institute Initiative) in some cursory search done a couple of days back. “Pressure to sell: gentrification as “reverse-blockbusting” (December 2, 2020) summarizes the findings of a 2019 study on the outcomes for home owners in North Nashville, a predominantly Black community, who were pressured to sell long-time homes. Without describing “real estate mobbing,” the summary makes reference to “aggressive” developers damaging the homes of reluctant sellers in their drive to acquire property. Key points include:
- Developers made an average of 45% profit off of flipping homes they purchased at below-market prices.
- Developers prefer to purchase in volume and to remake these “blocks” of homes in a manner that alters the perception of the neighborhood.
- Developers may structure the deal for their own profit by acting as real estate agent as well as buyer.
- Home owners who sold were the target of predatory practices before sale and suffered poor outcomes after sale as they struggled to find housing in an inflated housing market.
Housing Matters has a section of articles on housing. In “California’s Affordable Housing Stock is Dwindling. How Can It Be Preserved?“, I was glad to see a short list of ideas on what we can do to preserve affordable housing or at least to slow the exponential rise of housing prices in California. One idea whose implementation in Washington State might have discouraged my being mobbed in Seattle was that policy-makers make policies giving tenants and community organizations the first right of purchase when rented homes come onto the market. Another point that reaffirms my own inclinations is that owners of at-risk “naturally-occurring affordable housing” (NOAH) be incentivized to sell to affordable housing entities. The article makes the point that NOAH housing has, in recent years, increasingly been bought up by large, for-profit organizations.
Read on.
