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4: STATE HOUSING AGENCIES IN MARYLAND, MINNESOTA, AND TEXAS
- State University of New York Press
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4 STATE HOUSING AGENCIES IN MARYLAND, MINNESOTA, AND TEXAS The “resurgence of the states” during the 1960s and 1970s occurred because states rewrote their constitutions, professionalized their legislatures , and strengthened the powers of their governors. States also began creating state-level bureaucracies to develop and implement new social programs.1 Minnesota, Maryland, and Texas were chosen as case studies to better understand the role these bureaucracies played after devolution. These states were very different politically and they represented different regions of the country. Minnesota in the Midwest is considered one of the most progressive states in the nation; Texas in the Southwest, one of the most conservative; and Maryland in the MidAtlantic falls in between.2 They were also very different in terms of wealth, poverty rates, and population (see table 4.1 for comparisons). But, these three states were also similar in that they each operated under constitutions written shortly after the Civil War and the powers of their legislatures and governors had remained unchanged since the 1960s. The one change they had all made was the creation of housing agencies in order to issue federal mortgage revenue bonds. Minnesota’s and Maryland’s agencies were created in the early 1970s and Texas’s in 1979. Maryland’s agency began to evolve as a federal partner in the mid-1980s, as a direct result of federal devolution. Texas’s agency changed in response to the creation of the federal HOME program— which was designed in part to get holdout states more active in addressing their own affordable housing problems. Minnesota’s housing agency had already developed many statewide programs by the 1980s, but it too faced serious housing problems during the 1990s. Each of these states—indeed all states—faced some common affordable housing problems. First, low vacancy rates during the 1980s and 1990s in high-growth areas reduced the already limited supply of 75 affordable housing as higher income households squeezed out lowincome families. Second, household income during this period did not keep up with the cost of housing. The number of households below the poverty level nationwide increased by one million during this period, increasing the number of households in need of affordable housing.3 Third, the contracts for millions of federally built low-income housing units were set to expire by the mid-1990s, a situation that would further exacerbate the shortage of affordable housing. Finally, the resulting shortages from each of these events meant low-income working households were increasingly living in substandard housing or there was a mismatch between where they could afford to live and where they could find work. The crisis in affordable housing affected the growth of local communities and the quality of life in these states. The recognition that affordable housing was also needed to support community development helped transform state housing agencies. In Maryland, Texas, and Minnesota, advocacy groups and government reports had begun warning of the impending housing crises and its affect on community development as early as 1981. To address the problems, Maryland and Texas restructured their agencies and gave them greater authority and state funds for the first time. In Minnesota, an already active agency was given additional state funds and authority to address the state’s new housing needs. The first half of this chapter details the creation of these three agencies. The second half looks at the housing problems the agencies 76 THE CREATION OF A FEDERAL PARTNERSHIP TABLE 4.1 MARYLAND, MINNESOTA, AND TEXAS IN COMPARISON, 2006 Average Poverty Resident U.S. Family U.S. Rate U.S. Population Rank Income Rank Individuals Rank Maryland 5,602,258 19th $65,144 1st 7.8% 50th Minnesota 5,143,134 21st $54,023 10th 9.8% 43rd Texas 23,367,534 2nd $44,922 32nd 16.8% 8th U.S. 298,755,000 $48,451 13.3% Source: U.S. Census Bureau, table 1: Annual Estimates of the Resident Population for the United States, Regions, States, and Puerto Rico: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008 (NSTEST2008 -01); 2006 American Community Survey, Income, Earnings, and Poverty, 2006, series ACS-01, B19013. Median Household Income in the Past 12 Months (In 2006 Inflation -Adjusted Dollars); B17001. Poverty Status in the Past 12 Months by Sex and Age; http://factfinder.census.gov. [18.234.165.107] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:50 GMT) faced during the 1980s and 1990s and how they responded to those problems. What emerges is a picture of well-instituted bureaucracies...