Thesis (M.C.P. and S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2006. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-82). / By providing substantial grants to public housing authorities to demolish and rebuild distressed public housing and provide services to public housing residents, the HOPE VI program has helped transform these developments and their surrounding communities since 1992. HOPE VI has not only brought public and private investment to distressed neighborhoods but also has played an important role in increasing development capacity for housing authorities and HUD. In spite of the successful completion of many projects in the last decade, arguments have been made that HOPE VI is not only too expensive and too slow but is no longer needed. Housing advocates have also argued that there are programmatic flaws that must be reformed. The Bush Administration has sought to cut HOPE VI from the federal budget for the last four fiscal years. Congress has reinstated it each year, albeit at lower and lower funding levels, but the future of HOPE VI is uncertain at best. As the only funding program specifically designed to meet the needs of distressed public housing and its very low-income residents, HOPE VI is not easily replaced. / (cont.) Despite the challenges, many housing authorities and their partners are attempting to assemble funding for desperately needed public housing redevelopment projects. Interviews with housing authorities, developers, and consultants provide an understanding of the strategies that housing authorities are using to make these "post-HOPE VI" projects work. Housing authorities and their public and private partners have crafted innovations intended to replicate HOPE VI results, but without HOPE VI funds, these projects will only be possible through the piecemeal assembly of public and private funds and are likely to lack the holistic approach and broader vision enabled by HOPE VI. Without seed capital and without the flexibility to be creative, public housing authorities will have a limited ability to build on their entrepreneurial skills, partner with the private sector, and meet the needs of their residents and capital assets. Killing one of the few innovative government programs to emerge in the last decade is a waste and does not bode well for the future of very low-income families-a "HOPE VII" program is needed to build on the public learning achieved during HOPE VI and these early post-HOPE VI efforts. / by Kristen J. Wang. / M.C.P.and S.M.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning; and, (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1983. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Bibliography: leaves 155-157. / by Wayne A. Benjamin. / M.C.P. / M.S.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-80). / by Ayesha Malhotra. / M.C.P.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. Thesis. 1974. Ph.D. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 264-282. / Ph.D.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2018. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 162-180). / With declining federal assistance for essential infrastructure upgrades, water and wastewater utilities have increasingly relied on customer revenue to fill funding gaps. This has led most recently to "water crises" in cities such as Baltimore and Detroit, where residents who cannot afford to pay increasing rates have been disconnected from water services altogether. Although utility disconnection is a common practice to collect unpaid revenue, the scale and duration of these shut-offs is unprecedented, and, in both cases, the result of concurrent urban fiscal and social crises. In the absence of legislation that secures the right to water for all American citizens, people addressing the problems have typically tried to identify sources of infrastructure funding that would be more equitable, or calculate levels of payment that are truly affordable. In light of these debates, this thesis asks whether processes of deliberation between the government and the public might serve a critical role in alleviating the problem. After investigating Baltimore's financial structures and exploring causes of confrontation between the public and the utility, this thesis suggests transparency and accountability reforms that enhance planning processes which involve citizens so Baltimore's DPW can move beyond the practice of just counting meters, to one of seeing and hearing customers. The thesis argues that, short of improving the infrastructure, the processes of citizen engagement, particularly via the collaboration of various state and utility departments, will help improve the technical and financial efficiency of the utility and create greater equity for customers through providing data and records that bolster various processes and programs, from account classification to collection to customer assistance to information about cognate programs such as affordable housing -- all of which will make it easier to assess and determine equity. The ultimate goal is to meet the financial and physical needs of water and wastewater utilities, while also addressing issues of equity, with a focus on deliberation and data collection that places an emphasis on process that leads to both desired outcomes. / by Haleemah N. Qureshi. / M.C.P.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. Thesis. 1974. B.S. / Bibliography: leaves 47-48. / B.S.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 112-116). / In late 1990s and early 2000s Harlem, an affordable housing production "ecosystem" comprised of elected officials, city planners, civic advocates, builders, and financial institutions at the local, state, and national level supported a reliable, systematic pipeline of new affordable housing construction. The output of this pipeline included Harlem's first midrise affordable housing construction in thirty years in the late 1990s and, by the early 2000s, over 15,000 units of affordable housing construction starts per year. This thesis seeks to describe the creation and operation of this affordable housing production ecosystem within a framework of "push," "pull," and "safety net" factors influencing the allocation of capital and resources. "Push" factors consisted of the Community Reinvestment Act and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, the evolution of which led private investment into low-income and minority communities such as Harlem. "Pull" factors included the deeply-experienced, closely-knit network of affordable housing professionals working in Harlem that had the skills and influence to execute projects; and a long-term, comprehensive community development framework, spearheaded by the public sector, that organized affordable housing efforts across the public, non-profit, and private sectors. / (cont.) "Safety net" factors included local subsidies, housing finance innovations, and the emergence of secondary markets, all of which decreased the risk and uncertainty of investment in pioneering Harlem affordable housing projects. This thesis will also assess the ecosystem in practice by examining key representative projects: Maple Plaza and Maple Court; The Renaissance; and Madison Park, Madison Court, and Madison Plaza. These projects roughly represent an initial stage, fully-formed stage, and further evolved stage of the affordable housing production ecosystem at work. Looking ahead, this thesis seeks to identify and assess future challenges that the ecosystem must address as the banking industry evolves, local market and policy conditions change, and secondary markets grow larger and more complex. Lastly, this thesis seeks to draw insights from the Harlem experience for affordable housing practitioners and for communities seeking to create their own affordable housing production ecosystems. / by Ben Dookchitra. / M.C.P.

Thesis: M.C.P., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 2014. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 84-86). / This thesis seeks to understand how rental housing market dynamics-particularly landlord behavior, and the policies and players that shape it-contribute to the spatial clustering of households that participate in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program in New York City. Scholars have long been interested in understanding the reproduction of HCV holders into higher poverty, racially segregated neighborhoods in cities across the U.S. Most of the research to date has focused on the ways demand-side factors influence locational outcomes of voucher holders, specifically why they move, where and under what circumstances. However, to fully understand the residential patterns we see among voucher holders, we need to look beyond the demand-side barriers to understand the structural problems of the rental housing market and the voucher program itself. This thesis draws on in-depth interviews with landlords who participate and do not participate in the HCV program in New York City to better understand their experiences with the program and what drives their decision-making practices. Interviews were also conducted with realtors, public agency officials, landlord associations and a legal advocacy organization to better understand the role that intermediaries, public policies and city agencies play in influencing these decisions. Findings provide detailed accounts of the policies and agency practices landlords and realtors are responding to; they begin to explain how the structure of the rental housing market and voucher program itself lends to the reproduction of HCV clustering into high poverty neighborhoods. Ultimately, these findings indicate how deeply embedded our housing problems are within our economic system and the need to question the adequacy of market-driven housing policies. If we hope to realize a more socially just city, a rethinking of our rental housing policies is in order. / by Dara N. Yaskil. / M.C.P.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 73-74). / This study utilizes data from a national-level survey conducted by the Aspen Institute to examine the strategy of microenterprise assistance and microcredit provision in the United States. Four program groups are analyzed: training programs that do not offer loans, lending programs that serve primarily low income individuals, lending programs that serve primarily minorities, and lending programs that report unusually large average loan sizes. Within each of these groups, this study identifies significant subgroups that are making specific contributions to the strategy or employing it in unusual ways. The data confirm a diversification of the field that provides strong evidence against data aggregation and universal performance measures for microenterprise programs. The study concludes that there is a place for microenterprise programs in economic and community development in the US, but that the strategy may have a different role to play than originally anticipated. Policy implications and avenues for future micro- and macro-level research are discussed. / by Jennifer A. Langer. / M.C.P.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 207-224). / by Abel Valenzuela, Jr. / Ph.D.