The Urban Lab (Sam Chandan)

Three of the nation's leading housing nonprofits—the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), a  community financial institution with $900 million in assets under management (AUM); Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF), a collaborative of  affordable housing providers owning nearly 150,000 rental homes; and, the National Affordable Housing Trust (NAHT), a low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) syndicator with over $1 billion in AUM—have announced a new partnership addressing the growing housing affordability crisis.

In this special episode of the Urban Lab, Kimberly Latimer-Nelligan, President of LIIF, Lori Little, President and CEO of NAHT, and Andrea Ponsor, President and CEO of SAHF, discuss the $1 billion program that will build, protect, and preserve affordable homes across the United States. 

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit samchandan.com/urbanlab. Follow Sam and the Urban Lab on Twitter at SamChandan and UrbanLabPodcast.

Renowned urbanist Richard Florida joins Sam Chandan to discuss the future of cities as well as the social and economic forces contributing to protests taking place across the world following the death of George Floyd.

Dr. Richard Florida is Distinguished Fellow at the NYU SPS Schack Institute's Urban Lab, University Professor at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management, and Founder and Editor-at-Large at CityLab. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling Rise of the Creative Class, as well as The Great Reset and The New Urban Crisis.

This podcast includes excerpts from Sam Chandan's and Richard Florida's NYU class, Global Cities in a Post-Pandemic World, and has been edited for content and length.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab.

Steven Pedigo, Director of the LBJ Urban Lab at the University of Texas at Austin and Non-Resident Fellow at the NYU Urban Lab, joins Sam Chandan to discuss A Playbook for Resiliency, co-authored with Kirk Watson, Dean of the Hobby School at the University of Houston, former Mayor of Austin, and former State Senator for the Austin region.  Professor Pedigo discusses recommendations for Texas' long-term growth strategy, how those recommendations can inform policymaking in cities across the country, and which cities are best-positioned to attract businesses and jobs in the post-pandemic environment.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit samchandan.com/urbanlab. Follow Sam and the Urban Lab on Twitter at SamChandan and UrbanLabPodcast.

This segment was produced with research assistance by Peter Mattingly, Adjunct Instructor of Real Estate at NYU Schack.

Employers added 943,000 jobs in July, the highest monthly tally since August of last year. Unemployment is down and wages are up as the labor market tightens further, extending its recovery from the pandemic's initial, very deep losses.

To parse the new data, Sam Chandan is joined by Dr. Marianne Wanamaker, Professor of Economics at the University of Tennessee Knoxville's Haslam College of Business, Executive Director of the Baker Center for Public Policy, and former Chief Economist for the Domestic Economy at the White House Council of Economic Advisors, where she was also the nation's senior-most labor economist.

The monthly labor market analysis is produced in collaboration with LaborIQ by ThinkWhy, a leading provider of analytical tools for data-driven recruiting, hiring, and compensation planning.

To learn more about the Urban Lab, visit SamChandan.com and follow Sam Chandan on Twitter at SamChandan.

Ivan Kaufman, Chairman and CEO of Arbor Realty Trust, joins Sam Chandan to discuss apartment investment and lending during the pandemic, the availability of construction loans, the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, demand for single family rental homes, and Arbor's renter assistance program.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab.

The April jobs report fell woefully short of economists' expectations, with employers adding just 266,000 jobs to payrolls. For women, total employment declined from March to April, reinforcing the recovery's continued unevenness. At the same time, labor supply constraints in some sectors of the economy and the potential for stronger wage pressures are also a concern for monetary policy.

To parse the new data, Sam Chandan is joined by Dr. Marianne Wanamaker, Professor of Economics at the University of Tennessee Knoxville's Haslam College of Business and former Chief Economist for the Domestic Economy at the White House Council of Economic Advisors, where she was also the nation's senior-most labor economist. 

The monthly labor market analysis is sponsored by LaborIQ by ThinkWhy, a leading provider of analytical tools for data-driven recruiting, hiring, and compensation planning. 

To learn more about the Urban Lab, visit SamChandan.com and follow Sam Chandan on Twitter at SamChandan.

While New York City remains the US epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, indications of a plateau in diagnoses and deaths has allowed elected officials and policymakers to begin addressing how we will restart the local economy. Jonathan Bowles, Executive Director of the Center for an Urban Future, joins Sam Chandan to discuss issues ranging from the competitiveness of New York City in attracting and retaining residents and jobs, significant impairments to city finances, disparities in the labor market and recent job losses, small businesses' need for working capital, and threats to housing and food security. The research and policy recommendations discussed during this episode can be found at https://nycfuture.org/. 

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab and the NYU Urban Lab at the NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate at http://sps.nyu.edu/schack.

Employers added more than 900,000 jobs in March 2021, the largest net gain in seven months. The increase is lifting confidence in the strength of the economic recovery, though it remains uneven. Kicking off a new monthly analysis of the labor market coinciding with the release of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ jobs report, Sam Chandan is joined by Dr. Marianne Wanamaker, Professor of Economics at the University of Tennessee and former Chief Economist (Domestic) at the White House Council of Economic Advisors, where she was also the senior-most labor economist. The monthly labor market analysis is sponsored by LaborIQ by ThinkWhy, a leading provider of analytical tools for data-driven recruiting, hiring, and compensation planning. To learn more about the show, visit SamChandan.com and follow Sam Chandan on Twitter at SamChandan.

Across the United States and around the world, offices moved abruptly to remote working during March. Questions about remote work and how it will disrupt the office sector have been points of debate for many years, but the suddenness of the current shift has given these questions new importance. Tom Vecchione, Principal at Vocon and board member at the Center for an Urban Future and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Foundation, joins Sam Chandan to discuss the terms on which we will return to the office, the outlook for relatively dense co-working space, and practical steps to reduce density from the front door to the elevator to the cubicle floor.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab and the NYU Urban Lab at the NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate at http://sps.nyu.edu/schack.

Few corporate location decisions have generated as much excitement or controversy as Amazon’s search for HQ2. More than 200 cities across North America entered into a frenzied bidding war to become the tech giant’s next home, with New York City and Arlington, Virginia ultimately sharing the prize in late 2018. Just a few months later, Amazon cancelled its plans for New York in the face of a backlash that divided New Yorkers.

To recount the story of HQ2 and the lessons for cities, as well as the recent decision by Sidewalk Labs to abandon its plans for a smart city in Toronto, Sam Chandan is joined by Richard Florida, University Professor at the University of Toronto and Distinguished Fellow at Schack’s Urban Lab, and Matthew Kwatinetz, Director of the Urban Lab. Florida was involved in preparing Toronto's bid for HQ2 while Kwatinetz was Executive Vice President of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYC EDC) at the time.

This episode includes excerpts from Sam Chandan's and Richard Florida's NYU class, Global Cities in a Post-Pandemic World, and has been edited for content and length.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab. 

House prices are increasing at their fastest pace since the peak of the pre-Financial Crisis housing boom, fueled by shortfalls in supply and record-low mortgage rates. As a rising share of market participants adopt an auction mentality, economists and policymakers are growing concerned about overheating. In this segment, Dr. Frank Nothaft, Chief Economist of CoreLogic and former Chief Economist of Freddie Mac, joins Sam Chandan to discuss the latest CoreLogic data, the potential for a correction, the outlook for affordability, trends in the single-family homes for rent (SFR) market, and more.

The Urban Lab is a non-partisan program featuring leaders in private industry, public service, and academia, who join us to share their views on improving all aspects of urban life, the competitiveness of cities, the housing market, and urban epidemiology and public health. The views expressed by guests are not necessarily those of the hosts or producers.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit samchandan.com/urbanlab. Follow Dr. Chandan and the Urban Lab on Twitter at SamChandan and UrbanLabPodcast.

Kirk Sykes, Managing Director of Accordia Partners and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, joins Sam Chandan to discuss the planned transformation of Boston's Bayside and how the pandemic is shaping his vision for the project and its supporting infrastructure. Accordia is pressing forward with development of the 5.9 million square foot mixed-use project, including apartments, offices, labs, and retail, and more than 13 acres of public space, on a 20-acre parcel leased from the University of Massachusetts Building Authority.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab and the NYU Urban Lab at the NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate at http://sps.nyu.edu/schack.

Buoyed by the strongest new home sales market since before the Great Financial Crisis, homebuilder sentiment climbed to record levels in August, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). The housing tailwinds prevailing over drags from the labor market include historically low interest rates and a surge in buyer traffic, attributable at least in part to families exploring relocation from urban apartments.

Dr. Robert Dietz, Chief Economist of the National Association of Home Builders and previously of the United States Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, joins Sam Chandan to discuss homebuilding and the housing market forecast. Among the risks to the outlook, they explore sharp increases in the cost of lumber and other building materials, as well as shortages in the availability of skilled labor, all of which are constraining supply, exerting upward pressure on home prices, and placing homeownership out of reach for many American families. Rising lumber prices in particular, owing significantly to US tariffs on imports from Canada, are estimated to be adding $14,000 to the price of a typical new single-family home.

For more information about NAHB and the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, visit the NAHB on the web. Rob's analysis of the market can be found in Eye on Housing and on his Twitter feed at @dietz_econ. 

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab. Follow Sam  and the Urban Lab on Twitter at SamChandan and UrbanLabPodcast.

As the number of infections and deaths related to COVID-19 continue to rise in the United States, evidence is mounting of a disproportionate impact on people of color.  To discuss the racial disparities in the trajectory of the pandemic, Dr. Sam Chandan is joined by Dr. Rashawn Ray, David M. Rubenstein Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution and Associate Professor and Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research at the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously, Dr. Ray was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. The research and policy recommendations discussed during this episode can be found at https://www.brookings.edu/experts/rashawn-ray/. 

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab and the NYU Urban Lab at the NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate at http://sps.nyu.edu/schack.

Mitch Roschelle, Co-Publisher and Co-Chair of the ULI Emerging Trends in Real Estate report and Partner at PwC and Co-Chair of the firm's Real Estate Practice, joins Sam Chandan to discuss conditions in the commercial real estate market, the outlook for retail and office space demand, the competitive position of core urban areas in a post-pandemic world, and the persistence of historically low interest rates. 

For over 40 years, the Emerging Trends in Real Estate report has been amongst the most respected and widely read global surveys of real estate industry leader sentiment and expectations. According to ULI, the report "includes interviews and survey responses from more than 2,200 leading real estate experts, including investors, fund managers, developers, property companies, lenders, brokers, advisers and consultants."

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab.

Noerena Limón from the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP) and Ben Metcalf from the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, join Sam Chandan to discuss the increasing challenges facing small apartment building owners and the communities they serve.  They discuss the findings of a new joint survey, which shows one in four small landlords has borrowed to cover expenses since the beginning of the pandemic. Further deterioration in rent collection following the expiration of enhanced unemployment benefits threatens property owner' capacity to meet operating expenses as well as mortgage payments and property taxes.

Noerena Limón is Senior Vice President of Public Policy at NAHREP. She was previously with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Office of Political Affairs at the White House during the Obama Administration.

Ben Metcalf is Managing Director of Berkeley’s Terner Center. He was  Deputy Assistant Secretary at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama Administration. Following his term at HUD, Ben was head of the California Department of Housing and Community Development under Governor Jerry Brown.

The report cited in this segment can be found on the NAHREP website and Terner Center website.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab. Follow Sam Chandan and the Urban Lab on Twitter at SamChandan and UrbanLabPodcast. This episode was produced with research assistance from Peter Mattingly, Adjunct Instructor of Real Estate at the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate.

Brian Ward, CEO of Trimont and a member of the Board of Advisors at the NYU Schack Institute and Harvard Business School, joins Sam Chandan to discuss the rise in commercial real estate mortgage delinquencies and what happens when borrowers are unable to make their monthly mortgage payments. They discuss the role of forbearance and the uncertainties confounding the outlook for office, hotel, and retail properties. They conclude the conversation with Ward's observations on the role of industry leaders as mentors for young professionals entering the workforce during a period of crisis.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab.

Employers added 559,00 jobs in May, moving the headline unemployment rate to its lowest level since before the pandemic. Even so, May's numbers fell short of expectations and follow on a downside surprise in hiring in April.

To parse the new data, Sam Chandan is joined by Dr. Marianne Wanamaker, Professor of Economics at the University of Tennessee Knoxville's Haslam College of Business and former Chief Economist for the Domestic Economy at the White House Council of Economic Advisors, where she was also the nation's senior-most labor economist.

The monthly labor market analysis is presented by LaborIQ by ThinkWhy, a leading provider of analytical tools for data-driven recruiting, hiring, and compensation planning.

To learn more about the Urban Lab, visit SamChandan.com and follow Sam Chandan on Twitter at SamChandan.

Kicking off season 2 of the Urban Lab, Sam Chandan is joined by Arthanais Williams, Managing Director for Affordable Housing at Arbor Realty Trust. Williams discusses differences across the formal affordable housing sector and naturally occurring affordable housing, reasons for the persistent shortfall in the availability of affordable housing, and the different financing programs available to support the market.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit samchandan.com/urbanlab. Follow Dr. Chandan and the Urban Lab on Twitter at SamChandan and UrbanLabPodcast.

Jeff DeBoer, President and CEO of the Real Estate Roundtable, joins Sam Chandan to discuss the impact of the pandemic on the commercial real estate sector and the Roundtable's current policy priorities. They discuss the Roundtable's recommendations for reforming the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the merits of a Pandemic Risk Insurance Act akin to TRIA, the rent obligation chain, and the Roundtable's broader engagement with Congress and industry leadership. The research and policy recommendations discussed during this segment, as well as the Roundtable's COVID-19 Resource Center, can be found at  www.rer.org.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab and the NYU Urban Lab at the NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate at http://sps.nyu.edu/schack.

Willy Walker, Chairman and CEO of Walker & Dunlop and a board member of the Real Estate Roundtable and the Mortgage Bankers Association, joins Sam Chandan to discuss the outlook for the economy, the labor market, and real estate. Walker shares his views on the challenges facing different real estate asset classes, policy interventions in support of American jobs, and the case for a national infrastructure program.

Lisa Pendergast, Executive Director of the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council (CREFC), joins Sam Chandan to discuss  conditions in the commercial lending market, disparities in access to financing across property types, the rising volume of forbearance requests, positive signs for the market's capacity for new CMBS deal activity, and the role of the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) and other interventions in bolstering liquidity.

Information about CREFC, the Borrower's Guide for Dealing with CMBS Servicers, and the Guide to COVID-19 Relief Programs are available at crefc.org.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab and the NYU Urban Lab at the NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate at http://sps.nyu.edu/schack.

"Seven months after the first case of COVID-19 in New York was confirmed, it’s clear that the city and its surrounding region are enduring one of the biggest crises we have faced in nearly a century," writes the Regional Plan Association (RPA) in the preamble to its new evidence-based report, New York's Next Comeback. "While we can’t fully know what behavioral changes will be permanent, what new industries might emerge, or how the nature of work will evolve, we know that the next economy will be different."

Tom Wright, CEO and President of the RPA and Chairman of the New Jersey State Planning Commission, joins Sam Chandan to discuss the impact of the pandemic on New York City and the key challenges in repositioning the region for renewed growth and prosperity.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit samchandan.com/urbanlab. Follow Sam and the Urban Lab on Twitter at SamChandan and UrbanLabPodcast.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has played a critical role in the nation’s coronavirus pandemic response and in managing challenges to housing stability for both homeowners and renters impacted by the crisis. That support has taken myriad forms, ranging from forbearance for homeowners with federally backed loans to Ginnie Mae’s interventions to support liquidity in the mortgage-backed securities market.

To discuss HUD's response to the crisis, Sam Chandan is joined by the Honorable Seth Appleton, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development & Research at HUD and head of Ginnie Mae; and Alfonso Costa, Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary Ben Carson and HUD's agency lead for the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council. The Council is the oversight body for the Opportunity Zone program, which provides new paths for  investment in historically underserved communities.

Program Notes

Information for homeowners, renters, and housing providers on HUD's pandemic response programs can be found at hud.gov/coronavirus.

Information about the Opportunity Zone program can be found at OpportunityZones.gov.

IRS Notice 2020-39—Relief for Qualified Opportunity Funds and Investors Affected by Ongoing Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

Ed Pinto, Director of the Housing Center at the American Enterprise Institute and former Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer at Fannie Mae, recaps his March 2021 testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

The Urban Lab is a non-partisan program featuring leaders in private industry, public service, and academia, who join us to share their views on improving all aspects of urban life, the competitiveness of cities, the housing market, and urban epidemiology and public health. The views expressed by guests are not necessarily those of the hosts or producers.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit samchandan.com/urbanlab. Follow Dr. Chandan and the Urban Lab on Twitter at SamChandan and UrbanLabPodcast.

Seth Appleton, President of MISMO and former Assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Alfonso Costa, Executive Vice President at the Falcone Group and former Deputy Chief of Staff at HUD, return to the Urban Lab to discuss their recent appointments to the Bipartisan Policy Center's newly formed Housing Advisory Council and the outlook for affordable and workforce housing.

The council is chaired by Henry Cisneros, former Secretary of HUD, Pamela Hughes Patenaude, former Deputy Secretary, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. The Council works to advance policies that address urgent affordable housing needs and address racial disparities in housing outcomes.

To learn more about the Urban Lab, visit SamChandan.com. Follow Dr. Chandan and the Urban Lab on Twitter at @SamChandan and @UrbanLabPodcast.

With billions of people around the planet remaining in place, there are vastly fewer cars on the road and planes overhead. All manner of industries and household activities that rely on fossil fuels have seen declines of some degree. In cities such as New Delhi and Mumbai, images of the clearest skies in decades reflect that fossil fuel consumption has plummeted.  Dr. Carolyn Kissane, member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Academic Director of the NYU Center for Global Affairs, joins Sam Chandan to discuss the implications of the resulting decline in oil prices—for the global economy, for oil-producing nations, and for the push for sustainability.

For more information about the Urban Lab podcast and Dr. Sam Chandan, please visit http://www.samchandan.com/urbanlab and the NYU Urban Lab at the NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate at http://sps.nyu.edu/schack.