Neighborhood Opportunity and Location Affordability for Low-Income Renter Families (original) (raw)
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Does Gentrification Displace Poor Children? New Evidence from New York City Medicaid Data
The pace of gentrification has accelerated in cities across the country since 2000, and many observers fear it is displacing low-income populations from their homes and communities. We offer new evidence about the consequences of gentrification on mobility, building and neighborhood conditions, using longitudinal New York City Medicaid records from January 2009 to December 2015 to track the movement of a cohort of low-income children over seven years, during a period of rapid gentrification in the city. We leverage building-level data to examine children in market rate housing separately from those in subsidized housing. We find no evidence that gentrification is associated with meaningful changes in mobility rates over the seven-year period. It is associated with slightly longer distance moves. As for changes in neighborhood conditions, we find that children who start out in a gentrifying area experience larger improvements in some aspects of their residential environment than their counterparts who start out in persistently low-socioeconomic status areas. This effect is driven by families who stay in neighborhoods as they gentrify; we observe few differences in the characteristics of destination neighborhoods among families who move, though we find modest evidence that children moving from gentrifying areas move to lower-quality buildings.
Housing Policy Debate, 2020
Findings from a study using the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (PSID) and detailed urban environment and transit data support the location affordability hypothesis. Households in location-efficient places spent significantly less on household transportation, enough to offset high housing costs. Walkable blocks and good transit especially contribute to these savings. But households with very low incomes (below 35% AMI) do not see significant enough savings. Authors recommend investments in transit, sidewalks, and economic development in disinvested areas; the preservation and creation of affordable housing of all types and tenures; and more supports for households with very low incomes. For decades, researchers have explored how location efficiency (LE) affects housing affordability, including incorporating transportation costs into a holistic housing affordability measure known as location affordability. Others have argued that estimated transportation savings from LE may be overstated because of limits in data and methods. Smart and Klein's 2018 article in Housing Policy Debate analyzed the PSID and found "no evidence to support the location affordability hypothesis." Considering their study's policy implications, as well as its methodological limitations, we tested the PSID data at a smaller geography using more detailed household and urban form variables, per the LE literature. With this approach, we find statistically significant and meaningful transportation cost differences that are enough to offset higher housing prices for several income groups. However, the transportation savings for households in the lowest-income group in urban areas do not offset high housing costs. Because location-affordable places are in short supply, and the extreme shortage of affordable housing, both housing and transportation investments are needed to support households with low and moderate incomes. Expanding location affordability regionally will also help to address climate change and expand access to job opportunities, goods, services, and other amenities.
The Neighborhood Quality of Subsidized Housing
Journal of the American Planning Association, 2014
Housing policy in the United States has struggled for decades to assess the relative importance of neighborhood context in the provision of subsidized housing. In this study, we enter the debate over the value and limitations of neighborhood settings and the "dispersal-versus-development" approach by looking at the issue from an alternative perspective: neighborhood access. We provide a large-scale, quantifi ed assessment of the neighborhood context of subsidized housing, with specifi c attention to six metropolitan areas in the United States. Using data on neighborhood access (measured by a walkability index) and locations of federally subsidized housing, we investigate three primary areas of research: an analysis of the level of access for subsidized housing, the question of whether low-poverty neighborhoods translates to low access, and the degree to which neighborhood access is compromised by an increase in negative factors like crime, poverty, or segregation. We fi nd that federally subsidized housing in the United States is predominantly (72%) in poor-access locations. In addition, we fi nd that low poverty is likely to mean low access, for which voucher holders are not compensated by living in more attractive neighborhoods (indicated by higher housing market strength). However, we fi nd evidence that high-access neighborhoods are compromised by segregation in Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago, but not in Miami, Phoenix, and Seattle. Takeaway for practice: As advocates of the built environment, planners should support a more contextualized approach to housing policy, warranted by the fact that low-income households are often the most affected by physical proximity, or lack of it.
Low-Income-Rental-Housing Programs in the Fourth District
Working paper (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland)
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, many policy analysts are rethinking national housing policies, including affordable housing programs. We review the literature to compare the largest tenant-based (housing choice voucher or HCV) and place-based (low-income-housing tax credit or LIHTC) programs with respect to cost effi ciency and access to better quality neighborhoods. We also provide an overview of low-income-rental-housing policy trends and perform a rough comparison of neighborhood quality across programs and counties, focusing on four main urban counties in the Fourth Federal Reserve District (Cuyahoga, Hamilton, and Franklin in Ohio, and Allegheny in Pennsylvania). We fi nd that in spite of relatively stable real rents, affordability in the Ohio counties declined between 2005 and 2009 due to a drop in real incomes. We fi nd that in Allegheny County during 2006-2009, neighborhood quality was comparable for rental units available through each of the two housing programs. We also fi nd evidence that neighborhoods with LIHTC investments placed in service by 2000 in Allegheny County improved their quality by 2006-2009 relative to comparable neighborhoods, but we do not fi nd similar evidence for the Ohio counties. Lacking tenantlevel data on LIHTC renters, it is hard to explain these regional differences. Finally, we note that richer data reporting on various aspects of HCV and LIHTC would improve the ability of program administrators and policymakers to design, coordinate, and evaluate programs based on effi ciency and effectiveness.
Quality of Life, Transportation Costs, and Federal Housing Assistance: Leveling the Playing Field
Housing Policy Debate, 2016
Federal housing subsidies are allocated without regard to spatial differences in the cost of living or quality of life. In this article, we calculate housing subsidy payments for participants in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program and demonstrate that these subsidies are significantly related to metropolitan quality-of-life differentials. We then estimate amenityadjusted subsidies and compare these estimates with data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Location Affordability Portal. Our analysis yields three insights regarding the relationship between federal housing assistance payments (HAP), metropolitan quality-of-life differentials, and transportation cost burdens. First, HCV HAP show a strong inverse correlation with household transportation expenditures, and this is particularly pronounced for low-income households. Thus, HAP do not address location affordability because those living in high-transportation cost metropolitan areas receive the lowest housing subsidies. Second, we present evidence that HAP are positively related to metropolitan qualityof-life differentials. This suggests that high-amenity metropolitan areas also tend to be the most affordable from a transportation cost perspective. Third, our proposed amenity-adjusted HAP strongly reduce the inverse relationship between HAP and transportation cost burdens. Like most transfer payments, U.S. federal housing subsidies are designed to achieve redistributive goals. Unlike other forms of income redistribution such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, federal housing subsidies explicitly target housing consumption, reducing housing cost burdens for low-income households by equalizing the share of income spent on housing to 30% of an eligible low-income household's budget. Many scholars have criticized the arbitrariness of the 30% threshold formula, which is based largely on convention rather than a sound economic rationale (see, e.g., Green & Malpezzi, 2003). Some advocate for a more expansive definition of housing affordability that considers both the housing costs in a particular location and the transportation costs of reaching destinations from that location (Center for Neighborhood Technology, 2010). This latter critique is often characterized as the location efficiency argument, based on the rationale that when the housing and transportation costs of a given residential location are considered, the total cost of living in many otherwise affordable locations is much higher when transportation costs are considered. This article reexamines the transportation cost location efficiency argument as a corollary to a more general objection: The U.S. federal housing subsidy approach ignores the influence of a wide range ARTICLE HISTORY
Affordable Housing and Walkable Neighborhoods: A National Urban Analysis
2015
AbstractDemand for housing in walkable neighborhoods has been increasing rapidly in recent years, as has evidence of the benefits of walkable urban form and walking. These neighborhoods nevertheless remain in short supply, especially for low-income residents. Furthermore, crime, poor market strength, or racial segregation potentially compromise accessibility in lower income neighborhoods. We assess the nationwide supply of urban neighborhoods with walkable access and the extent to which U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-assisted voucher and project housing enables tenants to live in these neighborhoods. For assisted tenants with walkable access, we analyze whether or not this access is compromised. We aggregated more than 20 million address-level records (2010 to 2012) to the neighborhood level from about a dozen sources to characterize walkable access (using Walk Score), HUD-assisted housing, potential compromising factors, and other neighborhood characteristic...
Housing and transportation cost trade-offs and burdens of working households in 28 metros
This study examines neighborhood housing and transportation choices available to working households in 28 U.S. metropolitan areas. The purpose is to determine how constraints within the neighborhood and the region-e.g., lack of access to transportation choices, distance from job centers, shortages of affordable housing-affect household costs and how high-cost burdens impact the household, their neighborhoods and the region. Specifically, we examine the relationship between metro areas with the highest housing and transportation costs in relation to working family incomes and whether the highest cost regions for working households tend to be those with the greatest shortages of affordable housing and/or the worse congestion and/or the longest commutes. The results indicate that a number of factors cause high housing and transportation costs, and it is the regions where there are either a few factors at the extreme high end of costs or a number of factors at the medium level-both add up to total high costs for working families. All findings suggest the need for policies that address affordable housing location in concert with: affordable transportation, the location and creation of jobs-particularly in areas with concentrations of working families and existing infrastructure, e.g. inner-ring suburbs and central cities; and mixed-use, well-designed neighborhoods where residents can walk to fulfill some of their daily needs.
People Versus Place, People and Place, or More? New Directions for Housing Policy
Housing Policy Debate
Virtually all aspects of socioeconomic inequality in the United States are organized in space (Sampson, 2012). The spatial organization of inequality is, in part, simply a manifestation of inequality occurring at the levels of individuals, families, and groups that is mapped onto spaces through market processes. However, spatial inequality also is due to intentional efforts to organize physical space through state action in ways that maintain or reinforce inequality (Dreier, Mollenkopf, & Swanstrom, 2004). As a result of both sets of processes, there is tremendous variation in economic status, education and labor-market opportunities, institutions, environmental hazards, and social networks across city blocks, neighborhoods, municipalities, metropolitan areas, and regions. Well-documented trends in rising household income and wealth inequality are mirrored by trends in the degree to which low-and high-income families live apart from each other, as measured by economic segregation (Bischoff & Reardon, 2014). Although the growth of isolated affluent neighborhoods is an important contributor to the rise of economic segregation (Reardon & Bischoff, 2011), much of the concern about the issue stems from the long-term rise of concentrated poverty. Jargowsky (1996, 2003, 2015) has documented, in a series of reports, trends in the proportion of all Americans and poor Americans living in neighborhoods with a poverty rate of 40% or greater, showing substantial growth in concentrated poverty from 1970 to 1990, a decline in the 1990s, and a subsequent increase from 2000 to the most recent years in which data were available (2009-2013). Since 2000, the number of extreme-poverty neighborhoods has risen by over 75%, and the number of Americans living in such neighborhoods has risen by more than 90%, from 7.2 million to 13.8 million (Jargowsky, 2015). Many studies have measured the connections between an individual child or adult's exposure to concentrated poverty and a wide variety of subsequent negative outcomes (for recent reviews see Galster & Sharkey, in press; Sharkey & Faber, 2014). This literature increasingly supports the understanding that robust child development and adult opportunities for U.S. low-income households will be compromised in numerous aspects by the comprehensively deprived residential environments that they typically confront. For recent studies that provide plausibly causal estimates of the negative effects of neighborhood deprivation on many child and adult outcomes in the United States, see Chetty, Hendren,
The Geography of Child Opportunity: Why Neighborhoods Matter For Equity
2020
Neighborhoods matter for children's healthy development. A family's resources affect children's ability to thrive, but the neighborhoods where children grow up are critically important as well. Supportive neighborhood resources and onditions (e.g., good early childhood education centers and schools, green spaces, and low poverty) can enhancethe effect of protective family factors or mitigate the effects of adverse family factors. This report marks the launch of the Child Opportunity Index 2.0. A stronger and more robust data tool than its predecessor the Child Opportunity Index 1.0, COI 2.0 is the best index of children's contemporary neighborhood opportunity available. We are launching the COI 2.0 data and first findings to support improved understanding of the neighborhoods where our children are growing up today and spur actions to improve neighborhood environment for all children.In 2014, we launched the Child Opportunity Index to provide the first data resource...