Poster #67 - The Effect of Nuisance Ordinances on Residential Mobility

• In Event: Saturday Poster Luncheon

Abstract

Cities across the United States have nuisance property ordinances that hold property owners accountable when an “excessive” number of 911 calls have been made from their property within a specified period due to nuisance activity (e.g., noise, misdemeanors, etc.). When issued citations, rental property owners must abate the nuisance or face fines. Research has found that landlords often choose eviction as their abatement strategy (Arnold, 2019; Desmond and Valdez, 2013; Kroeger and La Mattina, 2020). However, little is known about where affected households move or how frequently they relocate.  

Nuisance ordinances also have concerning implications for housing equity. Domestic violence survivors and people with disabilities face a heightened risk of receiving nuisance citations because they frequently encounter emergencies where the police are necessary (Desmond and Valdez, 2013; Jarwala and Singh, 2019). Racially motivated false police reports further expose people of color to nuisance citations (Kurwa, 2022). To the extent that landlords respond to nuisance citations by evicting tenants, the aforementioned groups may be more likely to experience residential instability in cities where such ordinances are enacted. 

This paper seeks to answer the following questions: First, how do nuisance ordinances affect the inflows and outflows of renters in census tracts of varying opportunity scores? Does this vary by renters’ racial and ethnic identity? Second, how do nuisance ordinances affect the probability of moving for renter households and future census tract opportunity score? Does this vary by the racial/ethnic identity or disability status of the household members? 

To estimate the effects of nuisance ordinances on residential mobility, we use two complementary approaches, leveraging a combination of restricted census data on address histories and demographics, nuisance ordinance enactment data, and administrative data on 911 calls.  First, we estimate a difference-in-differences model that leverages the staggered enactment of nuisance ordinances between 2000 and 2019 to evaluate the effects on aggregate residential moves within and across census tracts, overall and by race/ethnicity. Second, we estimate the effects at the individual level, using nuisance ordinance enactment and 911 call data to identify households that are likely affected. We test two models: an OLS model and a two-stage model where we first match households based on observable characteristics. By using 911 call data to measure address-level treatment, we can more precisely identify the households likely affected by nuisance ordinances and evaluate their subsequent residential mobility.

Author

• Katherine Kwok, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author