Using New Sources of Data to Study the Relationships between Housing Affordability, Location, and Inequality

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Affordable housing is out of reach for too many households in the U.S., particularly in high-cost urban areas. This panel will feature research on policies to expand the stocks of market-rate and subsidized housing, with particular attention to how geographic mobility and income inequality intersect with efforts to create more housing of all types. The papers in this panel use new sources of data to study challenging housing policy problems in new ways. 

Marantz et al weigh relative contributions of rents, incomes, inequality and household formation in rising housing unaffordability across U.S. metropolitan areas since 1960. In doing this, they highlight that the predominant measures that use rent to income (RTI) measures mask important compositional trends. Specifically, real wage stagnation is probably given too much credit for rising RTIs, given that rising housing costs impact the composition of the renter population in any location at a given time.  

Kestleman’s paper also tackles thorny measurement challenges in housing. Several housing policy conversations, such as vacancy, rent control and eviction, are compromised by inadequate data on rental housing ownership. These data are typically a convoluted maze of limited liability companies (LLCs), partnerships, trusts, and other intermediary entities. Using administrative business data from several sources, Kestleman develops a national and scalable approach to construct “Final Owner Networks” that has the potential to rapidly specify and advance policy discussions on rental housing and research on rental property ownership and associated issues.

The final two papers use new sources of data to examine how key affordable housing policies interact with localized housing markets and influence neighborhood outcomes for low-income tenants. Wang’s paper examines an Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) program in Seattle using data from Craigslist. They identify how housing developers react to IZ incentives differently in higher-income neighborhoods, where households have more to gain from such incentives (because the rent discount is higher) but developers have more to lose, particularly when policymakers implement high IZ requirements. They find that IZ lowers nearby rents in lower-income areas but raises them in high-income areas, which they attribute to neighborhood amenity changes facilitated by IZ in higher income neighborhoods. 

Lens et al use microdata from two sources: the University of California Consumer Credit Panel (UC-CCP) and the California Housing Partnership (CHP) to identify the neighborhoods that households move from when they enter LIHTC housing and the neighborhoods they move to when they move out of those units. 

All four papers tackle the prominent and growing relationship between resource inequality and housing affordability in U.S. metropolitan areas using new sources of data . Taken together, these studies add nuance to long-running research and policy conversations about how to increase the stock of affordable housing in higher opportunity neighborhoods.

Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Chair

• Justin P. Steil, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Discussants

• Elizabeth Lochhead, New York University

• Vincent J. Reina, University of Pennsylvania

Organizer

• Michael C Lens, University of California - Los Angeles

Individual Presentations

• Measurement of Rental Property Ownership in the United States - Presenting Author: Stephanie Kestelman, Arnold Ventures

• Tradeoffs and Spillovers in Affordable Housing - Presenting Author: Eric Suyuan Wang, University of Washington

• The Distribution and Drivers of Rental Unaffordability - Presenting Author: Nicholas J. Marantz, University of California Irvine

• Using New Data Sources to Study Neighborhood Outcomes for LIHTC Tenants - Presenting Author: Michael C Lens, University of California - Los Angeles