Kaleidoscope of Impacts on Urban Rental Markets: Arrivals of High-Profile Firms, LIHTC, Filtering, and Natural Disasters

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

Impacts on urban housing markets have traditionally been assessed using home prices as the primary outcome variable, largely due to the relative availability and quality of home price data compared to rental data. However, this focus overlooks a critical dimension of urban housing systems: many metropolitan areas have substantial renter populations, particularly among low- and moderate-income households. As a result, relying solely on home prices provides an incomplete picture of how economic, policy, and environmental changes affect housing affordability, residential mobility, and neighborhood stability. This panel brings together four papers that leverage novel, large-scale rental datasets to examine how different forces shape urban rental markets. Importantly, each study pays close attention to distributional effects, highlighting how impacts vary across income groups, housing types, and neighborhoods. The first paper provides causal estimates of the entry of high-profile firms in the state of Georgia, finding that such arrivals are associated with increased rent burdens for median-income households. The second paper examines the effects of new Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) developments on nearby market-rate rents across six Florida metropolitan areas over a 25-year period, while also comparing these impacts to changes in single-family and multifamily property values. The third paper investigates the role of housing “filtering” in shaping rent distributions across six diverse U.S. cities, including high-cost, fast-growing, and legacy markets. The fourth study analyzes rental dynamics following natural disasters—specifically hurricanes in Florida and wildfires in California—using a two-decade panel dataset. It considers both cumulative disaster exposure and recovery interventions such as the Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program, finding long-run rent increases of 4–6 percent and relatively muted program effects, particularly in the short term. Taken together, these studies represent the cutting edge of empirical research on urban rental dynamics, offering new insights for policymakers, planners, and housing advocates while advancing data-driven approaches to understanding rental market inequalities.

Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Chair

• Seva Rodnyansky, Pew Charitable Trusts

Discussants

• Rachel Meltzer, Harvard University

• Kate W H Harwood, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Individual Presentations

• The Unequal Burden of Growth: Housing Cost Pressures on Renters Near High-Profile Firm Entries - Presenting Author: Eunjee Son, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Do LIHTC Properties’ Positive Spillover Price Effects Result in Lower Nearby Market Rents? - Presenting Author: Richard Voith, Econsult Solutions Inc

• Does Filtering Still Happen? The Effects of Added Supply on the Distribution of Rents - Non-Presenting Co-Author: Andrew Jakabovics, Enterprise Community Partners; Presenting Author: Matthew David Thompson, Enterprise Community Partners

• How Hurricanes Reshape Rental Housing Markets: Evidence from a Quarter Century of Severe Storms - Presenting Author: Anthony W. Orlando, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Organizer

• Brian Y. An, Georgia Institute of Technology