Neighborhood Organizational Resources and Subsidized Housing Placement: How Community Development Corporations Shape LIHTC Allocations

• In Event: 40821 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 9. Low-Income Housing Provision

Abstract

While it is widely recognized that community organizations can mediate neighborhood effects, it often remains unclear how and how much neighborhood organizational resources matter for spatial inequality in urban America. I test whether resources from neighborhood-based nonprofit housing developers called community development corporations (CDCs) influence the spatial distribution of affordable housing subsidized by the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). I analyze a novel neighborhood-level dataset spanning 30 metropolitan areas over 14 years, using a combination of marginal structural models, spatial regression, and instrumental variables to address time-varying confounding, spatial spillovers, and reverse causality. Effect estimates are positive but unstable; at most, weak evidence emerges of a causal link between CDCs and housing subsidy allocations at the national level over the recent history of LIHTC. Further analyses will evaluate effect heterogeneity by region, neighborhood demographic composition, and CDC organizational cohorts.

Author

• Nicholas Vincent DiRago, University of Texas at Austin