Down the street
The Impact of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program on Local Schools
Wenhua Di & James Murdoch
Journal of Housing Economics, December 2013, Pages 308–320
Abstract:
The low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) program has developed over two million rental homes for low-income households since 1986. The perception of deterioration in school quality has been a main reason for community opposition to LIHTC projects in middle- and upper-income areas. In this paper, we examine the impact of LIHTC projects on the nearby school performance using data on all LIHTC projects and elementary schools in Texas from the 2003-04 through 2008-09 academic years. We employ the longitudinal structure of the data to control for school fixed effects and estimate the relationship between the opening of nearby LIHTC on campus-level standardized test scores and performance ratings. We address the potential selection biases by controlling for preexisting trends in school performance prior to the study period. We find no robust evidence that the opening of LIHTC units negatively impacts the performance of nearby elementary schools.
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Natural Amenities, Neighborhood Dynamics, and Persistence in the Spatial Distribution of Income
Sanghoon Lee & Jeffrey Lin
Federal Reserve Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
We present theory and evidence highlighting the role of natural amenities in neighborhood dynamics, suburbanization, and variation across cities in the persistence of the spatial distribution of income. Our model generates three predictions that we confirm using a novel database of consistent-boundary neighborhoods in U.S. metropolitan areas, 1880-2010, and spatial data for natural features such as coastlines and hills. First, persistent natural amenities anchor neighborhoods to high incomes over time. Second, downtown neighborhoods in coastal cities were less susceptible to the suburbanization of income in the mid-20th century. Third, naturally heterogeneous cities exhibit spatial distributions of income that are dynamically persistent.
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The Social Impact of Home Rehabilitation in Low-Income Neighborhoods
Erin Graves & Elizabeth Shuey
Federal Reserve Working Paper, July 2013
Abstract:
While economists and others have studied the impact of abandoned foreclosed homes on nearby home prices and crime, very few scholars have attempted to understand the impact of abandonment and rehabilitation on neighborhood social conditions. The foreclosure crisis of 2005-2010 led to a concentration of abandoned foreclosed homes in disadvantaged neighborhoods and these neighborhoods became the targets of a policy intervention, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. This study employs a mixed-method longitudinal approach to investigate the impact of this foreclosed home rehabilitation policy on neighborhood social conditions and physical conditions in a highly disadvantaged neighborhood. We compared this to a quasi-control group of similar abandoned, foreclosed neighborhood homes not selected for the program. Results indicated that the rehabilitation of a foreclosed home had marginally significant negative impact on social conditions and no impact on the physical conditions of nearby homes. There were no differences between the program properties and the control properties, except that the control properties were rehabilitated more quickly. To further explore the quantitative findings, we divide the qualitative results into four major themes emerging from the data: indifference to foreclosures, threats to the neighborhood, call for community cohesion, and the importance of homeownership. These results indicate that the affected residents believe that neighborhood stabilization efforts would have benefitted more from programs that aimed to improve homeownership opportunities and increase neighborhood levels of social cohesion and social capital.
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Cumulative exposure to disadvantage and the intergenerational transmission of neighbourhood effects
Lina Hedman et al.
Journal of Economic Geography, forthcoming
Abstract:
Studies of neighbourhood effects typically investigate the instantaneous effect of point-in-time measures of neighbourhood poverty on individual outcomes. It has been suggested that it is not solely the current neighbourhood, but also the neighbourhood history of an individual that is important in determining an individual’s outcomes. Using a population of parental home-leavers in Stockholm, Sweden, this study investigates the effects of two temporal dimensions of exposure to neighbourhood environments on personal income later in life: the parental neighbourhood at the time of leaving the home and the cumulative exposure to poverty neighbourhoods in the subsequent 17 years. Using unique longitudinal Swedish register data and bespoke individual neighbourhoods, we are the first to employ a hybrid model, which combines both random and fixed effects approaches in a study of neighbourhood effects. We find independent and non-trivial effects on income of the parental neighbourhood and cumulative exposure to poverty concentration neighbourhoods.
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Is Selection Bias Inherent in Housing Transactions? An Equilibrium Approach
Anna Chernobai & Ekaterina Chernobai
Real Estate Economics, Winter 2013, Pages 887–924
Abstract:
We develop an equilibrium model for residential housing transactions in an economy with houses that differ in their quality and households that differ in their planned holding horizon. We show that, in equilibrium, a clientele effect persists, with long-horizon buyers overwhelmingly choosing higher quality properties and short-horizon buyers settling for lower quality properties. This clientele effect creates a sample selection bias: the properties that are on the market are predominantly of lower quality. Since these are the preferred choice of short-horizon buyers, they demonstrate a faster turnover. Both the clientele effect and the selection bias are more pronounced with an increase in the variance of house quality and in the variance of the planned holding horizon. Our theoretical model supports empirical evidence on the existence of such bias in home price indices and explains it by the differences in ex ante holding horizons.
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Neighborhood Problems and Nocturnal Blood Pressure Dipping
Frank Euteneuer et al.
Health Psychology, forthcoming
Objective: Living in adverse neighborhood conditions has been linked with greater prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD). We aimed to learn whether perceived neighborhood problems are related to attenuated nocturnal blood pressure (BP) dipping, a risk factor for CVD morbidity.
Method: A sample of 133 adults (71 male, 62 female; 80 White, 53 Black) underwent 24-hr ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. The neighborhood problem scale (NPS) was used to assess neighborhood environmental stressors.
Results: Nocturnal dipping in systolic (SBP), diastolic (DBP) and mean arterial (MAP) blood pressure was reduced in individuals with higher NPS scores (p < .05). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that neighborhood problems explained 4%−6% of the variance in SBP, DBP, and MAP dipping (p < .05) even after adjusting for several theoretical confounders such as social status, age, gender, race, body mass index (BMI), smoking, exercise, depression and discrimination.
Conclusion: Neighborhood problems may contribute to attenuated BP dipping beyond the effect of known risk factors.
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Longjian Liu et al.
Journal of Urban Health, December 2013, Pages 1053-1063
Abstract:
We aimed to test two hypotheses that (1) there were significant variations in the prevalence of hypertension (HBP) across neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia and (2) these variations were significantly explained by the variations in the neighborhood physical and socioeconomic environment (PSE). We used data from the Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Surveys in 2002–2004 (study period 1, n = 8,567), and in 2008–2010 (period 2, n = 8,747). An index of neighborhood PSE was constructed using multiple specific measures. The associations of HBP with PSE at the neighborhood level and other risk factors at the individual level were examined using multilevel regression analysis. The results show that age-adjusted prevalence of HBP increased from 30.33 to 33.04 % from study periods 1 to 2 (p < 0.001). An estimate of 44 and 53 % of the variations in the prevalence of HBP could be explained by the variations in neighborhood PSE in study periods 1 and 2, respectively. In conclusion, prevalence of HBP significantly increased from 2002–2004 to 2008–2010. Individuals living in neighborhoods with disadvantaged PSE have significantly higher risk of the prevalence of HBP.
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Survival of the Fittest in Cities: Urbanisation and Inequality
Kristian Behrens & Fr′ed′eric Robert-Nicoud
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We develop a framework that integrates natural advantage, agglomeration economies, and firm selection to explain why large cities are both more productive and more unequal than small towns. Our model highlights complementarities among those factors and matches a number of key stylised facts about cities. A larger city size increases productivity via selection, and higher urban productivity provides incentives for rural-urban migration. Tougher selection increases the returns to skills and earnings inequality in cities. We numerically illustrate a multi-city version of the model and explore the formation of new cities, the growth of existing cities, and changes in income inequality.
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Ron Cheung, Chris Cunningham & Rachel Meltzer
Journal of Housing Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Experiences reveal that the monitoring costs of the foreclosure crisis may be non-trivial, and smaller governments may have more success at addressing potential negative externalities. One highly localized form of government is a homeowners’ association (HOA). HOAs could be well suited for triaging foreclosures, as they may detect delinquencies and looming defaults through direct observation or missed dues. On the other hand, the reliance on dues may leave HOAs particularly vulnerable to members’ foreclosure. We examine how property prices respond to homeowner distress and foreclosure within HOA communities in Florida. We combine datasets of HOAs, sales and aggregate loan delinquency and foreclosures from 2000 through 2008. We find properties in HOAs are relatively less impacted by more distressed neighbor homes compared to non-HOA properties, but only when considering less severe delinquency rates. We also find that negative price effects from higher delinquency exposure rates are ameliorated for properties in larger and newer HOAs.
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Limited Urban Growth: London's Street Network Dynamics since the 18th Century
Paolo Masucci, Kiril Stanilov & Michael Batty
PLoS ONE, August 2013
Abstract:
We investigate the growth dynamics of Greater London defined by the administrative boundary of the Greater London Authority, based on the evolution of its street network during the last two centuries. This is done by employing a unique dataset, consisting of the planar graph representation of nine time slices of Greater London's road network spanning 224 years, from 1786 to 2010. Within this time-frame, we address the concept of the metropolitan area or city in physical terms, in that urban evolution reveals observable transitions in the distribution of relevant geometrical properties. Given that London has a hard boundary enforced by its long standing green belt, we show that its street network dynamics can be described as a fractal space-filling phenomena up to a capacitated limit, whence its growth can be predicted with a striking level of accuracy. This observation is confirmed by the analytical calculation of key topological properties of the planar graph, such as the topological growth of the network and its average connectivity. This study thus represents an example of a strong violation of Gibrat's law. In particular, we are able to show analytically how London evolves from a more loop-like structure, typical of planned cities, toward a more tree-like structure, typical of self-organized cities. These observations are relevant to the discourse on sustainable urban planning with respect to the control of urban sprawl in many large cities which have developed under the conditions of spatial constraints imposed by green belts and hard urban boundaries.
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The New District of Columbia: What Population Growth and Demographic Change Mean for the City
Lisa Sturtevant
Journal of Urban Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
The District of Columbia was a magnet for new residents in the first part of the twenty-first century. Drawn by good jobs, new condos, and burgeoning entertainment districts, the city attracted thousands of young professionals who might have otherwise settled in the region's suburbs. At the same time, some of the District's longer-term residents are leaving the city. The growing population provides a boon to the city, but is also leads to an increasing social, economic, and cultural divide. Between 2000 and 2010, the District of Columbia gained nearly 30,000 people. The 5.2% population growth in the last decade marks a turnaround for the city, which has lost residents in every decade since 1950. Population growth was fueled by an influx of white residents and an unprecedented loss of African Americans. This article explores the population and demographic trends in the District of Columbia between 2000 and 2010 by examining the socioeconomic characteristics of the city's in-migrants, out-migrants, and non-movers to explore evidence of gentrification. Using microdata from the 2006–2010 American Community Survey, this research also uses logistic regression to analyze the factors associated with out-migration from the city and movement within the city.
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Urban characteristics attributable to density-driven tie formation
Wei Pan et al.
Nature Communications, June 2013
Abstract:
Motivated by empirical evidence on the interplay between geography, population density and societal interaction, we propose a generative process for the evolution of social structure in cities. Our analytical and simulation results predict both super-linear scaling of social-tie density and information contagion as a function of the population. Here we demonstrate that our model provides a robust and accurate fit for the dependency of city characteristics with city-size, ranging from individual-level dyadic interactions (number of acquaintances, volume of communication) to population level variables (contagious disease rates, patenting activity, economic productivity and crime) without the need to appeal to heterogeneity, modularity, specialization or hierarchy.
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A social–ecological assessment of vacant lots in New York City
Peleg Kremer, Zoé Hamstead & Timon McPhearson
Landscape and Urban Planning, December 2013, Pages 218–233
Abstract:
Land vacancy is a persistent phenomenon in urban landscapes in the United States, yet little is known about the ways vacant lots are used in practice and the functions they serve in local communities. Here, we offer insight into the composition, uses and neighborhood context of vacant lots in New York City. Using ArcGIS and Google Earth, we conducted a visual survey of 5% of vacant lots in each New York City borough, collecting land cover and actual use data. Results indicate that many vacant lots in New York City are used as community gardens, residential yards, parks, parking areas and sports fields. Neighborhood income and lot vegetation are significantly associated with most of the ways that vacant lots are used in practice. In particular, lots which are actually unused (33%) tend to be located in neighborhoods with relatively high population density and low median household income levels. We suggest that by assessing vacant lot uses, ecological characteristics and the social characteristics of neighborhoods in which vacant lots are located, planners may be able to more effectively address urban land vacancy while supporting urban sustainability and resilience.