325 publications from this institution
This report details the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) response to the major 1994 earthquake in southern California. It documents the policy response to the earthquake, synthesizes the evaluative impressions of individuals involved in formulating and implementing those policies, and distills the potential lessons and unresolved issues that will be of value for future disaster response. Also discussed is HUD's rapid development of three new policies for emergency relief?the Section 8 Emergency Certificate Program, the Mobility Program, and the HELP Program. An appendix presents a content analysis that examines the role played by five local newspapers played in shaping, documenting, and influencing HUD's efforts.
Many policies in several Western European countries and the U.S. aim to counter spatial concentrations of deprivation and create more socio-economically mixed residential areas. Such policies are founded on the belief that neighbourhoods have a strong and independent effect upon the well-being and life-chances of individuals. The adequacy of the evidence base to support this position has been the subject of spirited debate on both sides of the Atlantic. The primary purpose of this book is to contribute to this policy-relevant discussion by presenting new scholarship from many countries that rigorously quantifies various sorts of neighbourhood effects through the use of cutting-edge social scientific techniques. The secondary purpose of this book is to introduce these techniques to a wider array of housing and planning researchers and to show how a variety of disciplines have offered insightful, synergistic perspectives. Research on neighbourhood effects has over the last 15 years led to a body of knowledge extending far beyond the sociological urban research where it originated. The problem of quantifying neighbourhood effects and the use of associated methodologies (like multi-level analysis, instrumental variables) has attracted scholars from criminology, sociology, social geography, economics and health science, and thus serves as a critical locus for interdisciplinary scholarship. This book was previously published as a special issue of Housing Studies.
The paper specifies a simultaneous-equation model of metropolitan racial residential segregation and economic disparities. The extent and centralized pattern of SMSA segregation and black-white median income ratios and occupational dissimilarity indices comprise endogenous variables in a four-equation model. Characteristics of the SMSA's population, industrial structure, and labor and housing markets serve as exogenous variables. Parameters are estimated using two-stage least-squares techniques on data for 40 SMSAs sampled by HUD's 1977 Housing Market Practices Survey. Results strongly support the simultaneous-equation specification and indicate the likely severe bias of previous studies. In general, segregation appeared to significantly abet economic disparities, although greater centralization of a larger black community was associated with greater diversity of black occupations. Conversely, income disparities were positively correlated with a more centralized pattern of black residences, and occupational disparities were positively correlated with the extent of segregation.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Flood risks are forecast to rise significantly across many parts of Europe, USA, and Asia. As the climate warms, sea levels will continue to rise and the water holding capacity of the atmosphere will increase exponentially. At the same time, the cost of building flood barriers will increase disproportionately with every additional centimetre of height. For many countries, these flood risks will be highly localised, however, and with strong spatial spillovers. This paper uses a unique dataset for 5 boroughs in London to develop a spatial econometric simulation model of the impacts of current and future flood risks on house prices and the location of employment. We consider the broader socio-economic implications of our results.
Six major challenges confront statistical researchers attempting to quantify accurately the independent effect of neighbourhood context on individuals: (1) defining the scale of neighbourhood; (2) identifying mechanisms of neighbourhood effect; (3) measuring appropriate neighbourhood characteristics; (4) measuring exposure to neighbourhood; (5) measuring appropriate individual characteristics; and (6) endogeneity. The paper describes these challenges, prior attempts to meet them, and their respective shortcomings. It notes several approaches on the horizon that offer the promise of surmounting these challenges: experiments with varied scales of bespoke neighbourhoods; databases with multi-domain measures of neighbourhood characteristics; statistical models testing for non-linear neighbourhood effects that are stratified by residential group, density of local social interactions, and duration of residency; and econometric devices involving instrumental variables and residuals. It argues that further progress can be made on this front if we take advantage of natural quasi-experiments and push toward fielding a major, new social survey employing a people/place panel design. JEL Classifications: B40, R00, C9, C01, C49
No abstract is provided for this article.
A model for temperature effects in p–n junction solar cells is introduced. The temperature of solar cells and the losses in the solar cell junction region caused by elevated temperatures are discussed. The model developed is examined for low-cost silicon solar cells. Plots of output power and efficiency as functions of the time throughout the day are presented. In order to improve the shape of the output power and efficiency curves throughout the day the coherence between technical parameters of the solar cells and the climate in the operation region is observed and examined. It is shown how the drop in output power around noon can be avoided by fitting technical parameters of the solar cells to the climate.
Substantial recent influxes of immigrants have transformed metropolitan housing markets across Europe, North America, and Australia. Where and under what physical and sociodemographic conditions these new residents and their children live influence their life chances and societal inequalities and cohesion. Using population register data, we estimate conditional logit models of neighbourhood selections jointly stratified by immigrant and income status for nine types of Oslo region families making 'child-salient,' inter- neighbourhood moves. Although homophily is an important driver of residential selection for both native and non-Western immigrant families, its significance pales in comparison to neighbourhood proximity and sectoral constraints in the spatial patterning of housing search. Study findings enhance our understanding of segregation processes and offer new perspectives on social mix housing policies. Social mix should attempt to enhance diversity at the larger spatial scales primarily by improving information about and enhancing access to potentially desirable residential options and countering anti-immigrant perceptions or discriminatory actions by real estate agents or mortgage brokers.
Previous studies on distributive environmental justice issues related to flooding exposure have been limited in spatial scale, afflicted by measurement shortcomings, and inconsistent in findings. We provide the first U.S. national and state-by-state descriptive portrait of annual average exposure to floods across all Census-defined racial/ethnic groups. Specifically, we investigate whether there are statistically significant interracial differences in average annual probabilities of experiencing a flood in the U.S. and how these differences vary across states and coastal vs. inland areas. We use predictions from the recent First Street Foundation flooding exposure model and demographic data from the US Census Bureau American Community Survey in our analysis. We observe no states in which non-Hispanic Blacks have a (statistically) significantly higher average exposure to floods than non-Hispanic Whites, but 21 states where the reverse is true. Hispanics have a significantly higher average exposure in three states, and a significantly lower average exposure in 18 states, compared to Whites. Notably, however, the aggregate Hispanic population of the three states where Hispanics face greater flood exposure (Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas) exceeds the aggregate Hispanic population of the 18 where their average exposures are lower than Whites’. There are eight states in which Native Americans have significantly higher exposure, and none where have lower exposure than Whites’, implying that additional research and appropriate, community-informed policy responses should focus on this group. Further studies are also needed at smaller spatial scales to identify communities of color facing disproportionate flood exposures.
Using paired testing data from the 1989 and 2000 Housing DiscriminationStudies (HDS) and data on fair housing enforcement activities during the 1990s inthe corresponding metro areas, we investigate whether 1989-2000 changes in themetropolitan incidence of racial/ethnic discrimination correlate with fair housingenforcement activity during the 1990s. We found that higher amounts of state andlocal enforcement activity supported by HUD through its FHIP and FHAP pro-grams (especially the amount of dollars awarded by the courts) were consistentlyassociated with greater declines in discrimination against black apartment-seekersand home-seekers. The evidence does not support similar conclusions for housingmarket discrimination against Hispanics where the level of enforcement is muchlower.Journal of Economic Literature Classification: J15, K42, L85, R30Keywords: Housing Discrimination, Fair Housing Enforcement, and PairedTestingThe ideas in this paper do not necessarily represent the views of our Uni-versities, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or any otheragency of the Federal Government. The authors wish to thank the many peopleat the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Urban Institute, FHAssociates, Progressive Management Resources, and Abt Associates who helpedmake the 2000 HousingDiscriminationStudy a success. We also expressgratitudeto Fred Freiberg, Todd Richardson, and Cliff Schrupp for their invaluable assis-tance in obtaining fair housing enforcement data from various sources. Sarah Prattprovided helpful technical assistance regarding the TEAPOTS database. JackieCutsinger and Phyllis Seals at Wayne State University and Jason Cutsinger atCompuware Inc. supplied able research, production, and technical assistance.
The authors contribute to the development of empirical methods for measuring the impacts of place-based local development strategies by introducing the adjusted interrupted time-series (AITS) approach. It estimates a more precise counterfactual scenario, thus offering a stronger basis for drawing causal inferences about impacts. The authors applied the AITS approach to three community development initiatives using single-family home prices as the outcome indicator and found that it could measure impacts on both the base level of prices and the rate of price appreciation. The authors also found a situation in which the method appears unreliable, however. The AITS approach benefits from more recurrent data on outcomes during the pre-and post-intervention periods, with an intertemporal pattern that avoids great volatility. The AITS approach to measuring effects of community development initiatives holds strong promise, with caveats.
The paper advances the conceptualisation of neighbourhood by specifying it as a bundle of spatially based attributes associated with clusters of residences, sometimes in conjunction with other land uses. There follows a discussion of how this 'composite commodity' definition relates to the planning challenge of spatially bounding neighbourhood. The paper then probes the myriad idiosyncrasies associated with the concept of neighbourhood: cross-attribute variation in durability and ability to be priced, relativistic evaluations of attributes and consumption impacts on attributes. It discusses how, within this new paradigmatic context, neighbourhoods are produced by the same actors that consume them: households, property owners, business people and local government. Finally, consideration is given to various aspects of the origins and nature of neighbourhood change and it is argued that neighbourhood dynamics are rife with social inefficiencies.
Indicators of the financial condition of the multifamily housing stock can potentially inform several policy issues, such as the loss of affordable rental units, multifamily developers’ access to capital, and the emerging secondary mortgage market for multifamily properties. Several rules of thumb exist for assessing financial condition. This article uses the Residential Finance Survey to investigate whether it matters, from a practical standpoint, which one is employed. Specifically, we ascertain how five measures—loan‐to‐value, debt coverage, rent‐to‐value, net operating income—to‐value, and vacancy loss ratios—relate to each other and rank properties. We found that Pearsonian correlations among the measures varied dramatically. Factor analysis produced two factors, one corresponding to a rent‐flow measure and the other to a debt‐burden measure. Spearman rank‐order correlations revealed that with one exception, measures yielded noticeably dissimilar financial condition rankings. We conclude that single‐dimensional measures of financial condition should not be used in isolation.
We investigate the degree to which neighborhood income composition affects the subsequent income of individual male residents, and test the degree to which these effects are characterized by nonlinear, threshold-like relationships. We specify a fixed-effects model to reduce potential bias arising from unmeasured individual characteristics affecting neighborhood selection and income. We employ annual data on 124 000 working-age males residing in Stockholm over the 1991–2006 period to estimate parameters for innovative variables measuring the sequence, duration, and intensity of neighborhood exposures. We find that two thresholds—one above 20 per cent and the other above 40 per cent—best describe the strong inverse relationship between consistent exposure to higher percentages of low-income male neighbors and subsequent earnings of individual male residents. We draw implications for potential causal mechanisms behind this relationship and formulating public policy towards places of concentrated disadvantage.
This powerful new theoretical approach to analyzing urban housing problems and the policies designed to rectify them will be a vital resource for urban planners, developers, policymakers, and economists. The search for the roots of serious urban housing problems such as homelessness, abandonment, rent burdens, slums, and gentrification has traditionally focused on the poorest sector of the housing market. The findings set forth in this volume show that the roots of such problems lie in the relationships among different parts of the market—not solely within the lower-quality portion—though that is where problems are most dramatically manifested and housing reforms are myopically focused. The authors propose a new understanding of the market structure characterized by a closely interrelated array of quality submarkets. Their comprehensive models ground a unified theory that accounts for demand by both renters and owner occupants, supply by owners of existing dwellings, changes in the stock of housing due to conversions and new construction, and interactions across submarkets.
Nonlinear and threshold relationships are commonly manifested in neighborhoods, both relating to effects of neighborhoods on residents and causes of neighborhood changes arising from individual mobility and housing investment decisions. These relationships are generated by amalgam of often reinforcing processes related to socialization, gaming, tolerance, contagion, and tolerance. The existence of nonlinear and threshold effects holds powerful implications for planners. Scarce public investment resources must be spatially concentrated, so that they exceed property owners’ reinvestment thresholds. Poverty deconcentration strategies must seek to replace neighborhoods exceeding 40 percent poverty rates with those that have low (less than 15 percent) poverty rates.
