Publications

Costs for severely mentally disabled persons receiving housing subsidies and/or case management services or who are in a state hospital were compared in two suburban and rural Ohio counties. Costs assessed included housing, mental health services, medical services, dental services, personal consumption, and total costs. Costs for groups consisting of 16 clients with subsidized housing and intensive case management, 24 with subsidized housing and nonintensive case management, 11 with nonsubsidized/intensive, 11 with nonsubsidized/nonintensive, and 20 with subsidized/treatment team clients were compared with aggregate costs for state hospital patients. Costs were adjusted for differences in client characteristics between groups. Results indicated that in the areas of housing costs, mental health costs, personal-consumption costs, and total costs, there were statistically significant differences among the five community-based groups. More dramatic, total operating costs for the state hospital were at least three times as high.

This rejoinder addresses the response to articles by Berkovec, Canner, Gabriel, and Hannan. While our earlier comments emphasized the biases in the default approach, we focus here on the basic disagreement: whether, given those biases, the default approach provides a viable test for mortgage lending discrimination. We argue that the default approach does not provide such a test. The Berkovec, Canner, Gabriel, and Hannan research (BCGH, 1994 and in this issue) provides a careful empirical look at racial differences in loan default rates using data on Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgages. In this rejoinder, however, we focus on the key issues that separate us. First, we express our deep concerns about the basic conclusion of the BCGH article; then, with those concerns in mind, we suggest a change in future default specifications. In addition, we discuss the problems inherent in their suggestion that default rates may be useful for partitioning the observed incidence of racial discrimination into two different types: statistical and prejudiced based. Our fundamental disagreement with BCGH centers around the following statement, which is found in their article (in other words) and appears in their response to our critiques: “… FHA loan performance data do not support a finding of widespread systematic discrimination in mortgage lending due to lender prejudice.” Although they acknowledge that their approach may suffer from a variety of biases and cannot prove that discrimination does not exist, they argue that proof is too high a standard for any empirical test. In response, we propose an alternative standard: Performance analyses should not be used to identify discrimination in mortgage lending unless it is demonstrated that these analyses are at least as effective as relevant alternative analyses, such as traditional analyses based on loan approval data. We conclude that the default approach fails to meet this standard under virtually all circumstances. Consider the two key assumptions referred to by BCGH as no omitted variable bias and no statistical discrimination. The first assumption implies that all unobserved variables known to the lender are uncorrelated with race. If that is not so, the BCGH results are biased away from finding discrimination. In this case, BCGH point out—and we agree— loan application studies are also biased, and the bias is in favor of finding discrimination.

No abstract is provided for this article.

We conduct an impact analysis of the Denver, Colorado, Housing Authority's Home Ownership Program (HOP) employing quasi experimental methodologies (i.e., nearest-neighbor matching, inverse probability weighting with regression adjustment) that permit causal inferences of program impacts with substantial confidence. HOP is an unusual, enhanced variant of the Family Self-Sufficiency program that incentivizes and assists participants' purchase of a home. We analyze whether, compared with the control group, HOP participants exhibited significantly greater earnings growth during the program, enhanced economic security, and rates of home buying. We find that participants with a high intensity of treatment showed significant improvement in all outcomes. Results are robust to model specification and insensitive to omitted variable bias typically found in the social sciences. We conclude that a well-conceived and well-executed public housing authority program aimed at building the financial, human and social assets of low-income households receiving housing assistance can yield substantial benefits to participants.

An econometric model of 1970-80 residential turnover rates for white households is estimated for census tracts in Cuyahoga County, Cleveland, Ohio. Results indicate that 1970 tract percentage black, coupled with its interaction with estimated segregationist sentiment for white residents, was the dominant explanatory variable, although the relationship was highly non-linear. Ceteris paribus, the maximum rate of racially motivated turnover by whites occurred in tracts that were at least 55 per cent black in 1970, regardless of whites' segregationist sentiments. However, tracts had negligible amounts of such turnover if they had below-average levels of segregationist sentiment and blacks did not represent a majority in the tract. Application of the results to the Schelling model indicated that white neighbourhood 'tipping-out' points varied from 98 per cent to 53 per cent white, within 1 standard deviation of the mean level of segregationist sentiment. Integration management policies conducted by the suburban Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights jurisdictions during the period did not succeed in dampening this pattern of white flight. On the contrary, ceteris paribus, Heights tracts had white turnover rates 16.6 percentage points greater.

:This article discusses the appropriate measurement of neighborhood racial integration and proposes a new operational definition. A neighborhood is integrated if currently (1) its stock of households may be classified as "mixed" (no single group comprises more than 75% of the neighborhood's population), and (2) the flow of households into and out of this stock is such that it will be so classified for a decade in the future. The article mathematically develops stability boundaries that researchers and policy makers can use to assess the degree to which contemporaneous flows of households into and out of mixed neighborhoods will render them integrated in the future.

1. Introduction: Quantifying Neighbourhood Effects Jorg Blasius, Jurgen Friedrichs and George Galster 2. What mix matters? Exploring the relationships between individuals' incomes and different measures of their neighborhood context Roger Andersson, Sako Musterd, George Galster and Timo M. Kauppinen 3. Mixed Tenure Communities and Neighbourhood Quality Ade Kearns and Phil Mason 4. Homeownership, poverty and educational achievement: school effects as neighbourhood effects Glen Bramley and Noah Kofi Karley 5. The Influence of Neighbourhood Poverty During Childhood on Fertility, Education, and Earnings Outcomes George Galster, Dave E. Marcotte, Marv Mandell, Hal Wolman and Nancy Augustine 6. Internal heterogeneity of a deprived urban area and its impact on residents' perception of deviance Jorg Blasius and Jurgen Friedrichs 7. The effects of neighbourhood poverty on adolescent problem behaviours: A multi-level analysis differentiated by gender and ethnicity Dietrich Oberwittler 8. The socio-cultural integration of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands. Identifying neighbourhood effects on multiple integration outcomes Merove Gijsberts and Jaco Dagevos 9. Intergenerational Neighbourhood-Type Mobility: Examining Differences between Blacks and Whites Thomas P. Vartanian, Page Walker Buck and Philip Gleason

The issue of discrimination directed toward applicants for mortgages who are members of racial-ethnic minority groups has received markedly increased public attention during the 1990s. Various sorts of evidence, including disparities observed in Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data, vignettes of blatant discrimination, a smattering of court cases, pilot studies using paired testers, and multivariate statistical analyses of lenders' loan application files, have combined to paint a convincing picture of the problem (for reviews, see Galster 1992; Cloud and Galster 1993; and Yinger, chapter 2, this volume).

Infill investments are argued to mitigate environmental footprints, regenerate places and accommodating population growth, but frequently generate local opposition. However, there is a dearth of knowledge around how different types of infill affect different segments of local property markets, how persistent effects are and how far they reach. Using detailed geocoded infill development activity and sales data, we test the price level and trajectory impacts of five infill types, distinguished by the net scale of additional dwellings, on property prices within five concentric 100-meter rings. Using an adjusted interrupted time-series estimation strategy with locality, property and neighborhood characteristic controls we find that developments that generate a net increase in dwellings of four or less, typically result in an appreciation in the average sales prices of proximate dwellings. Moderate and large-scale developments generate negative price effects, but these effects predominantly affect apartments and townhouses, not the dominant detached house submarket. Over time, amenity effects and local market potential may even have a further positive expectation effect on detached house prices. Infill type differentiation shows that urban densification may result in positive affordability outcome in the apartment submarket, but has the opposite effects in the detached house submarket. Divergent price trajectories also contribute to widening wealth disparities.

Every January, the US endeavors to count all of the individuals experiencing homelessness on a given night (General Definition of Homeless Individual, 1987).Local agencies called Continuums of Care tally up everyone residing in emergency shelters and transitional housing within their service areas, and send out volunteers to document people sheltering in cars or tents and other places "not designed for or ordinarily used as a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings" (42 USC § 11302).Last year, more than 580,000 people were experiencing homelessness according to this count-a record high (National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), 2023).And yet this number is almost certainly an underestimate (people experiencing unsheltered homelessness might reasonably prefer to avoid public detection).Neither does it recognize forms of severe housing insecurity that might be considered homelessness under another definition (such as doubling up or sleeping in a motel).In countries around the world, there is much to learn about who experiences homelessness, in what way, and how best to serve them.As we embark on a new year of enumerating and fighting homelessness, this focus issue of Housing Policy Debate gathers nine articles shedding light on these efforts.The issue can be split roughly into two halves, beginning with a set of articles that try to better understand the experience of homelessness.

No abstract is provided for this article.

No abstract is provided for this article.

We synthesize the vast, international scholarly literature related to the growing problem of housing affordability. As a foundation for assessing both the causes of housing affordability problems and possible policies for alleviating them, we take a systematic, holistic perspective and specify nine structural relationships for a metropolitan area that comprehensively delineate the determinants of housing affordability. We discuss concepts and measures of housing affordability, evidence on the primary causes and effects of unaffordable housing, alternative policy approaches, potential future trends in affordability, and suggestions for further research. While focusing on the most recent, high-quality empirical evidence, we also rely on previously published reviews and seminal papers in order to provide historical perspective on how the literature has evolved. Our reconnaissance of the international literature since 2008 demonstrates that although evaluation research in the context of western, developed countries' housing policies has dominated, increasingly such research has emerged from other countries.Highlights We discuss how to frame housing affordability issues, synthesize evidence from the relevant literature, and propose directions for future research.We take a holistic perspective to understand causes of housing affordability problems and assess policy responses.Our review of the international scholarly literature encompasses the evidence from non-western, developing countries.Despite the extensive literature, there remain unexplored questions and emerging topics.

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.

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.

The paper investigates the impact of ethnic segregation on the life chances of low-income African American and Latino children, focusing on whether it is the ethnic composition of the neighbourhood per se that matters or other, correlated aspects of the residential environment. The approach links the consequences of segregation and neighbourhood effects literatures by arguing that metropolitan segregation forces directly shape children’s intra-neighbourhood ethnic exposure and indirectly shape their exposure to non-ethnic aspects of neighbourhood. Associations between a wide range of neighbourhood characteristics and children’s health, exposure to and engaging in violence, educational and fertility outcomes are quantified using a natural experiment, thereby permitting valid causal inferences. Data analysed come from a retrospective survey of Denver (CO) Housing Authority (DHA) residents. The analysis avoids parental geographic selection bias because DHA’s assignment of households to neighbourhoods mimics a random process. Logit models stratified by ethnicity show that growing up amid concentrations of African American residents is associated with a variety of adverse outcomes for low-income Latino and (especially) African American children, though outcomes associated with concentrations of Latino residents are more mixed. Virtually all of the negative associations disappear, however, when other aspects of the residential context are controlled, and several positive ones persist. The adverse developmental consequences of ethnic segregation appear to be generated primarily in Denver by concentrating minority children in neighbourhoods with higher rates of property crime and lower occupational prestige.

No abstract is provided for this article.

No abstract is provided for this article.

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.