Publications
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Working Paper
How Low Income Neighborhoods Change: Entry, Exit, and Enhancement PDF
Ingrid Gould Ellen, Kathy O'Regan. August 2010.
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Book
How to House the Homeless LINK
Homelessness is one of the most troubling and persistent social problems in the United States, yet experts can neither agree on its root causes nor on how to eradicate it. Is homelessness the result of individual life conditions, such as poverty, addiction, or mental illness, or is there simply not enough affordable housing? And which services are the most successful? In How to House the Homeless, editors Ingrid Gould Ellen and Brendan O’Flaherty propose that the answers entail rethinking how housing markets operate and developing more efficient interventions in existing service programs. The book critically reassesses where we are now, analyzes the most promising policies and programs going forward, and offers a new agenda for future research.
Ingrid Gould Ellen, Brendan O'Flaherty. July 2010.
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Working Paper
The Role of Neighborhood Characteristics in Mortgage Default Risk: Evidence from New York City PDF
We construct a database of non-prime hybrid adjustable and fixed rate mortgages from New York City that augments a rich set of loan and borrower risk characteristics with a variety of census tract level neighborhood characteristics. We find that these neighborhood characteristics are important for default behavior, even after an extensive set of controls. First, default rates increase with the rate of foreclosure notices and the number of lender-owned properties (REOs) in the tract. Second, default rates for home purchase mortgages are higher in predominantly black tracts, regardless of the borrower’s own race. We explore possible explanations for our findings.
Sewin Chan, Michael Gedal, Vicki Been, Andrew Haughwout. June 2010.
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White Paper
Building Environmentally Sustainable Communities: A Framework for Inclusivity PDF
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has decided to include two key goals in all of its programs: encouraging sustainable communities and enhancing access to opportunity for lower-income people and people of color. This paper examines the relationship between these two goals through a literature review and an original empirical analysis of how these goals interact at the neighborhood and metropolitan area levels. We also offer policy recommendations for HUD.
Vicki Been, Mary Cunningham, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Adam Gordon, Joe Parilla, Margery Austin Turner, Sheryl Verlaine Whitney Aaron Yowell, and Ken Zimmerman. May 2010.
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White Paper
Improving U.S. Housing Finance through Reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Assessing the Options PDF
After facing insolvency one year ago, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed in government conservatorship in September 2008. The Obama Administration’s recently released report on financial regulatory reform calls for a “wide-ranging process” to explore options for the future of the GSEs. The Furman Center, in cooperation with the What Works Collaborative, has conducted research to better understand six primary options for the future of the enterprises, ranging from nationalization to dissolution. This white paper provides an overview of the U.S. housing finance system and the basic operations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before conservatorship. It then discusses the basic goals of a healthy secondary market for both the single- and multifamily market, and offers a framework to help to describe and understand the different proposals for reform. Finally, it looks in detail at some of the specific proposals now emerging for reform of the housing finance system. As the federal government contemplates the future of these two entities, we hope that this paper offers a useful framework to evaluate the alternative proposals.
Ingrid Gould Ellen, John Napier Tye, Mark A. Willis. May 2010.
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Article
Crime and Urban Flight Revisited: The Effect of the 1990s Drop in Crime on Cities PDF
For most of the twentieth century, concerns about safety and high crime rates have beset U.S. cities. Researchers and policymakers pointed to these high urban crime rates as one of the chief ‘urban blights’ from which middle class, mobile (and typically white) households fled during the post-War period, fueling suburbanization. But this picture changed dramatically in the 1990s, a decade during which the crime rate in the U.S. fell by a remarkable thirty percent, and crime rates in many U.S. cities declined even further. This paper builds on the ‘flight from blight’ literature, and considers what effect (if any) the 1990s drop in crime rates had on urban population changes.
Ingrid Ellen & Katherine O'Regan. Journal of Urban Economics. April 2010.
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Working Paper
Community Benefits Agreements: A New Local Government Tool or Another Variation on the Exactions Theme? PDF
Community benefits agreements (CBAs) are the latest in a long line of tools neighbors have used to protect their neighborhood from the burdens of development, and to try to secure benefits from the proposed development. This Article canvasses the benefits and drawbacks various stakeholders perceive CBAs to offer or to threaten, and reviews the legal and policy questions CBAs present. It recommends that local governments avoid the use of CBAs in land use approval processes unless the CBAs are negotiated through processes designed to ensure the transparency of the negotiations, the representativeness and accountability of the negotiators, and the legality and enforceability of the CBAs’ terms.
Vicki Been. April 2010.
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Policy Brief
How Have Recent Rezonings Affected the City’s Ability to Grow? PDF
How Have Recent Rezonings Affected the City’s Ability to Grow? is the first comprehensive statistical analysis of the City’s rezoning strategy. The report examines the net impact of the 76 rezonings initiated by the City between 2003 and 2007. It finds that, of the 188,000 rezoned lots citywide, 86% were rezoned to reduce or limit new development through either a downzoning or a contextual-only rezoning. Nevertheless, the 14% of lots that were upzoned resulted in a net gain of 100 million square feet of new capacity citywide. The report explores the likelihood that this new capacity will be developed for residential use, and examines the characteristics of neighborhoods that gained new capacity and of those that lost capacity.
Amy Armstrong, Vicki Been, Josiah Madar, Simon McDonnell. March 2010.
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White Paper
Foreclosed Properties in NYC: A Look at the Last 15 Years PDF
In 2009, New York City saw a record number of foreclosure filings, passing 20,000 for the first time since we started tracking foreclosures in early 1990s. Yet little is known about what happens to these properties after they receive a foreclosure notice. This report analyzes the outcomes of 1-4 family properties that entered foreclosure in New York City between 1993 and 2007, paying particular attention to trends in recent years. The report identifies a current inventory of 1,750 bank-owned (termed Real Estate Owned or “REO” by lenders) properties citywide—up dramatically from about 290 at the end of 2006. While the overall number of REO properties in New York remains small compared to harder hit cities, the report finds that these properties are highly concentrated in Eastern Queens, Central Brooklyn, and the North Shore of Staten Island—not surprisingly, the same neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by the mortgage crisis.
Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. January 2010.
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Chapter
Exploring Changes in Low-Income Neighborhoods in the 1990s PDF
While there has been much talk of the resurgence of lower-income urban neighborhoods in the United States over the past ten to fifteen years, there has been surprisingly little empirical examination of the extent and nature of the phenomenon. Our chapter aims to address these key questions. In the first half, we undertake a broad empirical investigation of income changes in low-income neighborhoods in U.S. cities during the 1990s, comparing them to the changes that occurred during the two previous decades. In the second half of the chapter, we explore some reasons why the fortunes of lower-income urban neighborhoods improved during the 1990s.
Ingrid Gould Ellen & Katherine O'Regan. December 2009.
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Policy Brief
The High Cost of Segregation: The Relationship Between Racial Segregation and Subprime Lending PDF
This study examines whether the likelihood that borrowers of different races received a subprime loan varied depending on the level of racial segregation where they live. It looks both at the role of racial segregation in metropolitan areas across the country and at the role that neighborhood demographics within communities in New York City played.
Amy Armstrong, Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Josiah Madar. November 2009.
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Working Paper
Minimum Parking Requirements: Transit Proximity and Development in New York City PDF
New York City policymakers are planning for a city of over 9 million residents by 2030, a large increase from today. A central goal of City officials is to accommodate this increase while simultaneously improving the City’s overall environmental performance, addressing externalities arising from traffic congestion and providing increased access to affordable housing. The requirement in the City’s zoning code that new residential construction be accompanied by a minimum number of off-street parking spaces, however, may conflict with this goal. Critics argue that parking requirements bundle the cost of unnecessary new parking with new housing, not only increasing the cost of housing, but also reducing the density at which it can be built. Facilitating car ownership by requiring parking may also lead to increases in auto-related externalities. In this research, we combine a theoretical discussion of parking requirements in New York City with a quantitative analysis of how they relate to transit and development opportunity. Using lot-level data and GIS we estimate two measures of the parking requirement for each lot and at a City, borough and neighborhood level. Our results indicate that the per unit parking requirement is, on average, lower in areas near rail transit stations, consistent with the City’s development goals. However, we also find that the required number of spaces per square foot of land area is higher, on average, in these areas. This raises interesting questions about the role of parking requirements in determining the use of scarce land resources in transit-rich neighborhoods.
Simon McDonnell, Josiah Madar, Vicki Been. November 2009.
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Working Paper
Underused Lots in New York City PDF
Despite a robust real estate market for most of this decade, researchers and policymakers have observed that many areas of New York City have remained built out well below their zoning capacity. This study aims to contribute to our understanding of urban redevelopment by compiling and analyzing a large database of underdeveloped lots in the City. We identify about 200,000 such lots as of 2003 that were built out at less than 50% of their zoning capacity, representing about a quarter of all residentially zoned lots. Of these, about 8% were redeveloped during the subsequent four years. Our preliminary analysis reveals that underdeveloped lots are primarily made up of low density 1-4 family houses and are disproportionately located in poor and minority neighborhoods. We plan to use this analysis as the foundation for further analysis to assess whether market failures and regulatory and other barriers impede desirable development in mature cities.
Vicki Been, Josiah Madar, Simon McDonnell. November 2009.
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Working Paper
Can Homeownership Transform Communities? Evidence on the Impact of Subsidized, Owner-Occupied Housing Investments on the Quality of Local Schools PDF
While recent evidence demonstrates that subsidized investments in owneroccupied housing can lead to increases in property values (Schwartz et al. 2006), the impact of such housing on other community amenities is largely unexamined. Yet, the response of local services to public investments is crucial for policy-makers and community development practitioners who view increasing subsidized homeownership as a mechanism to improve urban neighborhoods. Drawing on evidence from New York City, we examine the impact of subsidized housing on the quality of local schools by studying exogenous variation in city investments in owner and rental units. Specifically, we explore whether – and in what ways – publicly financed investments in owner- or renter-occupied housing made in the late 1980s and 1990s by the City of New York affected the characteristics and performance of local public schools. Our results suggest that the completion of subsidized, owner-occupied housing is associated with a decrease in schools’ percentage of free lunch eligible students, an increase in schools’ percentage of white students, and controlling for these compositional changes, a positive change in pass rates on standardized reading and math exams.
Ingrid Gould Ellen, Colin Chellman, Brian J. McCabe, Amy Ellen Schwartz, & Leanna Stiefel. October 2009.
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White Paper
An Opportunity to Stabilize New York City’s Neighborhoods PDF
A core mission of the Furman Center is to provide essential data and analysis about New York City’s housing and neighborhoods to those involved in land use, real estate development, community economic development, housing, research and urban policy. Towards this end, we present this fact sheet describing some of the ways that government agencies and other stakeholders can use data to target the use of funds made available to stabilize neighborhoods in the wake of the foreclosure crisis.
Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. July 2009.
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White Paper
Key Findings on the Affordability of Rental Housing from New York City’s HVS 2008 PDF
Every three years, the U.S. Census Bureau releases the New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey (HVS), which assesses changes in various aspects of New York City’s housing and neighborhoods. The primary goal of the survey is to estimate the rental vacancy rate in the City, but the survey also provides valuable insight into other trends in the housing stock. However, the data are released in a format that is hard to understand without statistical software. In order to make the findings available to a wider audience, we have analyzed the data about New York City’s neighborhoods and compiled this summary of noteworthy trends.
Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. June 2009.
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Article
The High Cost of Segregation: Exploring Racial Disparities in High Cost Lending PDF
Research consistently has found evidence of significant racial disparities in the incidence
of subprime lending. This paper investigates the relationship between the residential
racial segregation in a metropolitan area and disparities in the share of loans members of
different racial groups in that area received that are subprime. Specifically, we evaluate
the impact that the extent of black-white and Hispanic-white segregation in each of about
200 of the country’s metropolitan areas has on the likelihood that a black or Hispanic
borrower in the area will receive a subprime loan. In addition, using data from New York
City, we examine how the concentration of different racial groups within a neighborhood
affects the probability that borrowers of all races living in the neighborhood will receive
subprime loans.Vicki Been, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Josiah Madar. Fordham Urban Law Journal. April 2009.
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Article
No Renters in My Suburban Backyard: Land Use Regulation and Rental Housing LINK
Academics and policymakers have argued that the ability of low- and moderate-income families to move into desirable suburban areas is constrained by the high cost of housing. Local zoning and other forms of land use regulation are believed to contribute to increased housing prices by reducing supply and increasing the size of new housing. Suburban restrictions on rental housing are particularly likely to reduce mobility for low-income families. In this paper, I employ an instrumental variables approach to examine the effects of zoning on the quantity and price of rental housing in Massachusetts, using historical municipal characteristics to instrument for current regulations. Results suggest that communities with more restrictive zoning issue significantly fewer building permits for multifamily housing but provide only weak evidence of the effects of regulations on rents. The lack of effects on rents may reflect the low level of multifamily development, while analysis is complicated by development of subsidized housing under the state’s affordable housing law.
Schuetz, Jenny. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. March 2009.
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Article
Tenants: Innocent Victims of the Nation’s Foreclosure Crisis PDF
Renters are innocent victims of the foreclosure crisis, losing their homes through no fault of their own when their landlord goes into foreclosure. Until lately, the national discussion on the foreclosure crisis largely focused on owner-occupied homes, but recent analysis reveals that the crisis is significantly impacting renters across the country. New York University’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy found that in New York City, well over half of all foreclosure filings in 2007 were on two to four family or multi-family buildings, and a growing body of data and anecdotal evidence indicates that the problem is not isolated to New York City; heart wrenching stories of renters losing their homes have appeared in newspapers nationwide.
Vicki Been & Allegra Glashausser. 2 Alb. Gov't L. Rev. 1 (2009). February 2009.
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Working Paper
Crime and U.S. Cities: Recent Patterns and Implications PDF
For most of the twentieth century, U.S. cities – and their high-poverty neighborhoods in particular—were viewed as dangerous, crime-ridden places that middle class, mobile (and typically white) households avoided, fueling suburbanization. While some pundits and policy analysts bemoaned this urban flight, others voiced concern over the potential impact of crime-ridden environments on the urban residents who were left behind. In the past decade or so, the media has instead highlighted the dramatic reductions in crime taking place in many large cities. In this paper we explore these crime reductions and their implications for urban environments.
Ingrid Gould Ellen & Katherine O'Regan. January 2009.
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