Publications
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How to Save Millions of Americans from Losing Their Homes
In this Opinion piece, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Amy Ganz, and Katherine O’Regan reflect on the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the government’s response. The authors highlight the pre-existing housing problems that many Americans faced even before the pandemic, and discuss why proactive policies and existing programs become even more essential during crises. They point out how these policies and a lack of support for low-income individuals can cause tremendous strains on both renters, and on society as a whole. Ultimately, this piece is a reminder of the need for greater government housing support and a call to increase housing stability.
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Localized Commercial Effects from Natural Disasters: The Case of Hurricane Sandy and New York City
This paper considers the localized economic impacts of an extreme event, Hurricane Sandy, on a dense and diverse economy, New York City. It isolates establishments that are more dependent on local customers--retail establishments--to test whether or not they are more vulnerable to hurricane-induced flooding than other entities with geographically dispersed consumer bases. The paper exploits variation in micro-scale exposure to pre-storm risk and post-storm inundation to identify the impact of storm-induced flooding on establishment survival, employment and sales revenues. Results indicate that the neighborhood economic losses from Sandy were significant, persistent, and concentrated among retail businesses that tend to serve a more localized consumer base.
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Renovating Subsidized Housing: The Impact On Tenants’ Health
Many public and subsidized housing developments in the US are aging and in need of significant repairs. Some observers worry that their poor condition threatens the health of residents. This study evaluated a recent renovation of public housing that was undertaken through the transfer of six housing developments from the New York City Housing Authority to a public-private partnership. It examined whether the renovation and transfer to private managers led to improvements in tenants’ health over three years, as measured by Medicaid claims. While it did not find significant improvements in individual health outcomes, it found significant relative improvements in overall disease burden when measured using an index of housing-sensitive conditions.
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Migration Choices of the Boomerang Generation: Does Returning Home Dampen Labor Market Adjustment?
This paper shows that boomerang moves (returning to live with one's parents) are more likely to bring young adults to labor markets with higher unemployment and lower wages and the likelihood of a non-boomerang location being chosen by a young adult increases with local wages.
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Do Housing Vouchers Improve Academic Performance? Evidence from New York City
This paper examines whether—and to what extent—housing vouchers improve educational outcomes for students whose families receive them. Using data from New York City, the nation's largest school district, the authors match over 88,000 school‐age voucher recipients to longitudinal public school records. Results indicate that students in voucher households perform better in both English Language Arts and Mathematics in the years after they receive a voucher.
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The Effects of Small Area Fair Market Rents on the Neighborhood Choices of Families with Children
This paper reports and extends the quantitative findings of the Small Area Fair Market Rent Demonstration Evaluation, focusing on the important subgroup of families with children. The authors test whether varying housing assistance subsidy caps with ZIP Code rent levels (that is, introducing Small Area Fair Market Rents or SAFMRs) increases the likelihood that voucher-holder families with children locate in higher opportunity neighborhoods, as proxied by poverty rates, the proficiency levels of local elementary schools, jobs proximity, and environmental hazards. Five years after implementation, Small Area FMRs do not appear to affect overall move rates, but they meaningfully affect the locational outcomes among families with children who move.
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Do Vouchers Protect Low-Income Households from Rising Rents?
Using restricted administrative data on the voucher program, the authors examine the experience of voucher holders in metropolitan areas with rising rents. While some of the authors' models suggest that rising rents in metropolitan areas are associated with a slight increase in rent-to-income ratios among voucher holders, poor renters in general see significantly larger increases in rent-to-income ratios. The authors see little evidence that rising rents push voucher holders to worse neighborhoods, with voucher holders in central cities ending up in lower-poverty neighborhoods as rents rise. It appears that vouchers may help low-income households remain in neighborhoods as they gentrify.
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Updating CRA Geography: It’s Not Just About Assessment Areas
In his recent paper, “Updating CRA Geography: It’s Not Just About Assessment Areas,” NYU Furman Center Senior Policy Fellow Mark A. Willis offers his suggestions on how to effectively modernize one crucial regulation authorized under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Published by the Penn Institute for Urban Research, the paper proposes a method to evaluate the CRA performance of large retail internet banks.
The core of the proposal involves separately weighing a bank’s CRA activity both within its AA from its CRA activities beyond the AA, with the latter evaluation consisting of tests for both the bank’s retail products and community development activities to ensure they are meeting the needs of Low and Moderate Income Households. By combining these evaluations together, the paper asserts that banks will be more confident in their ability to get CRA credit for conducting CRA activities in areas of high need that may be outside their AA.
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Gentrification And The Health Of Low-Income Children In New York City
Although the pace of gentrification has accelerated in cities across the US, little is known about the health consequences of growing up in gentrifying neighborhoods. This study used New York State Medicaid claims data to track a cohort of low-income children born in the period 2006–08 for the nine years between January 2009 and December 2017. It compared the 2017 health outcomes of children who started out in low-income neighborhoods that gentrified in the period 2009–15 with those of children who started out in other low-income neighborhoods, controlling for individual child demographic characteristics, baseline neighborhood characteristics, and preexisting trends in neighborhood socioeconomic status.
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HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule: A Contribution and Challenge to Equity Planning for Mixed Income Communities
“What Works to Promote Inclusive, Equitable Mixed-Income Communities” is the fifth volume in the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s What Works series. This essay by Faculty Director Katherine O'Regan and Distinguished Fellow Ken Zimmerman provides a brief background on the legal basis of HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, explains the framework and theory behind the rule, and describes how a rule aimed at overcoming racial segregation can support the creation and preservation of mixed-income communities. The essay lay out key details of the rule and how they connect to more equitable and inclusive planning, and highlights potential connections and tensions for mixed-income strategies within the context of the rule. It then assesses the early experience of the AFFH approach, and the threat posed by HUD’s current suspension of the rule. The piece concludes with a discussion of implications for action (or at least attention) with respect to the rule, particularly with respect to mixed-income strategies.
