Research
Working Papers
Knocking it Down and Mixing it Up: The Impact of Public Housing Regenerations, with Lorenzo Neri [IZA Discussion Paper No. 15855]
Revise and Resubmit, Review of Economics and Statistics
Partly due to their negative effects on surrounding neighborhoods, some countries have gradually been replacing distressed public housing developments with mixed-income housing. This paper studies the effects of such policies on local housing markets in the context of London (UK), where local authorities demolished and rebuilt several public housing developments while adding market-rate units on-site. We show that these ‘regeneration’ programs lead to large increases in nearby house prices and rents over a six-year period, although house prices decrease farther away. The results are consistent with strong demand effects from observed amenity improvements near the buildings and downward price pressures from increased supply dominating in the broader area. We provide suggestive evidence that regenerations involving larger socioeconomic composition changes are associated with higher price increases.
Coverage: GLA Housing, Nada Es Gratis
Local Effects of Bypassing Zoning Regulations in High-Income Areas, with Noémie Sportiche [Draft available upon request]
An increasing number of state and local governments are passing regulations to allow for denser housing in high-income areas. This paper examines how local house prices and existing residents –who are often strongly opposed to these policies– react to this new construction. We focus on housing constructed under Chapter 40B, a Massachusetts state policy that requires all municipalities to maintain a minimum proportion of affordable housing and allows developers to bypass local zoning regulations if those minimums are not met. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares housing located near 40B developments to housing located slightly farther away paired with rich individual-level data, we find that larger 40B developments lead to long-run decreases in nearby house prices, while smaller developments do not affect prices. Our results further show that nearby residents respond by moving out at higher rates after large 40B developments are constructed, though we do not observe significant changes in existing residents’ political participation at the state or federal level. Overall, we do not find strong evidence that such responses can substantially undermine the policy’s goal of reducing economic segregation.
Publications
Pecuniary Effects of Public Housing Demolitions: Evidence from Chicago. Regional Science and Urban Economics 98, 2023 [Link] [Ungated version]
Coverage: Building the Skyline
Work in Progress
Redistribution through Housing Assistance, with Juliette Fournier
We examine the distributional implications of the shift from public housing to subsidized private housing initiated by the U.S. government over the past few decades. We build a quantitative urban framework where housing assistance complements income taxation to redistribute across workers. We argue that provision of affordable housing involves a trade-off between indirect pecuniary redistribution and direct amenity spin-offs. On the one hand, public housing drives local rents down, while amplifying the spatial concentration of poverty. On the other hand, project- and tenant-based rental assistance enhances the local amenities of subsidized households by promoting mixed-income communities, but pushes private landowners’ rents up.
Neighborhood Change and Local Economic Activity, with Lorenzo Neri
Spillover Effects from Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning, with Lorenzo Neri
Segregated Welfare: The Effects of Federal Public Housing, with Luca Perdoni