Search Results
Monograph
Applying Research to Policy Issues in Distressed Housing Markets: Data-Driven Decision Making
A compilation of research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on housing markets experiencing foreclosure and/or a large number of vacant properties which sheds light on a wide range of housing markets. It provides possible policy solutions applicable to both regional and national policy discussions.
Journal Article
Housing recovery: how far have we come?
Four years into the economic recovery, housing markets have finally started to improve. While many indicators of activity indicate recent growth, comparing over time and across the United States suggests that many regional housing markets are looking better now only in comparison to where they were during the recession. The recovery in housing markets does appear to be gaining steam, but it remains a work in progress in many places.
Journal Article
Public Housing, Concentrated Poverty, and Crime
A number of studies have explored the relationship between public housing policy, poverty, and crime. This Commentary discusses the results of a recent study, which investigated the effects of closing large public housing developments on crime. To see if the demolitions?and the associated deconcentration of poverty?reduced crime or merely displaced it, researchers examined the case of Chicago. They found that closing large public housing developments and dispersing former residents throughout a wider portion of the city was associated with net reductions in violent crime, at the city level.
Journal Article
The impact of foreclosures on the housing market
A record number of mortgage loans are either in default or in danger of being defaulted upon. Many of the properties that back these loans will end up going through the foreclosure process. A growing body of research shows that foreclosed homes sell at a discount and that foreclosures have a negative impact on the value of other homes that are nearby. The effect on nearby property values happens for two different reasons, but my recent work suggests that one or the other predominates depending on certain characteristics of the neighborhood where the foreclosures are occurring. This finding ...
Journal Article
Urban decline in rust-belt cities
Many Rust-Belt cities have seen almost half their populations move from inside the city borders to the surrounding suburbs and elsewhere since the 1970s. As populations shifted, neighborhoods changed?in their average income, educational profile, and housing prices. But the shift did not happen in every neighborhood at the same rate. Recent research has uncovered some of the patterns characterizing the process.>
Working Paper
The long-term employment impacts of gentrification in the 1990s
In the ongoing debate over the social benefi ts and costs of gentrification, one of the key questions left largely unaddressed by the empirical literature is the degree to which gentrification impacts local labor markets. This paper begins by exploring the nature of employment change in one archetypical gentrifying neighborhood?Chicago?s Wicker Park?to motivate the central hypothesis that gentrification is associated with industrial restructuring. Next, a detailed analysis is presented on the long-term employment changes in neighborhoods that have experienced gentrification during the 1990s ...
Working Paper
Are America's Inner Cities Competitive? Evidence from the 2000s
In the years since Michael Porter?s paper about the potential competitiveness of inner cities there has been growing evidence of a residential resurgence in urban neighborhoods. Yet, there is less evidence on the competitiveness of inner cities for employment. We document the trends in net employment growth and find that inner cities gained over 1.8 million jobs between 2002 and 2011 at a rate comparable to suburban areas. We also find a significant number of inner cities are competitive over this period?increasing their share of metropolitan employment in 120 out of 281 MSAs. We also ...
Working Paper
Household Finance after a Natural Disaster: The Case of Hurricane Katrina
Little is known about how affected residents are able to cope with the fi nancial shock of a natural disaster. We investigate the impact that flooding from a major US hurricane had on household finance. Spikes in credit card borrowing and overall delinquency rates for the most flooded residents are modest in size and short-lived. Greater flooding results in larger reductions in total debt. Lower debt levels appear to be driven by homeowners using flood insurance to repay their mortgages rather than to rebuild. Debt reductions are larger in census tracts where mortgages were likely to be ...
Working Paper
Within-city variation in urban decline: the case of Detroit
When a city experiences a decline in income or population, do all neighborhoods within the city decline equally? Or do some neighborhoods decline more than others? What are the characteristics of the neighborhoods that decline the most? We answer these questions by looking at what happened to neighborhoods within Detroit as the city experienced a sharp decline in income and population from the 1980s to the late 2000s. We find patterns of changes in income and population that are consistent with the model and empirical patterns of gentrification presented in Guerrieri, Hartley, and Hurst ...
Working Paper
The effect of foreclosures on nearby housing prices: supply or disamenity?
A number of studies have measured the negative price effects of foreclosed residential properties on nearby property sales. However, only one study beside this one addresses the mechanism responsible for these effects. I measure separate effects for different types of foreclosed properties and use the estimates to decompose he effects of foreclosures on nearby home prices into two components. One component is due to the additional available housing supply and the other is due to a disamenity stemming from deferred maintenance or vacancy. I estimate that each extra unit of supply decreases ...