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Journal Article
Recent Findings on Residential Instability in Oakland
Safe, stable, and affordable housing is central to ensuring healthy, sustainable, and inclusive communities. Amid COVID-19-related economic shocks and a worsening housing crisis, residents in cities across California are struggling to keep up with the rising costs of housing. This report draws from a unique, longitudinal dataset of over 14,000 residents to examine residential instability–in the form of moving and household crowding–in the City of Oakland, California. It presents trends from the last 20 years, with an additional focus on patterns emerging during the COVID-19 pandemic.The ...
Working Paper
The Consequences of Gentrification: A Focus on Residents’ Financial Health in Philadelphia
There have been considerable debate and controversy about the effects of gentrification on neighborhoods and the people residing in them. This paper draws on a unique large-scale consumer credit database to examine the relationship between gentrification and the credit scores of residents in the City of Philadelphia from 2002 to 2014. We find that gentrification is positively associated with changes in residents? credit scores on average for those who stay, and this relationship is stronger for residents in neighborhoods in the more advanced stages of gentrification. Gentrification is also ...
Working Paper
Has COVID Reversed Gentrification in Major U.S. Cities? An Empirical Examination of Residential Mobility in Gentrifying Neighborhoods During the COVID-19 Crisis
This paper examines whether neighborhoods that had been gentrifying lost their appeal during the pandemic because of COVID-induced health risks and increased work-from-home arrangements. By following the mobility pattern of residents in gentrifying neighborhoods in 39 major U.S. cities, we note a larger increase of 1.2 percentage points in the outmigration rate from gentrifying neighborhoods by the end of 2021, relative to nongentrifying ones, with out-of-city moves accounting for over 71 percent of the increased flight. The share of out-of-city moves into gentrifying neighborhoods also ...
Working Paper
Housing Market Interventions and Residential Mobility in the San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area is an extreme case of a constrained housing market, with job growth outpacing new housing production and resulting in supply shortages and price spikes that date back at least 30 years. The Bay Area’s structural shortage of housing that is affordable at all income levels affects the regional economy by increasing commuting and housing costs, which creates barriers to full economic participation, especially for lower income workers. An array of solutions have been considered, including subsidized housing production, affordable housing preservation, and tenant ...
Journal Article
Who Moved and Where Did They Go? An analysis of residential moving patterns in King County, WA between 2002–2017
From 2002-2017, moderate and middle socioeconomic status (SES) King County residents exhibited greater rates of moving compared to the lowest and highest SES residents. Geographically, movement rates were highest in East King County and North Seattle. High-SES residents were the least likely to move during all years.The percentage of King County residents in the high-SES group increased by 8.9 percentage points between 2002 and 2017, while the percentages of middle-, moderate- and lower-SES residents decreased (by 3.3, 3.2, and 2.4 percentage points, respectively).Neighborhoods in Seattle and ...
Working Paper
Gentrification and residential mobility in Philadelphia
Gentrification has provoked considerable debate and controversy about its effects on neighborhoods and the people residing in them. This paper draws on a unique large-scale consumer credit database to examine the mobility patterns of residents in gentrifying neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia from 2002 to 2014. We find significant heterogeneity in the effects of gentrification across neighborhoods and subpopulations. Residents in gentrifying neighborhoods have slightly higher mobility rates than those in nongentrifying neighborhoods, but they do not have a higher risk of moving to a ...
Journal Article
Residential Instability in the Bay Area through the COVID-19 Pandemic
This report draws on a unique, longitudinal dataset of over 250,000 San Francisco Bay Area residents to examine residential instability—including moving, crowding, and financial health—in the Bay Area during the pandemic. Our research finds a substantial decrease in moving during the pandemic, particularly for residents of extremely low socioeconomic status (SES). At the same time, we report a concerning rise in residents living in crowded conditions and experiencing declining credit scores. These trends suggest that COVID-19 rent relief programs and eviction moratoria may be successful ...
Working Paper
Effects of Gentrification on Homeowners: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
A major overhaul of the property tax system in 2013 in the city of Philadelphia has generated significant variations in the amount of property taxes across properties. This exogenous policy shock provides a unique opportunity to identify the causal effects of gentrification, which is often accompanied by increased property values, on homeowners’ tax payment behavior and residential mobility. The analysis, based on a difference-in-differences framework, suggests that gentrification leads to a higher risk of delinquency on homeowners’ tax bills on average, but there was no sign of a ...
Working Paper
Neighborhood Change and Residential Instability in Oakland
Affordable housing is critical to ensuring healthy and resilient communities and broad access to economic opportunity. In this report, we examine neighborhood change and residential instability in the City of Oakland over the past two decades. We employ multiple data sources, including individual-level data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel/Equifax data. We analyze historical and contemporary data to understand patterns of residential instability, and we identify which residents and areas are most likely to experience heightened challenges in the context of the ...