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Working Paper
Can More Housing Supply Solve the Affordability Crisis? Evidence from a Neighborhood Choice Model
We estimate a neighborhood choice model using 2014 American Community Survey data to investigate the degree to which new housing supply can improve housing affordability. In the model, equilibrium rental rates are determined so that the number of households choosing each neighborhood is equal to the number of housing units in each neighborhood. We use the estimated model to simulate how rental rates would respond to an exogenous increase in the number of housing units in a neighborhood. We find that the rent elasticity is low, and thus marginal reductions in supply constraints alone are ...
Working Paper
Housing Supply and Affordability: Evidence from Rents, Housing Consumption and Household Location
We examine how housing supply constraints affect housing affordability, which we define as the quality-adjusted price of housing services. In our dynamic model, supply constraints increase the price of housing services by only half has much as the purchase price of a home, since the purchase price responds to expected future increases in rent as well as contemporaneous rent increases. Households respond to changes in the price of housing services by altering their housing consumption and location choices, but only by a small amount. We evaluate these predictions using common measures of ...
Discussion Paper
Urban Marylanders Are Migrating to More Affordable and Smaller Metro Areas
With its unemployment rate reaching 1.9 percent in December 2023, Maryland has the tightest labor market in the country, which poses an ongoing hiring challenge for the state's employers. A key contributor to the tightness is the state's slow post-pandemic labor force recovery, especially in the state's inner-ring suburbs of the District of Columbia. While some of the state's former workers and job seekers have dropped out of the labor force but have remained residents, others have left the state altogether, according to recent statistics that placed Maryland in the top 5 states by net ...
Working Paper
Rural Affordable Rental Housing : Quantifying Need, Reviewing Recent Federal Support, and Assessing the Use of Low Income Housing Tax Credits in Rural Areas
Recently, there has been significant interest in the high levels of rental cost burden being experienced across the United States. Much of this scholarship has focused on rental cost burdens in larger urban areas, or at the national level, and has not explored differences in the prevalence of rental cost burden in urban versus rural communities. In this paper, I find that rental cost burdens are a challenge facing both urban and rural communities. However, despite the need for affordable rental housing in rural communities identified, I find the amount of resources made available by the ...