Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 12.
(refine search)
Working Paper
Predictive Modeling of Surveyed Property Conditions and Vacancy
Using the results of a comprehensive in-person survey of properties in Cleveland, Ohio, we fit predictive models of vacancy and property conditions. We draw predictor variables from administrative data that is available in most jurisdictions such as deed recordings, tax assessor?s property characteristics, and foreclosure filings. Using logistic regression and machine learning methods, we are able to make reasonably accurate out-of-sample predictions. Our findings indicate that housing professionals could use administrative data and predictive models to identify distressed properties between ...
Journal Article
Making Sense of Eviction Trends during the Pandemic
Eviction filings have largely returned to their prepandemic levels in 2022 after a long period of being below trend. In this Economic Commentary, I describe the trends in eviction filings collected so far during the pandemic and pandemic-era policies aimed at mitigating the damage of the pandemic on housing stability. I show that restrictions on evictions, common early in the pandemic, are associated with lower levels of eviction filings; that recent rent-price growth is associated with higher levels of eviction filings; and that the timing of eviction trends varies in response to the federal ...
Working Paper
Landlords and Access to Opportunity
Landlords in high-opportunity neighborhoods screen out tenants using vouchers. In our correspondence experiment, signaling voucher status cuts landlord responses in half. This voucher penalty increases with posted rent and varies little with signals of tenant quality and race. We repeat the experiment after a policy change and test how landlords respond to raising voucher payment limits by $450 per month in high-rent neighborhoods. Most landlords do not change their screening behavior; those who do respond are few and operate at small scale. Our results suggest a successful, systematic policy ...
Working Paper
Does Differential Treatment Translate to Differential Outcomes for Minority Borrowers? Evidence from Matching a Field Experiment to Loan-Level Data
This paper provides evidence on the relationship between differential treatment of minority borrowers and their mortgage market outcomes. Using data from a field experiment that identifies differential treatment matched to real borrower transactions in the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data, we estimate difference-in-difference models between African American and white borrowers across lending institutions that display varying degrees of differential treatment. Our results show that African Americans are more likely to be in a high-cost (subprime) loan when borrowing from lenders that ...
Working Paper
Landlords and Access to Opportunity
Despite being eligible for use in any neighborhood, housing choice vouchers tend to be redeemed in low-opportunity neighborhoods. This paper investigates how landlords contribute to this outcome and how they respond to efforts to change it. We leverage a policy change in Washington, DC, that increased voucher rental payments only in high-rent neighborhoods. Using two waves of a correspondence experiment that bracket the policy change, we show that most opportunity landlords screen out prospective voucher tenants, and we detect no change in average screening behavior after a $450 per month ...
Working Paper
Neighborhood Sorting Obscures Neighborhood Effects in the Opportunity Atlas
The Opportunity Atlas (OA) is an innovative data set that ranks neighborhoods according to children’s adult outcomes in several domains, including income. Conceptually, outcomes offer new evidence about neighborhood effects when measured in isolation from neighborhood sorting. This paper shows that neighborhood sorting contributes to OA estimates. We document cases in which small sample sizes and changes over time can explain disagreements between OA rankings and those based on contemporaneous variables. Our results suggest caution for interpretations of the OA data set at a granular level, ...
Working Paper
What Determines the Success of Housing Mobility Programs?
This paper studies how design features influence the success of Housing Mobility Programs (HMPs) in reducing racial segregation. Targeting neighborhoods based on previous residents' outcomes does not allow for targeting race-specific outcomes, generates uncertainty when targeting income-specific outcomes, and generates bias in ranking neighborhoods' effects. Moreover, targeting opportunity bargains based on previous residents' outcomes selects tracts with large disagreements in current and previous residents' outcomes, with such disagreements predicted by sorting since 1990. HMP success is ...
Working Paper
Can Landlords Be Paid to Stop Avoiding Voucher Tenants?
Despite being eligible for use in any neighborhood, housing choice vouchers tend to be redeemed in low-opportunity neighborhoods. This paper investigates whether landlord behavior contributes to this outcome by studying the recent expansion of neighborhood-based voucher limits in Washington, DC. We conduct two waves of a correspondence experiment: one before and one after the expansion. Landlords heavily penalize tenants who indicate a desire to pay by voucher. The voucher penalty is larger in high-rent neighborhoods, pushing voucher tenants to low-rent neighborhoods. We find no evidence that ...
Report
Measuring Evictions during the COVID-19 Crisis
Evictions are a serious risk for households facing job loss and economic upheaval during the COVID-19 pandemic, and temporary policies put in place to protect renters are beginning to expire. To understand how the crisis is affecting evictions, we measured eviction filing activity across 44 cities and counties. As of July 7, 2020, eviction filings have almost returned to their prepandemic levels in places where local bans have expired or where they were never enacted. We find that eviction filings tend to surge after temporary policies expire much more in places that enacted both filing bans ...
Working Paper
The Impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on Local Home Values
This paper simulates changes to neighborhood home prices resulting from reforms to tax preferences in the recently passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The simulation uses federal tax data summarized at a fine geography to impute homeowner rents at the zip code level across six income classes. Employing a user cost framework, I model rents as a function of prices under the old tax law and under the TCJA. While the average price impact of the TCJA is found to be ?5.7 percent, local effects range from 0 to ?23 percent across zip codes. Variation across income class is also large. Simulations by ...