Margery Austin Turner

Does neighborhood matter? Assessing recent evidence

Abstract This article synthesizes findings from a wide range of empirical research into how neighborhoods affect families and children. It lays out a conceptual framework for understanding how neighborhoods may affect people at different life stages. It then identifies methodological challenges, summarizes past research findings, and suggests priorities for future work. Despite a growing body of evidence that neighborhood conditions play a role in shaping individual outcomes, serious methodological challenges remain that suggest some caution in interpreting this evidence. Moreover, no consensus emerges about which neighborhood characteristics affect which outcomes, or about what types of families may be most influenced by neighborhood conditions. Finally, existing studies provide little empirical evidence about the causal mechanisms through which neighborhood environment influences individual outcomes. To be useful to policy makers, future empirical research should tackle the critical question of how and ...

Moving out of poverty: Expanding mobility and choice through tenant‐based housing assistance

Abstract Historically, federal housing policy has contributed to the concentration of poverty in urban America. Moving out of poverty is not the right answer for every low‐income family, but tenant‐based housing assistance (Section 8 certificates and vouchers) has tremendous potential to help families move to healthier neighborhoods. This article explores the role of tenant‐based housing assistance in addressing the problem of concentrated inner‐city poverty. The Section 8 program by itself does not ensure access to low‐poverty neighborhoods, particularly for minority families. Supplementing certificates and vouchers with housing counseling and search assistance can improve their performance; a growing number of assisted housing mobility initiatives are now in place across the country. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should continue to fund these initiatives and increase their number over time. HUD should also strengthen incentives for all housing authorities to improve location...

Who Should Run the Housing Voucher Program? A Reform Proposal

Abstract Section 8, the federal governments primary program for addressing the housing needs of low‐income renters, is administered by thousands of local public housing agencies, most of which serve individual cities, towns, and counties. This article contends that the current balkanized system undermines the potential of the program to promote mixed‐income communities and the deconcentration of poverty and that the voucher program should be administered regionally rather than locally in urban areas. One strategy for achieving metropolitan administration would be to contract out responsibility for operating the voucher program to competitively selected regional organizations. In addition to describing how such a program could work, we suggest a series of incremental reforms for moving the Section 8 program in the direction of metropolitan administration. Moreover, other reforms—including an expansion of affordable rental housing in suburban communities—are also needed for housing vouchers to achieve their full potential.

Discrimination in urban housing markets: Lessons from fair housing audits

Abstract This paper examines the use of fair housing audits to study housing market discrimination and summarizes the key findings of the Department of Housing and Urban Developments two national fair housing studies—the Housing Discrimination Study and the Housing Market Practices Survey. Fair housing audits provide a uniquely effective tool for analyzing discrimination, for monitoring compliance with fair housing law, and for assembling evidence of discrimination in individual circumstances. Because of the findings from fair housing audits, there is widespread recognition that housing discrimination remains a serious problem. In order to combat discrimination more effectively in the 1990s, the audit methodology should be further refined and extended to all stages in the housing market transaction.

Patterns of racial steering in four metropolitan areas

Discrimination against minority homeseekers can take many forms. One important form of housing market discrimination is steering, in which minority homebuyers are shown houses, but in systematically different neighborhoods than those shown or recommended to comparable white homebuyers. Steering is often difficult for individual homeseekers to detect, since minorities are shown houses that meet their specifications and have few opportunities to find out about the houses they are not shown. But if minorities are systematically steered away from predominantly white neighborhoods-and vice versa-this form of discrimination clearly limits housing and neighborhood choice and may play a role in perpetuating patterns of residential segregation. This paper describes and analyzes patterns of racial steering, using data from the Housing Discrimination Study (HDS), a nationwide fair housing audit study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).’ We focus on similarities and differences among four major metropolitan areas-Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Atlanta-where sufficient audits were conducted to permit site-specific analysis. Statistical procedures are used to compare the characteristics of neighborhoods where houses were shown or recommended to black and white auditors and to test the hypothesis that black homebuyers are “steered” away from predominantly white neighborhoods, and offered housing opportunities in integrated or black neighborhoods instead. In addition, spatial patterns are illustrated in greater depth using maps for the metropolitan areas of Chicago and Atlanta, and spatial analytic tech-

Estimating demand for owner-occupied housing subject to the income tax

The federal income tax code includes several provisions which benefit homeowners. First, the imputed rent from the ownership of a house is not incorporated into a household’s taxable income. Second, mortgage interest and property tax payments are tax deductible. Finally, capital gains go untaxed if they are reinvested. These provisions reduce the effective price of housing services by reducing the factor prices for land and structure; but they do not reduce the price of operating inputs nor do they necessarily reduce the prices of land and structure proportionately. Thus, they alter the optimum factor input combinations in the production of owner-occupant housing services by influencing relative factor prices. The homeowner tax provisions also increase effective income if the deductions and exclusions are large enough to shift the households into a lower tax bracket. In this case, the household receives an effective income transfer in the amount of income saved by not having to pay taxes at a higher rate. Few attempts at quantifying owner-occupant demand behavior have systematically incorporated federal income tax provisions. None have considered the effects of these provisions on housing service production behavior. Maisel et al. [ 121 conducted a study in which income but not price was adjusted for taxes, while Straszheim [21], using household interview data, made an adjustment to the gross price of housing without adjusting income. In an analysis of the welfare effects of owner-occupant tax benefits, Laidler [l l] acknowledges that taxes alter both price and income, but uses an estimate of price elasticity which does not incorporate income tax provisions. Rosen [ 18, 191, however, has adjusted both price and income for taxes in a recent estimation of housing demand. While Rosen’s work represents a

Exploring the effects of racial preferences on urban housing markets

Social segregation of residential areas is a fact of life in urban America, and its most vivid manifestation is racial segregation. Extreme patterns of segregation have changed very little in the postwar period. For example, the index of segregation computed by the Taeubers declined only slightly from 85.2 in 1940 to 80.0 in 1970.’ Moreover, there continues to be convincing evidence of widespread discrimination against blacks in urban housing markets, strongly affecting the availability of housing to them.2 Economists have devoted a good deal of thought to the consequences of racial prejudice and discrimination and at least three types of market inefficiencies have been identified. First, some households pay higher prices per unit of housing service than they would in the absence of prejudice; and these higher prices are not necessarily offset in the aggregate by lower prices elsewhere. Second, because of the location attributes associated with dwellings and the limited range over which units can be economically modified, prejudice causes some mismatch between desired attributes and those purchased. The high incidence of dwelling deficiencies in units occupied by blacks compared to whites in the same economic circumstances is one indication of this phenomenon. 3 Third, premature depreciation and abandonment of some housing results from neighborhood succession patterns

New Life for US Housing and Urban Policy

After a decade of neglect, housing and urban issues are getting serious attention from the federal government. The subprime meltdown and foreclosure crisis vividly demonstrated how important housing and housing finance are to the national economy and how dangerous it is to mindlessly promote homeownership at the expense of more balanced housing markets and policies. The Obama Administration recognizes that restoring US housing markets is critical to the nation’s larger economic recovery. But the renewed commitment to housing and urban policy goes much farther. Federal policymakers see metropolitan regions as the economic engines that will pull the country out of the current recession and define post-recovery opportunities. Newly appointed leaders in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and in other agencies across government also understand that current urban development and land use patterns drive wasteful energy usage, traffic congestion, greenhouse gases, and climate change. They recognize that housing costs have been rising faster than wages for a growing number of Americans, creating tremendous hardship, even among full-time workers. They understand that for the most vulnerable individuals and families, affordable, service-enriched housing may be the key to achieving stability and health. They fully grasp how past housing policies have enforced racial segregation, helped concentrate poverty, and, as a result, damaged kids, families, communities, and our society as a whole. The new thinking in Washington is clear: the well-being of people (children, workers, families, retirees) is fundamentally linked to the structure and vitality of the urban places (neighborhoods, cities, and regions) in which they live and work.1

Changes in the Housing Situation of the Elderly

This paper presents results of a careful examination of the changes in the housing circumstances of the elderly over the 1974-79 period, using data from the Annual Housing Survey. The focus is on both the quality of housing occupied and the level of income devoted to housing. The outcomes show that among elderly households there has been substantial and widespread improvement in housing quality especially the incidence of serious structural defects. Improvements in housing quality appear to be achieved by the elderly expending more of their incomes for housing. This however may be a temporary problem due to several factors. Stabilized energy prices, reduced inflation, and a rental building surge fostered by the provisions of the Economic Tax Recovery Acy of 1981 may offer some relief.

Achieving a new urban diversity: What have we learned?

Since the 1960s, many of America’s major cities have lost population while suburban jurisdictions burgeoned. Successive waves of families seeking larger homes on bigger lots, better schools, safer streets, and more amenities left the central city for new communities farther and farther from the urban core. In 1990, only about a third of the Americans who lived in metropolitan areas were central-city residents, down from more than half in 1950. Perhaps more important, most cities lost middleand upperincome residents, with those remaining behind more likely to be poor and minority. As a consequence, central cities are now substantially poorer than the suburbs that surround them. In 1990, for example, median incomes in central-city jurisdictions nationwide were almost 30 percent lower than in the suburbs. And the gap between city and suburbs is far greater in some of the largest metropolitan areas of the Northeast and Midwest.