COMMUNITY TO COMMUNITY: POLICY EQUITY FOR ALL

FOCUS AREAS: HOUSING

In January 2020, there were 580,466 people experiencing homelessness in America. Roughly 30% are families with children. During the pandemic, C2C researchers advised state agencies on developing Emergency Rental Assistance programs and will assess the program’s impact on helping low-income households with overdue rent and utility bills.

Policy Relevant Articles

- Housing Equity and Resilience in Greater Boston’s Post-COVID Economy. The Boston Foundation.
  - The authors of this article highlights the lack of housing security that renters in the Boston area have been subjected to both during the pandemic and long before it. They suggest we use the spotlight on housing caused by the pandemic to build a better and more equitable housing system.
- Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2019: Supply, Demand and the Challenge of Local Control. The Boston Foundation.
  - This study is presented as a report card for Boston’s housing circumstances, and consists of four chapters. The first discusses the housing needs of Boston using core metrics, the second focuses on best practices of local land use policies and practices, the third describes the relationship between housing production and segregation, and the final chapter serves as a conclusion and policy discussion.

Peer Reviewed Publications

- Are Americans Locked into Their Houses? The Impact of Housing Market Conditions on State-to-State Migration. Regional Science and Urban Economics.
  - This study measures lock-in by using the share of non-prime households with negative equity, and utilizes that analysis to investigate state-to-state migration patterns during the recent housing bust. They find that mobility across states is reduced by house-lock by 2.7%.
- Voting with Their Feet: Relative Economic Conditions and State Migration Patterns. Regional Science and Urban Economics.
  - This article details how economic conditions matter when determining migration. However, these factors vary in importance, and their importance also varies over time. During the past three decades, labor market conditions and per capita incomes have had the greatest impact on migration between states, while housing affordability has played a secondary role.