Published: 2020 | Alexander Sahn Abstract High housing prices drive inequality, reduce growth, and increase racial segregation. Scholars have identified laws restricting the use of land, particularly for dense multi-family housing, as a primary cause of housing unaffordability. What explains…
Consumer-Lending Discrimination in the FinTech Era
Published: 2019 | Robert Bartlett, Adair Morse, Richard Stanton, Nancy Wallace Abstract Under U.S. fair-lending law, lenders can discriminate against minorities only for creditworthiness. Using an identification under this rule, afforded by the GSEs’ pricing of mortgage credit risk, we…
Racial Rent Differences in U.S. Housing Markets
Published: 2018 | Dirk W. Early, Paul E. Carrillo, Edgar O. Olsen Abstract This paper exploits an unusually rich data set to estimate racial differences in the rents paid for identical housing in the same neighborhood in U.S. housing markets…
Building Black Homeownership Bridges: A Five-Point Framework for Reducing the Racial Homeownership Gap
Published: 2019 | Alanna McCargo, Jung Hyun Choi, and Edward Golding | Urban Institute Abstract Homeownership is an important wealth-building source and a foundation for economic stability. Owning a home can provide a stable place to live and remove significant…
To Understand a City’s Pace of Gentrification, Look at Its Housing Supply
Published: 2020 | Laurie Goodman, Ellen Seidman, Jun Zhu | Urban Institute Abstract Gentrification is a hotly debated subject, with conversations centering around what happens to neighborhoods’ income and racial mix as new buyers move in and how that affects…
The Geography of Inequality: How Land Use Regulation Produces Segregation
Published: 2020 | Jessica Trounstine | American Political Science Review Abstract Public goods in the United States are largely funded and delivered at the local level. Local public goods are valuable, but their production requires overcoming several collective action problems…
Sustainable Communities or the Next Urban Renewal?
Published: 2020 | Moira O’Neill, Giulia Gualco-Nelson, Eric Biber | Ecology Law Quarterly Abstract California has committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) to address climate change. But in California, the sector that produces the largest share of greenhouse gas…
It’s Time to End Single-Family Zoning
Published: 2020 | Paavo Monkkonen, Michael Lens, and Michael Manville | Journal of the American Planning Association Abstract Local planning in the United States is unique in the amount of land it reserves for detached single-family homes. This privileging of…
Inclusionary Zoning: What Does the Research Tell Us about the Effectiveness of Local Action?
Published: 2019 | Kriti Ramakrishnan, Mark Treskon, and Solomon Greene | Urban League Abstract As real wages stagnate, racial disparities grow, and housing prices soar in cities across the US, local governments are increasingly adopting laws and regulations that aim…
Long Shadow of Racial Discrimination: Evidence from Housing Covenants of Minneapolis
Published: 2019 | Aradhya Sood, William Speagle, and Kevin Ehrman-Solberg Abstract This paper studies the effect of racially-restrictive covenants prevalent during the early-to-mid 20th century on present-day socioeconomic outcomes such as house prices and racial segregation. Racial covenants were clauses…