How Housing Instability Occurs PDF Download

Author: Seungbeom Kang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Housing policy
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Due to an acute shortage of affordable housing, millions of American renter households suffer from severe housing cost burdens, using over half of their incomes to pay housing costs. Along with the housing affordability problem that is commonplace in the United States, housing instability, often represented by involuntary and frequent residential mobility, is rampant among low-income renters. Scholars in many disciplines have increasingly expressed concern about the prevalence of housing instability because of its detrimental effects on low-income people’s lives. Housing instability negatively affects education environments of children, employment, mental health, social relationships, and so on. Although housing instability is becoming a widespread urban problem and a key mechanism of poverty in US cities, little is known about in what conditions housing instability occurs. Understanding the conditions in which housing instability is likely to occur is a fundamental step for researchers and policymakers to measure the varied housing needs for stable housing and to suggest effective policy approaches to providing stable housing to unsubsidized renter households. This dissertation examines the question of how household-level factors, metropolitan-level conditions, and different types of housing assistance are associated with the risk of housing instability. By analyzing a unique panel dataset built upon the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and other secondary data, this dissertation identifies subgroups vulnerable to housing instability in rental housing markets. This dissertation contains three essays, each of which is designed to examine a different aspect of housing instability. In my first essay, Why Low-Income Households Become Unstably Housed, I estimate the effects of potential household-level predictors on the likelihood of experiencing housing instability. The results reveal that changes in family employment structure, job insecurity, automobile ownership, and the number of adult family members within a household correlate with housing instability after controlling for changes in household income and housing costs—both of which are two main elements of a housing cost burden of a household. Moreover, I find that families with a greater number of children are particularly vulnerable to housing instability. These results contribute to identifying valid household-level predictors of housing instability and developing preventive policy interventions that help unsubsidized low-income households achieve housing stability. My second essay, Identifying Regional Determinants of Housing Instability, addresses one research question: Under what regional conditions are low-income renter households more likely to experience housing instability? I analyze the PSID dataset combined with multiple secondary datasets that include information about neighborhood- and metropolitan-level conditions within 252 metropolitan areas. Results reveal that low-income renter households are more likely to experience housing instability when residing in a region in which the poverty rate and car dependency are high. In particular, housing instability is likely to occur when households have no vehicle and reside in a region where a large proportion of commuters use automobiles. The third essay, To Whom Housing Policies Provide Stable Housing, examines potential variations in the roles of housing programs in alleviating housing instability. Specifically, this study focuses on exploring the associations between the five statuses related to receiving or leaving housing assistance and subsequent housing instability experience. These statuses include households that: (1) reside in a public or project-based subsidized housing (PH) unit; (2) leave a PH unit; (3) receive a Housing Choice Voucher (HCV); (4) leave the HCV program; and (5) are unsubsidized but income-eligible for housing assistance. Results reveal that, although all housing assistance recipients are less likely to experience housing instability than income-eligible unsubsidized households, HCV recipients are relatively more likely to experience housing instability than PH residents. Moreover, those who made their transitions off the assistance do not significantly differ from income-eligible unsubsidized households. These findings contribute to expanding the knowledge about the double-sided roles of tenant-based housing programs; on the one hand, the programs can encourage program participants to leave concentrated poverty areas. If housing consistency is lost, on the other hand, the programs can make them exposed to a wide variety of market-related risks that could destabilize their housing circumstances. The findings from the essays have several implications for housing policy and planning practice. The first two essays suggest a set of household-level and metropolitan-level determinants of housing instability. These results suggest subgroups of the low-income population that are more vulnerable to housing instability in private rental housing markets. The third essay provides housing assistance statuses that heighten the risk of housing instability among subsidized households. These findings would help public housing authorities, and urban planners (1) predict the size and type of households vulnerable to housing instability, (2) improve strategies to allocate limited resources for alleviating housing instability, and (3) develop alternative ways to help low-income households achieve housing stability.