Housing choice vouchers provide low-income households with additional income to spend on rental housing in the private market. The assistance vouchers provide is substantial, offering the potential to dramatically expand the neighborhood--and associated public schools--that low-income households can reach. However, existing research on the program…

In theory, improving low-income families' housing and neighborhoods could also improve their children's health, through any number of mechanisms. For example, less exposure to environmental toxins could prevent diseases such as asthma; a safer, less violent neighborhood could improve health by reducing the chances of injury and death, and by…

The recent foreclosure crisis has plagued nearly every city in the U.S., including New York City. Despite considerable attention to the causes of these mortgage foreclosures and the consequences they have had for communities, we know little about their impacts on individual families and children. Given that more than 2.8 million U.S. property…

Few communities welcome federally subsidized rental housing, with one of the most commonly voiced fears being reductions in property values. Yet there is little empirical evidence that subsidized housing depresses neighborhood property values. This paper estimates and compares the neighborhood impacts of a broad range of federally subsidized…

A family's housing unit provides more than simply shelter. It also provides a set of neighborhood amenities and a package of local public services, including, most critically, a local school. Yet housing and education policymakers rarely coordinate their efforts, and there has been little examination of the schools that voucher holders or other…

This paper examines the effect of exposure to violent crime on students' standardized test performance among a sample of students in New York City public schools. To identify the effect of exposure to community violence on children's test scores, we compare students exposed to an incident of violent crime on their own blockface in the week prior…

The mortgage foreclosure crisis has affected millions of households around the country. Researchers and policy makers have begun to pay attention to the external costs that these foreclosures impose on surrounding properties and neighborhoods (Schuetz et al., 2008; Harding et al., 2009). But few have considered the collateral costs for children,…

Nonprofit organizations play a critical role in U.S. housing policy, a role typically justified by the claim that their housing investments produce significant neighbor-hood spillover benefits. However, little work has actually been done to measure these impacts on neighborhoods. This paper compares the neighborhood spillover effects of…

The race-based neighborhood projection hypothesis holds that in choosing neighborhoods, people care less about present racial composition then expectations for future neighborhood conditions. Using data linking households to their neighborhoods, the paper estimates exit and entry models and constructs a simulation model that predicts racial change…