Patrick Power PRO
Economics PhD @ Boston University
A Class Presentation of
Description
Issues
Significance
The Good
Challenges
Concerns about Fire
Public Health Concerns
Limiting Commercial Development
Congestion Externalities
Environmental Externalities
Homeownership?
Motivation for Housing Policy Intervention
Guidance
Issues of Poverty
Problems in the Housing Market
"We argue that direct housing-market interventions should be contemplated only when the housing market is failing to deliver
homes at a price that is close to or below construction costs. The existence of people so poor that they cannot afford even inexpensive housing does not justify intervening in the housing market, whether to stimulate new supply or to regulate in different ways. The proper way to deal with poverty is to transfer resources to the impoverished, not to meddle with
the housing market."
Motivation for In-kind Transfers
What's Missing From this?
I am petrified about doing this pilot project, that it might prove something I’ve been working on for 30 years is not effective,” he told me. “It could challenge the overall system. That’s the unnerving part. But it takes a little bit of courage to say in the end it’s not about me.
"Perhaps new development should be restricted in some areas because of the environmental and aesthetic externalities that are associated with new homes. On theoretical grounds, at least, land-use regulations might decrease affordability while still being quite rational and efficient"
"The reason construction costs are a good benchmark for what the price of housing should be in a well-functioning market is that, if we believe housing is too expensive in some place, then the correct response presumably is to produce more housing so that its price will fall to the level at which it can be produced in a competitive market"
"If housing prices, no matter how high, simply reflect strong demand and normal supply conditions, then it is hard to see why a policy intervention is called for"
"This scarcity is artificial in the sense that policy created it. If local policy is primarily responsible for the wide and growing gap between house prices and construction costs in many of the nation’s coastal markets, then housing in those areas is unnecessarily, and possibly inefficiently, expensive."
Incidence
Heterogeneity
The Need for Data
Given reasonable assumptions, including that there are both subsidized and unsubsidized builders in each market and that both types of builders use the same construction technology so that their production costs are the same, it is likely that rents are no lower than they would be in the absence of the program.
How insightful do you find this?
The study finds a very large crowd-out effect of about two-thirds. That is, each unit of subsidized housing displaces about two-thirds of a purely private-sector unit, implying that the net increase in the housing stock is only one-third of the gross increase in units from the subsidy program.
Motivation to Understand How Results are Drawn
By Patrick Power