Contemporary Neighborhood Housing Dynamics in a Mid-Sized U.S. City: The Policy Consequences of Mismeasuring the Dependent Variable
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2015
Publication Source
Housing and Society
Abstract
This paper analyzes median assessed residential property values using three different operationalizations of a tract-level dependent variable for a mid-sized US city: Louisville, Kentucky. We estimated the impacts of accessibility, sociodemographics, and housing characteristics as well as three policy interventions (HOPE VI, historic preservation districts, and university-community partnerships) on median assessed values and changes to them over the 2000–06 housing bubble.
Our interpretation of models employing the three different operationalizations leads to different conclusions about neighborhood health and the efficacy of policy programs. Conventional operationalizations employed by advocates, such as looking at medians or raw dollar changes in median values, are likely to find that policy interventions have less of an impact compared to measuring recent percent changes in property values.
Thus, we provide a methodological contribution that shows that percent changes should accompany traditional analysis in capturing the effects of contemporary policy interventions. Mismeasuring neighborhood housing markets has played a role in prematurely concluding that targeted policy programs in neighborhoods are ineffective. Based on our analysis, we invite academics and policymakers to rethink contemporary neighborhood housing dynamics.
Inclusive pages
40-68
ISBN/ISSN
0888-2746
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
Volume
42
Issue
1
Peer Reviewed
yes
eCommons Citation
Hanka, Matthew J.; Ambrosius, Joshua D.; Gilderbloom, John I.; and Wresinski, Keith E., "Contemporary Neighborhood Housing Dynamics in a Mid-Sized U.S. City: The Policy Consequences of Mismeasuring the Dependent Variable" (2015). Political Science Faculty Publications. 44.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/pol_fac_pub/44
