Large-scale, sustainable urban development projects can transform surrounding neighborhoods. Without precautionary policies, environmental amenities produced by these projects, such as parks, trails, walkability, and higher-density development, tend to result in higher land and housing costs. This will make it harder for a low-and moderate-income households to live near the projects, and neighborhoods are likely to become increasingly affluent. The Atlanta Beltline will ultimately connect 45 Atlanta neighborhoods via a 22-mile loop of trails, parks, and eventually a streetcar, all of which follow abandoned railroad tracks. This paper examines the effect of the Beltline on housing values within one half mile. From 2011 to 2015, depending on the segment of the Beltline, values rose between 17.9 percent and 26.6 percent more for homes within a half-mile of the Beltline than elsewhere. The implications for housing affordability and neighborhood change of projects like the Beltline, and associated policy questions, are addressed.

Due to a scarcity of small-area jobs data, much of the spatial mismatch literature has not directly addressed the impact of nearby jobs on neighbourhood employment rates. Such analysis is particularly needed when considering the probable effects of neighbourhood-targeted economic development. Moreover, the occupational mix of jobs and their match with resident skills have not been dealt with adequately. A consistent measure of job proximity is found to have a significant but modest effect on neighbourhood employment and unemployment rates, with a standard deviation increase resulting in an increase in the employment rate of approximately six-tenths of a percentage point and a reduction in unemployment of approximately three-tenths of a percentage point. When considering occupational match and the average occupational level of nearby jobs, the effect of nearby jobs is larger. Race and educational attainment are found to have the largest effects on employment rates.

In the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis, there has been a marked shift toward renting in the United States, with a large increase in households renting single-family homes. In the 50 largest metropolitan areas, the number of detached, single-family rental homes (SFRs) increased from 3.8 million to 5.8 million from 2006 to 2015. Single-family rentership rates increased in all 50 large metro areas, with the percentage of single-family units that are rented increasing from 11.3% to 16%. Notably, the nine metropolitan areas with the largest increases were all located in the Sunbelt. Given expected neighborhood sorting, it is important to consider neighborhood increases in SFRs. In one large Sunbelt metro area, Atlanta, increases in SFRs from 2010 to 2015 were particularly large in older, inner-county diverse suburbs. Regression results show that, controlling for other neighborhood characteristics, neighborhoods with larger Asian, Latino, and black populations saw larger increases in SFRs. The effects were particularly high in neighborhoods with larger Latino and, especially, Asian populations. Another key finding is that, in neighborhoods with lower property values, more foreclosures during the crisis were associated with sizeable increases in SFRs. However, more foreclosures in neighborhoods with high property values were not associated with increases in SFRs. This is possibly due to the exclusionary nature of high property-value suburbs and the strong demand in such neighborhoods for owner-occupied housing. Implications for policy and research are considered. Since the middle of the 20th century, the United States has been a majority homeownership nation. With the expansion of the middle class after the Great Depression and the institutionalization of more affordable and accessible mortgage markets, the U.S. homeownership rate climbed rapidly from below 45% in 1940 to over 60% by 1960, and then more gradually until 1980 (Fetter, 2013; Spader, McCue, & Herbert, 2016). Since 1980 there have been ebbs and flows in the homeownership rate, punctuated with a spike in the rate from the middle 1990s to 2004, when the rate reached a peak of 69%. Since 2004, in the wake of the mortgage crisis, the rate has dropped significantly, settling at about 63%-64% since 2015. Single-family homeownership, in particular, is not just a phenomenon of household aspiration. Rather, it was the foundation of suburbanization and suburban form, with both construction financing and homeownership finance led by the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration loan programs (Jackson, 1987). Arguably, the exclusion of renters, especially those of modest means, was and still is a hallmark of modern American suburbs. Localities employ fiscal and exclusionary zoning practices to build and maintain neighborhoods dominated by homeownership, especially in metropolitan areas where land is relatively more affordable (Levine, 2010; Pendall, 2000). The suburban ideal is marked by homeownership, and the physical design and organization of sub...

A key aspect of the U.S. subprime crisis was the accumulation of vacant, foreclosed properties in many neighborhoods and localities. This article describes zip-code-level patterns of foreclosed homes, or what are typically called “real estate owned” (REO) properties, at the peak of the subprime crisis in late 2008 and estimates a model of REO accumulation from 2006 to 2008. Three key findings emerge. First, during the peak of the subprime foreclosure crisis in late 2008, large central cities, on average, experienced higher levels of REO per mortgageable property than suburban areas. This contradicts some suggestions that the crisis was primarily centered in suburban or exurban communities. Second, the suburbanization of REO varied across two key types of metropolitan areas, with boom—bust regions experiencing more suburbanization than weak- or mixed-market metros. Finally, determinants of zip-code-level REO accumulation included high-risk lending activity and the age of housing stock. After controlling for these and other variables, neither the central city versus suburban location of a zip code nor the proportion of residents commuting over 30 minutes was significantly associated with REO growth. The intrametropolitan location of a zip code appears to have been a less important factor in REO growth than the fact that a large amount of development in newer communities was financed during the subprime boom.

In recent years, increasing homeownership among blacks, as well as other minority groups, has been a major federal policy objective in the United States.Black homeownership in the US has increased signijicantly in the 1990s, and the benefits of such increases to minority households are likely to be considerable. However, examining black home-buying patterns in the Chicago area in the early 1990s shows that an increasing proportion of black buyers are buying into segregated or soon-to-be segregated neighborhoods. The proportion of black home buyers in the Chicago area moving into tracts with 75% or more black buyers increased from 27% in 1990-1991 to 45% in 1995-1994. Although federal policies have shown promise in opening up financial access to minority home buyers, without more aggressive policies to open up home-selling markets, black homeownership is likely to remain highly segregated and likely to yield far fewer benefits than would more widely distributed settlement patterns.T h e persistence of racial segregation in housing has been the focus of considerable research and policy attention over the last 50 years. Myrdal (1944) argued that residential segregation contributed to the inferior socioeconomic status of blacks. Massey and Denton (1993) maintained that segregation has been a dominant cause of many of the problems faced by blacks in US cities. Segregation can lead to reduced access to employment, the concentration of poverty, weak neighborhood economies, and lower wealth accumulation