Does Federally Subsidized Rental Housing Depress Neighborhood Property Values?

Abstract:     
Few communities welcome federally subsidized 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, rental housing programs, using rich data for New York City and a difference-in-difference specification of a hedonic regression model.

We find that federally subsidized developments have not typically led to reductions in property values and have in fact led to increases in many cases. Impacts are highly sensitive to scale, though patterns vary across programs.

Working Paper Series