Local power and the location of subsidized renters in comparative perspective: public support for low- and moderate-income households in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom

Abstract

In the context of worsening housing affordability for low- and moderate-income households, we assemble data from metropolitan areas in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom to analyze regional differences in the level and distribution of nationally supported affordable-housing units and renters with tenant-based housing benefits. We examine the location of subsidized renters comparatively, exploring how varying power arrangements between national and local governments over land-use and housing policy shape options for low-income renters. We find that US metropolitan areas are unique in the extent to which many municipalities exclude subsidized renters altogether; subsidized housing is disproportionately situated in areas with historically limited access to resources. The number of municipalities within metropolitan areas does not appear to impact the location of subsidized units, but the ability of localities to exclude is associated with their distribution.

Keywords:

• Affordable housing
• social housing
• vouchers
• fragmentation

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous peer reviewers, Vincent Reina, Peter Kemp, and participants in the Penn/Oxford Symposium: Housing Affordability in the Advanced Economies for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Because of inadequate data in the New York region, we exclude 291 places (representing 5 percent of the population) from our examination of voucher units.

2 The Herfindahl index is equivalent to the Simpson index, used to measure diversity.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yonah Freemark

Yonah Freemark (corresponding author) is a senior research associate at the Urban Institute. Address: 500 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, DC 20024. [email protected]. Twitter: @yfreemark.

Justin Steil

Justin Steil is associate professor of law and urban planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [email protected].