Planning for Opportunity

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings

Although there is strong evidence that living in high-opportunity neighborhoods can improve the long-run educational and economic outcomes of children, translating this into practical advice for planners is difficult. There is little consensus about how to operationalize neighborhood opportunity, and planning discussions rarely consider how much that opportunity costs, even though planners around the country must grapple with the typically higher cost of providing housing in opportunity areas. We offer concrete guidance to planners about how to best overcome these barriers. We argue for a streamlined measure called the school–violence–poverty (SVP) index based on three contemporary metrics that research shows enhance economic mobility for children: school quality, violent crime, and poverty. Combining the SVP index with data on rental prices in New York City (NY) and Greater Boston (MA), we identified a collection of high-opportunity bargain neighborhoods with lower rents than expected given their opportunity metrics and housing characteristics. We found that high-opportunity bargain areas tended to be more affordable because they lacked amenities such as restaurants and proximity to the city center that are associated with higher rents but are unlikely to be very related to children’s economic mobility.

Takeaway for practice

Here we provide a streamlined, easy-to-use index for planners to identify high-opportunity bargain areas in their communities. It has direct implications for planners attempting to stretch limited budgets by helping planners decide where to get the most opportunity for their taxpayer dollars when building affordable housing and how to empower low-income families to weigh tradeoffs about where to live and achieve better neighborhood matches. The simplicity of the index can empower families to access areas that are more affordable and offer robust public services for their children.

Keywords:

• crime
• housing
• opportunity
• schools
• vouchers

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be found on the publisher’s website.

Notes

1 To be clear, there are some dissenting studies, which have suggested that the schools are less important than the neighborhoods where children live (Burdick-Will et al., 2011; Fryer & Katz, 2013).

2 An index for the elderly poor would have different indicators; other indexes could therefore be developed for groups with different amenity needs.

3 Though the terminology is the same as what we developed in this study, the terms were developed independently.

4 The Boston Housing Authority preferred zip codes as the unit of analysis given their adoption of small area fair market rents, which are set at the zip code level. This index was originally developed for the Boston Housing Authority.

5 We included absolute value to address negative predicted rents due to very low scores on the SVP index.

6 We examined the difference between actual and predicted rents because the difference may vary from the drivers of rents more broadly, given that the rent gap controls the SVP index and housing characteristics.

7 We standardized the Opportunity Atlas’s estimate of household income at age 35 for low-income children as well as the Diversity Data Kids’ overall opportunity score.

8 The low correlation between rents in Greater Boston and the SVP index seems due to zip codes in Boston and Cambridge that have higher than predicted rents.

9 Areas in Manhattan may appear as high-opportunity bargains due to small samples of rental prices.

10 Suburban areas like Carlisle likely appear as high-opportunity bargains due to small numbers of rentals in those areas.

11 Note that median household incomes are much higher in Greater Boston overall than New York City, given Greater Boston includes many high income suburbs.

12 While there are fewer voucher holders with children than 20 years ago (Reina & Aiken, 2022), we believe child outcomes should remain a critical focus of voucher policy.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Kelly

NICHOLAS KELLY ([email protected]) recently received his PhD in public policy and urban planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently an adjunct lecturer at Northeastern University and Senior Fellow at the Boston Housing Authority.

Ingrid Gould Ellen

INGRID GOULD ELLEN ([email protected]) is Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at New York University.