Weak housing demand in a shrinking city: the potential effects of the water crisis on Flint, Michigan’s housing market and homeowners’ perceived mobility

ABSTRACT

This study explores perceived and real effects of a human-made environmental crisis (the Flint water crisis) on residential mobility and housing demand in the weak market city of Flint, Michigan, USA. We surveyed Flint residents in summer 2016 and found that a large proportion of homeowners believed the water crisis negatively affected their property values; more than half wanted to leave the city but felt constrained by the inability to sell their homes; and one-fifth considered abandoning their homes to leave the city. We used regression models to examine predictors of these responses, and spatial statistics to examine whether responses clustered in the city. Then, to see if the perceptions of homeowners reflected actual changes in the housing market caused by the crisis, we used descriptive statistics, maps, and repeated measures ANOVA models to examine changes in home sales prices and mortgages originations in Flint from 2012–2017, before and after the start of the crisis. The results indicate the water crisis had no discernable effect on the city’s housing market, likely because the market was incredibly weak prior to the crisis. The severe lack of housing demand irrespective of the crisis potentially contributed to residents’ perceptions of constrained mobility.

KEYWORDS:

• Flint
• mortgage origination
• residential mobility
• shrinking city
• urban decline

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We say “rough” because the statewide percentage includes data from the Flint metropolitan statistical area, meaning the percentage is slightly skewed by trends in Flint.

2. From PolicyMap: “PolicyMap has suppressed data in places with fewer than five sales. Data may be labeled insufficient because it is unavailable, incomplete, or suppressed. Data might be unavailable for several reasons, including missing data from a county’s deed records in Zillow’s ZTRAX database or there being no sales reported in a given place.”

3. Inflation rates: 2012–2017 = 6.8%; 2013–2017 = 5.2%; 2014–2017 = 3.5%; 2015–2017 = 3.4%; 2016–2017 = 2.1%.

4. ANOVA tests differences in means. In our case, the analysis tests differences in the means of the medians at the tract-level.

5. Using the original coding of 0 through 4 (not dichotomized), the Pearson Correlations between survey responses are as follows: property values and cannot sell (r= .371, p < .001); property values and abandonment (r = .329, p < .001); cannot sell and abandonment (r= .353, p < .001).

6. In other words, the analyses are of high and low values assigned to points not polygons (i.e., respondent home locations, not tracts).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Victoria Morckel

Victoria Morckel earned a PhD in City and Regional Planning from The Ohio State University. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP) and is currently an Associate Professor of Urban Planning & Public Policy at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. Morckel’s research considers ways to improve quality of life for people living in shrinking, deindustrialized cities in the Midwestern United States. She is interested in the causes and consequences of population loss, including issues of vacancy, blight, and neighborhood change. Morckel has several articles on the Flint water crisis, including: “Why the Flint, Michigan, USA water crisis is an urban planning failure” in Cities (2017), “Legacy city residents’ lack of trust in the governments: An examination of Flint, Michigan residents’ trust at the height of the water crisis” in Journal of Urban Affairs (2018), and “The effects of the water crisis on population dynamics in the City of Flint, Michigan” in Cities and Health (2018).

Bernadette Hanlon

Bernadette Hanlon is an Associate Professor and undergraduate program chair in the City and Regional Planning Section at The Ohio State University’s Knowlton School. Hanlon received a BA in politics and philosophy from University College Dublin, a Masters of Philosophy from Trinity College Dublin, and, in 2007, a PhD in Public Policy from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Her teaching and research interests center on the political economy of cities and suburbs, environmental sustainability, immigration, and urban environmental policy and planning. Hanlon’s recent research focuses on suburban growth and decline. Her recent publications include Once the American Dream: Inner-ring suburbs in the metropolitan United States published by Temple University Press, Cities and Suburbs: New metropolitan realities in the US, published by Routledge, and Global Migration: The Basics also published by Routledge.