Economic and Statistical Models for Affordable Housing Policy Design

Prescriptive planning models for affordable and subsidized housing policy design that have a local focus and which are intended to reflect aspects of current and/or best practices require detailed estimates of various structural parameters. These estimates should ideally reflect observations of actual housing units, households and development projects. We examine here three classes of structural parameters: dollar-valued benefits and costs of affordable/subsidized housing provision, correlates of measures of housing market strength, and locational outcomes of households participating in housing mobility programs. Current results for dollar-valued housing impacts—provision costs, household benefits and subsidy levels—are based on detailed administrative data from a local housing provider and generate promising forecasting models for use in regional-level planning models. Results for the remaining two classes of structural parameters are currently under development.