Housing Insecurity

Housing Instability

In this class, we focus on stories of the private rental market which caters to low-income individuals. Desmond’s account portrays the daily challenges that tenants face in securing and mainting housing. It’s a raw portrayal of the factors which contribute to insecure housing.

Foreclosures

In this class, we examine the costs of foreclosure to homeowners, landlords and renters. Reading an earlier version of the work, we discuss the importance of transparent and credible research - something that all researcher’s struggle with (myself included!). Slides

Diamond et al. (2020)

Writings:

Evictions

In this class, we discuss the negative impacts the eviction has both on housing instability and employment. We discuss the challenges of assessing the costs of eviction, from working with Judge-IV, to data linking issues, to non-count outcomes which may be quite similar to evictions. Slides

Collinson et al. (2023)

Articles:
Massachusetts’ Highly Touted Push to “Significantly Reduce” Affordable Housing Vacancies Barely Made a Dent

Landlords

In this class, we discuss the impact that landlords have on housing instability. In particular, we dicuss the landlord decision making process surrounding evictions as covered in “Nonpayment and Eviction in the Rental Housing Market.” Slides

Humphries et al. (2024)

Natural Disasters

Bloomberg, ProPublica

Case Management

In this class, we consider the challenge of carrying out randomized control trials involving tenants who face housing insecurity. We explore the challenges that arise in Phillips and Sullivan (2022) who examine the impact of providing tenants with case management services. Slides

Phillips and Sullivan (2022)

Financial Assistance

In this class, we examine the relative impacts of financial assistance. Slides

Evans et al. (2016)

Phillips and Sullivan (2023)

Insurance

In this class we consider the effectiveness of govenment sponsored insurance programs on the supply of rental housing.Slides

Bezy et al. (2024)

Right to Counsel

In this class, we discuss both the impact of eviction prevention policies as well as the challenges of empirically estimating the causal effects of policy at scale.

Power et al. (2024)