Urban Institute Housing Model: Application to South Bend, Indiana. Experimental Housing Allowance Program

摘要

This paper reports on the first phase of work intended to integrate findings of the Supply Experiment of the Experimental Housing Allowance Program and the Urban Institute Housing Market Model. Both were designed to aarket effects of housing policies. In 1974, a 10 - year housing allowance program was started in South Bend, Ind. Results of calibrating a housing market model for South Bend are presented, including three sets of estimated parameters. The first set consists of housing expense to income ratios by race and family type. This set approximates the proportion of income each group would be likely to spend on housing. Estimated values are presented for these categories: white nonelderly families, white elderly / single - person households, black nonelderly families, and black elderly / single - person households. Secondly, calibrating the model also produces estimates of (1) household willingness to substitute among dwellings of various sizes in response to price changes, (2) household preference for a wealthy neighborhood, and (3) household preference for a racially homogeneous neighborhood. In South Bend, households are willing to adjust dwelling size in response to price change and they appear not to be as interested in neighborhood wealth as in racially homogeneous neighborhoods. The third set of parameters indicates the responsiveness of the housing stock to the price of housing services. In South Bend, simulations were performed using both an elastic and an inelastic set of supply parameters to test the implications of a wide range of values. Based on these three sets of parameters calibrated for South Bend, a full - scale housing allowance program was simulated for the 1960 - 70 decade. Results show that 17.5 percent of the population of households was eligible for the program, 71 percent of these chose to participate, and participants achieved substantial quality improvements in their housing. The report contains tabular data, footnotes, and an appendix listing and describing the inputs to the South Bend application of The Urban Institute Housing Model. (Author abstract modified).