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The Furman Center’s Current Research Agenda

The Furman Center’s research examines the impact various forms of land use regulation, real estate development and other public and private place-based investments have upon the affordability and character of surrounding neighborhoods. Below is a list of our current projects.

Housing's Impact on Local Schools

In cooperation with NYU’s Institute for Education and Social Policy, the Furman Center is assessing whether, and in what ways, publicly-financed housing investment drives changes in local schools.  The study will analyze whether the City’s investments in new and rehabilitated housing resulted in crowding in existing public elementary schools or spurred the opening of new schools.  It will look at how (if at all) the City’s investments in housing changed the characteristics or mobility of students in the neighborhood schools, and how they affected the allocation of resources, the characteristics of teachers, student's test scores and other measures of quality and student performance in neighborhood schools.

Public Housing and Schools

In another joint project with NYU's Institute for Education and Social Policy, we are studying the academic performance of children living in New York City's public housing developments.  The analysis will compare the test scores and graduation rates of students living in public housing, as well as the characteristics of the schools they attend, to those of other poor children who do not live in public housing.  We also will examine whether children living in public housing developments that offer extensive youth services fare better than children living in public housing developments without such services.  

Mortgage Foreclosures

The Furman Center is studying the impact that mortgage foreclosures have had on surrounding properties over the past few years in New York City.  Our estimation of the neighborhood impacts of foreclosures in the City will help cities across the country determine how to best to design and target both their anti-foreclosure programs and their efforts to return foreclosed properties to productive uses. 

In May, we will host a roundtable conference on the disposition of foreclosed properties, Transforming Foreclosed Homes into Community Assets.  The roundtable will bring together leading housing researchers, policy-makers, lenders, servicers, private equity investors, and non-profit housing groups to discuss how best to leverage public and private resources to dispose of foreclosed properties in a manner that helps stabilize neighborhoods. 

Promoting Synergies Between Housing and Retail Uses

As New York City has invested in building new housing and rehabilitating dilapidated housing, community groups and housing providers alike have expressed concern that insufficient resources are devoted to ensuring that retail uses on the ground floor or in nearby buildings complement that investment. The Furman Center is researching how the different city and state agencies now work to promote synergies between economic development and affordable housing, and what could be done to further ensure that the two goals are being pursued in tandem.  Last November, we convened a roundtable of experts to talk through the issues identified in our background research, and are now finalizing a report on the existing system, as well as recommendations for improvement.

Supportive Housing

Communities across New York City (and around the nation) oppose proposals to open supportive housing in their neighborhoods because they say they fear that the housing will decrease the quality of life in the neighborhood and diminish the value of their homes.  That opposition poses a serious threat to the ability of providers to implement the recent NY/NY III agreement, which calls for more than 6,000 new units of supportive housing in the City.   Although many researchers have studied the effect that supportive housing has on the surrounding community, most of the studies have been so limited by methodological and data constraints that they do not credibly answer neighbors’ questions and fears. The Furman Center is conducting the first methodologically rigorous large scale examination of the effect different kinds of supportive housing have on the value of surrounding properties, as well as on such determinants of neighborhood quality as crime and building activity.

Low Income Housing Tax Credit Developments 

The Furman Center finished a series of studies several years ago regarding the neighborhood spillover impacts of various housing investments subsidized by the City, State or Federal governments.  With funding from LISC and Enterprise, we are just completing the extension of those studies to look at the impacts of Low Income Housing Tax Credit developments in New York City.  The research assesses whether tax credit projects in New York helped to spur neighborhood revitalization, as measured by increases in the value of surrounding properties. The Furman Center is extending the work to undertake a national analysis of how LIHTC affected income change in low income neighborhoods around the county.

Why Do Some Sites Remain Underdeveloped in Strong Markets?  

New York City’s capacity to grow depends in part upon whether land that is now under-utilized can be developed to its full zoning capacity.  We don’t know enough about what causes some property owners to develop their land under the allowable FAR (floor area ratio), or about why some owners continue a current use when development to full FAR appears to make economic sense.  We are gathering data to identify which sites in the City currently are developed under FAR, and to evaluate the characteristics of the properties, their owners, and the neighborhoods in which they are located.  We also will use focused case studies and interviews with owners and real estate professionals to assess why owners don’t develop lots to the full allowable FAR.  Using information gleaned from our data analysis and the interviews and case studies, we will try to construct a model that can predict which lots will build out and which won’t, and will suggest policies that the City could adopt to encourage landowners to develop under-used land. 

The project also will enable us to explore whether transferable development rights held by property owners who have not built to full capacity (such as libraries, schools, and houses of worship) could be better used to promote the development of affordable housing.  We are exploring both legal changes to the geographic restrictions on the transfer of TDRs and mechanisms to promote the efficiency of the market for TDRs.  We will use the research as the basis for a roundtable in the fall to bring together City officials, nonprofit housing providers, nonprofit property owners, real estate brokers, landowners and developers of market rate housing to debate whether a TDR policy can be crafted to be more supportive of the production of affordable housing.

Neighborhood Change

In recent work, we have found that neighborhood economic gain has become more common among poor urban neighborhoods around the country, but no work exists that sheds light on either the underlying factors driving these changes, or their consequences.  Popular accounts of neighborhood revitalization frequently use the term gentrification, which implies a particular form of change.  Simply put, the conventional view of gentrification describes a process through which the influx of higher income, white households (usually childless) pushes up rents and attracts amenities that cater to more affluent residents.  As these changes occur, and housing gets more expensive, the original poorer (minority) residents are pushed out of an increasingly white neighborhood.  This stylized story is both undocumented and likely simplistic.  We in fact know very little about the underlying dynamics of neighborhood economic transition.  Through the use of unique, nationally-representative Census data, the Furman Center aims to shed light on both the residential decisions underlying neighborhood change as well as the consequences of such change.

 

The Furman Center's Completed Projects

Inclusionary Zoning

Inclusionary zoning programs are becoming increasingly prevalent in metropolitan areas with high housing costs, as governments seek to encourage the production of a means of producing housing that is affordable to low- and moderate-income households without providing direct public subsidies.  However, little empirical research has been done to determine whether inclusionary zoning actually results in more affordable housing or to assess what other impacts (such as increases in prices of market rate housing) inclusionary zoning requirements might have.  At the request of the Center for Housing Policy at the National Housing Conference, the Furman Center examined the effects of inclusionary zoning programs on housing prices, and the production of both market-rate and affordable housing in three metropolitan areas: San Francisco, Boston and Washington DC.

Business Improvement Districts

Over the past few decades, New York City and other major cities have fostered the development of business improvement districts (BIDs) to finance supplemental public services in designated commercial areas. BIDs typically provide basic services such as sanitation and security, as well as neighborhood amenities such as unified signage, street lighting, and street plantings. The Furman Center has compelted a project analyzing how BIDs affect the value of commercial and residential properties within their district. The analysis may help inform policy-makers about whether and how to support the formation of BIDs, and help local businesses determine whether a BID is appropriate for their area.

Neighborhood Impacts of Investments in Affordable Housing

Public investment in construction of affordable housing often is justified by the claim that the benefits will not be limited to the occupants of the housing, but will spill over to the surrounding neighborhood.  New or rehabilitated affordable housing may improve the neighborhoods’ housing stock, reduce dangerous and unsanitary conditions in the area, encourage residents to participate in neighborhood and civic affairs, and promote greater economic and racial integration in the neighborhood.  Such improvements are expected to be capitalized in the property values of surrounding properties.

To study these claims, the Center has analyzed the property value effects of several different types of affordable housing programs:

• Subsidized Construction of Owner-Occupied Housing in New York City: This project examined the impact of city-assisted housing construction programs, such as the Nehemiah Plan and the Partnership New Homes Program, on residential property values in surrounding neighborhoods. The analysis found evidence of significant, positive spillover effects from the housing.  See Publications for a full list of published works resulting from this research.
• Federally Subsidized Rental Housing: This project examined the neighborhood effects of housing units built using four different federally subsidized rental housing programs: The Public Housing Program, the Section 8 New and Substantial Rehabilitation Program, the Section 202 Program for the Elderly, and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). The analysis shows that the programs have very different effects on surrounding communities – the Section 202 and LIHTC programs generate positive spillovers that persist over time, while large Section 8 and Public Housing projects generate negative effects initially, but those effects dissipate within 5 to 7 years. Housing for elderly residents tends to have more positive effects than housing for low-income families, and the programs that house the lowest income tenants appear to have the most negative effects.

Reducing the Cost of New Housing Construction in New York City

In 1999, the Furman Center published a report examining the cost of new housing construction in New York City. The report, which was commissioned by the New York City Partnership and Chamber of Commerce and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, compared the cost of construction in New York City to other large American cities, and analyzed the legal, economic, and other factors that contributed to the high cost of housing in the City. The Report made over 65 recommendations about how the cost of developing new housing could be reduced through legal and other reforms by government and the private sector. The research was underwritten by grants from Chase Manhattan Bank, Fannie Mae Corporation, Fleet Bank, J.P. Morgan & Co., New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Public-Private Initiatives and the Surdna Foundation. The report was authored by Jerry J. Salama, Michael H. Schill and Martha E. Stark.  Reducing the Cost of New Housing Construction in New York City: 

In 2005, the Center published an updated version of this report, which investigated two related questions: (1) to what extent does the cost of building housing in New York City exceed the cost of construction in other large American cities and (2) what steps can government and the private sector take to reduce the cost of housing development.

The analysis begins with an overview of housing problems facing the city of New York and then compares construction costs in New York to three other major U.S. cities – Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas. A wide variety of factors contributing to high construction costs are explored, including the cost of labor, vacant land availability, brownfields, environmental and zoning regulation, land use review, the building code, permit approvals by the Department of Buildings, taxes and fees, insurance premiums, green building and corruption in the insurance industry. Additionally, the report analyzes costs affecting the development of affordable housing, and looks at proposals to guarantee the production of affordable housing through inclusionary zoning programs. The report provides over 90 recommendations to reduce the cost of new housing construction. Reducing the Cost of New Housing Construction in New York City: Update 2005

The Effect of Crime Reduction on Property Values

It was generally taken for granted that reductions in crime lead to increases in property values. This study examined the link between reduction in crime in New York City and commercial and residential property values. This research was funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation. See Schwartz, Amy Ellen, Scott J. Susin, and Ioan Voicu, Has Falling Crime Driven New York City’s Real Estate Boom?, Journal of Housing Research 14(1), 2003, pp. 101-135.

Evaluating Laws to Fight Housing Discrimination in the United States

The Furman Center conducted two studies of the effectiveness of laws outlawing housing discrimination in the United States. The first study evaluated aspects of the federal government’s Fair Housing enforcement effort, in particular, the election process instituted by the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988. The study includes a survey of 500 complainants and respondents in addition to an examination of all complaints filed since 1988. The research was supported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Fannie Mae Foundation and was conducted by Samantha Friedman and Michael H. Schill. The second study analyzed the current caseloads and effectiveness of 20 state and local human rights agencies across the nation. That research was funded by Fleet Bank. The research was done by Kate Lorenz, Steven Mitra, Joshua Pepper and Michael H. Schill.

The Housing and Neighborhood Conditions of Immigrants in New York City

The Furman Center’s affiliated faculty and research staff have written five articles on various aspects of the housing and neighborhood conditions of immigrants in New York City. The research was funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation and is co-authored by Samantha Friedman, Emily Rosenbaum and Michael H. Schill.

The Impact of Welfare Reform on Community Development Corporations

In a joint research project with the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the Furman Center examined the impact of welfare reform on the operations of community development corporations in several large American cities. Among the areas that were studied and tracked are tenant characteristics, management practices, operating revenues and expenses and welfare-to-work initiatives. Field research teams collected data from CDCs, intermediaries and tenants in each city. The research was funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The co-principal investigators were Ingrid Gould Ellen, Richard P. Nathan, Michael H. Schill and David Wright. The field researcher for New York City was Judith Robinson.

Housing Abandonment

The Furman Center’s affiliated faculty and staff, together with researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, studied the determinants of housing abandonment in New York City. An Early Warning Information System, consisting of an integrated database for all residential buildings in the city was created and provided to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development to assist the Agency in its anti-abandonment program. An article on the economics of housing abandonment was publishing in 1998 in the Journal of Housing Economics. The article was co-authored by Benjamin Scafidi, Michael H. Schill, Susan M. Wachter and Dennis Culhane. The research on the Early Warning Information System was funded by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.

The Impact of Water Metering on Affordable Housing in New York City

The Center was engaged by the New York City Departments of Environmental Protection and of Housing Preservation and Development, the New York City Housing Development Corporation, and the New York City Water Board to examine the city’s transition from flat rate water charges to universal metering. The study estimated how water metering would affect current water bills and what the distribution of this impact would be across the city’s different neighborhoods. The report also examines various policy options and makes a series of recommendations. The report was co-authored by Dick Netzer, Michael H. Schill and Scott Susin.