The standard argument against affordable housing is pretty simple: It lowers a neighborhood’s home prices. Here’s the thing, though: The data doesn’t support it.
Residential real estate site tracked tracked housing prices in 20 of the most expensive US markets between 1996 and 2006. The company found that home values within 2,000 feet of low-income housing projects were virtually identical to those for houses between 2,000 and 4,000 feet away from such projects.
Those findings back up decades of research showing that “most new affordable housing does not have a negative impact on home values,” says Kristy Wang, director of community planning policy at urban research group SPUR.
“The bottom line for NIMBYs who fear that property values will take a hit when a low-income housing project locates nearby is that their anxiety is largely unfounded, at least in cities where housing is either expensive or in short supply,” Trulia said in its report.
For its research, Trulia compared home prices around 3,083 new low-income housing sites during the nine years before and after they opened (the Year 0 in the chart). The only exception was a price decline in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a slight increase in Denver, Colorado. The findings roughly align with affordable-housing data collected by the National Housing Conference (pdf), the Association of Bay Area Governments, and realtor associations.
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