Essays on housing policies

Abstract

This dissertation comprises three essays on housing policies. The first chapter evaluates the effect of affordable housing policy on households’ rent burden using the 421-a Tax Exemption Program in New York City. The program requires developers of housing projects in Geographic Exclusion Areas (GEA) to provide 20% of new units as affordable housing for a tax benefit. I find that the program helps to ease households’ rent burden. Furthermore, the GEA restriction affects households’ rent burden heterogeneously, depending on their income level. Specifically, the GEA restriction makes it more likely that low-income households’ rent burden decreases, but middle-class households’ rent burden increases. I suggest that this heterogeneous effect of the program is because developers constructed luxurious market-rate units to cross-subsidize affordable units. The second chapter evaluates the impact of a housing market stabilization policy, using the Administrative Action for Housing Market Stability in Korea in 2020. In this Action, the authority pervasively designated High-Speculative Areas and Areas subject to Adjustment, in which it imposed stricter regulations on mortgage loan underwriting and levied heavier property tax. I find that the Action mitigated the overheated housing market. Specifically, the designation of regulated areas led to a 5 percent reduction in apartment prices. In the last chapter, I examine the impact of the housing structure composition of urban areas on greenhouse gas emissions. The housing structure composition in a city have an impact on the commuting patterns of residents living in there, and eventually affect the carbon dioxide emissions generated from transportation sector. I find that a metropolitan city covered by residential units accommodating fewer households generates the higher carbon dioxide emissions from passenger cars or light-duty vehicles. Specifically, a one percent point decrease in the share of single-detached housing units causes about 2% less on-road carbon dioxide emissions per person.