How Housing Allowances Affect Housing Prices. Housing Assistance Supply Experiment

摘要

Experimental evidence from the full - scale housing allowance programs conducted in Brown County, Wis., (an unsegregated market with a low vacancy rate) and St. Joseph County, Inc., (a segregated market with a high vacancy rate) make up this report on how the Housing Assistance Supply Experiment is affecting housing prices. The records of the first several years of program operations and of systematic annual surveys of the rental markets in the sites reveal no significant price increases beyond those clearly attributable to national price inflation -- especially rising energy prices. Those who expected substantial price effects generally assumed faster program growth, more elastic housing demand by participants, stronger earmarking effects, and less elastic supply than was encountered in the field. The evidence concerning market stimulus, market effects, gross and contract rent increases, components of gross rent increases, contract rent changes for participants, gross rent changes in submarkets, local versus national and regional rent inflation, and rent increases for stayers and movers presented in this report leads to the conclusion that housing allowances can be judged in terms of who participates, how much they benefit, and the costs of the program relative to alternatives; nonparticipants can be assumed to be unaffected by the program. Reasons why price effects have been small are discussed in detail; they include slow and gradual enrollment, small increments provided participants, high rates of choices to repair housing rather than move, and demand shift and rent change not sensitive to these shifts. Study data and references are provided. (Author abstract modified).