Doctoral Dissertation Research: Housing Costs and the Residential Mobility of Middle-Income Renters

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This doctoral dissertation research project will examine how middle-income renters make residential decisions in high-cost cities. This project will focus on the impacts of increased housing costs on middle-income renters and how their perceptions of housing cost change and their experiences of neighborhood change impact their decisions to move or not move. This project will contribute to a growing body of scholarly literature regarding neighborhood change and residential mobility. It will increase basic understanding of population dynamics in urban areas by examining and the reasons that middle-income residents move in a changing city. Because this project will identify the specific factors that influence residential mobility or immobility in middle-income renters, project findings will enable policymakers and housing developers to better understand and serve the needs of middle-income residents in competitive housing markets and will facilitate development of more effective policy interventions aimed at middle-income residents. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.Many urban areas in the United States have high and increasing housing costs. In the ten years following the 2008 global financial crisis, the number of renters in the United States has increased in every income group, indicating that households who previously would have owned their homes now are renting. The doctoral student conducting this research project will address two specific sets of research questions: (1) How are new housing development, commodification of housing, and increased housing prices related to the spatial distribution of middle-income residents and middle-income affordable rentals? (2) How do housing costs affect middle-income renters' perceptions of housing affordability, provide information about their decisions to move or stay, and impact their experience of neighborhood change? The student will employ a mix of research methods to answer these questions. She will address the first question by analyzing census data to identify spatial relationships between housing investments and middle-income residential locations, she will develop a hedonic model of where middle-income affordable rentals are likely to be. Geographically weighted regression will be used to analyze the geography of the relationship between investment and middle-income locations. The student will address the second question using geo-narratives of residential histories to analyze the spatially and temporally specific reasons for household residential histories. Semi-structured interviews with middle-income residents will provide insights into where they have lived, why they moved or did not move, and how they make sense of the broader processes of housing commodification, investment, and gentrification in their own residential experiences. This study will investigate these questions through a case study in New York City, a high-cost U.S. city, but the findings will be applicable to other high-cost of living metropolitan areas in the United States.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.