How Housing Matters: An Introductory Note
In collaboration with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation۪s How Housing Matters Initiative, Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity will be running a series of commentaries for the next two months exploring the relationship between housing and three topics:health, economic opportunity, and education. This commentary is the introduction for the series, which is entitled “How Housing Matters to Families and Communities.”
The MacArthur Foundation۪’s interest in housing dates back more than 20 years. By 2012, we will have invested $300 million in housing research, policy, and practice more than two-thirds since 2000. This investment is an expression of concern about both people and place.
In 2004, we took the next step in this work, and embarked on an effort to define the boundaries and research priorities for a new interdisciplinary research program called How Housing Matters to Families and Communities, which is the focus of this commentary series.
This process involved consultation with more than 70 scholars from an array of disciplines, and we explored a wide range of topics, including: the relationship between housing and labor markets and the impacts of housing programs on work incentives and labor market supply; how state and local regulatory regimes affect land supply, and the cost and access to affordable housing; the housing cost-transportation nexus, and the effects of extended commute times on family life; housing and health issues, including housing۪s role in triggering respiratory disease among children; and a broader range of child development issues.
In particular, two literature reviews were useful in informing the contours of the How Housing Matters research program. Johns Hopkins University۪’s Sandra Newman considered the evidence on how housing matters for human development outcomes, and a team from Harvard۪s Joint Center on Housing Studies documented the evidence of housing۪’s relationship to community outcomes.
Both papers pointed to gaps in the quantity and quality of the evidence about housing۪’s role in human and community development.
First, less was known about the connection of housing to human development than to community outcomes, although rigorous research on how neighborhoods directly or indirectly influence family outcomes was also lacking.
Second, there was an absence of scientific data and validated measures in housing studies related to various dimensions of physical and mental health, and to a broad range of child development issues.
Third, studies had also not been replicated in different types of communities and markets to measure and confirm the stability and generalizability of outcomes.
Through this exploration, we concluded that there was a solid core of high-quality research in these areas that creative researchers with strong backgrounds in both theory and analytical techniques would be able to produce important empirical results of use to policymakers.
As a result the Foundation announced How Housing Matters to Families and Communities in early 2009, a five-year $25 million research commitment with two complementary strands of work: a competitive research program and an interdisciplinary research network.
The goal of both is to deepen empirical evidence of whether and how stable, affordable housing may be an essential “platform” that promotes a wide array of positive human outcomes, both directly and indirectly, by helping to ensure greater returns from other social and public investments. In short, we wanted to understand the value of housing, beyond providing shelter alone.
We plan to achieve these goals through a range of key investments.
First, the How Housing Matters Research Network – comprised of economists, developmental psychologists, sociologists, and epidemiologists – is looking at how housing matters for young children in the context of their immediate and extended families. This interdisciplinary network, organized in the tradition of MacArthur’s more than 25 such efforts, and chaired by Northwestern University professor Thomas Cook, will infuse new ideas, better methods, and a stock of empirical knowledge into a field that has lagged behind.