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The use of administrative records--data collected by governmental agencies or commercial businesses in the course of administering a program or service--for household enumeration may be one way to significantly reduce Decennial Census costs, particularly in nonresponse follow-up (NRFU). Administrative records suffer the complications of big data in that they are collected for purposes not related to Census enumeration, yet contain a wealth of information relevant to Census enumeration. This paper describes a modeling approach to determine which administrative data are sufficiently reliable to proxy for a field response in a way that reduces costs and balances quality. Specifically, the approach is to (1) develop and assess models to determine characteristics of good-quality administrative records via a retrospective study of linked field and administrative data; and (2) choose a quality threshold, in a statistically defensible way, at which administrative records take the place of field responses. This paper presents empirical results illustrating the cost-quality trade-off of this approach applied to Census enumeration. We assess three classification techniques to further detail the cost-quality trade-off and allow flexibility in balancing predictive power and implementation complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides empirical evidence on the theory of price adjustment mechanism for rental housing in the U.S. The purpose of this paper is to provide some preliminary empirical evidence on the theory of the price adjustment mechanism for rental housing proposed by Blank and Winnick (1953). There has been little evidence on this neglected aspect of the urban housing market. Smith (1969,1974) has provided some empirical evidence using data for selected cities in Canada. Smith's findings tended to confirm the traditional rent adjustment model presented by Blank and Winnick. The rental of housing services, in the traditional analysis, is explained primarily by the rate of vacancies, since changes in rents should vary inversely with the vacancy rate within a critical zone of occupancy. Rent, vacancy, and operating expense data for four U. S. cities and four types of apartment buildings are used in the present study to examine further the price adjustment mechanism. This approach is more consistent with the original arguments of Blank and Winnick concerning the possibility of different adjustment mechanisms for various types of rental properties. The results of this study tend to indicate the cost-push elements, as measured by operating expenses, are more important than vacancy rates in explaining the price adjustment mechanism for rental housing.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and associated economic crisis have placed millions of US households at risk of eviction. Evictions may accelerate COVID-19 transmission by decreasing individuals' ability to socially distance. We leveraged variation in the expiration of eviction moratoriums in US states to test for associations between evictions and COVID-19 incidence and mortality. The study included 44 US states that instituted eviction moratoriums, followed from March 13 to September 3, 2020. We modeled associations using a difference-in-difference approach with an event-study specification. Negative binomial regression models of cases and deaths included fixed effects for state and week and controlled for time-varying indicators of testing, stay-at-home orders, school closures, and mask mandates. COVID-19 incidence and mortality increased steadily in states after eviction moratoriums expired, and expiration was associated with a doubling of COVID-19 incidence (incidence rate ratio = 2.1; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.1, 3.9) and a 5-fold increase in COVID-19 mortality (mortality rate ratio = 5.4; CI: 3.1, 9.3) 16 weeks after moratoriums lapsed. These results imply an estimated 433,700 excess cases (CI: 365,200, 502,200) and 10,700 excess deaths (CI: 8,900, 12,500) nationally by September 3, 2020. The expiration of eviction moratoriums was associated with increased COVID-19 incidence and mortality, supporting the public-health rationale for eviction prevention to limit COVID-19 cases and deaths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The weakly regulated independent mortgage companies (IMCs) had a vastly disproportional contribution to the expansion in risky credit during the mortgage boom and to the ensuing foreclosure crisis. We exploit a quasi-experimental setting, created by the inconsistency of state lender regulations between banks and IMCs and their heterogeneity across states, to isolate the impact of regulation on lending standards using county-pairs straddling state borders. We find that weaker state regulation of IMCs is associated with a sharper expansion of IMCs, particularly in risky high-yield loans, which were also of worse quality in the weakly regulated states, based on subsequent delinquency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the recent flourishing of mediation analysis techniques, many modern approaches are difficult to implement or applicable to only a restricted range of regression models. This report provides practical guidance for implementing a new technique utilizing inverse odds ratio weighting (IORW) to estimate natural direct and indirect effects for mediation analyses. IORW takes advantage of the odds ratio's invariance property and condenses information on the odds ratio for the relationship between the exposure (treatment) and multiple mediators, conditional on covariates, by regressing exposure on mediators and covariates. The inverse of the covariate-adjusted exposure-mediator odds ratio association is used to weight the primary analytical regression of the outcome on treatment. The treatment coefficient in such a weighted regression estimates the natural direct effect of treatment on the outcome, and indirect effects are identified by subtracting direct effects from total effects. Weighting renders treatment and mediators independent, thereby deactivating indirect pathways of the mediators. This new mediation technique accommodates multiple discrete or continuous mediators. IORW is easily implemented and is appropriate for any standard regression model, including quantile regression and survival analysis. An empirical example is given using data from the Moving to Opportunity (1994–2002) experiment, testing whether neighborhood context mediated the effects of a housing voucher program on obesity. Relevant Stata code (StataCorp LP, College Station, Texas) is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Neighborhood physical disorder is thought to affect mental and physical health, but it has been difficult to measure objectively and reliably across large geographical areas or multiple locales. Virtual street audits are a novel method for assessing neighborhood characteristics. We evaluated the ecometric properties of a neighborhood physical disorder measure constructed from virtual street audit data. Eleven trained auditors assessed 9 previously validated items developed to capture physical disorder (e.g., litter, graffiti, and abandoned buildings) on 1,826 block faces using Google Street View imagery (Google, Inc., Mountain View, California) dating from 2007–2011 in 4 US cities (San Jose, California; Detroit, Michigan; New York, New York; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). We constructed a 2-parameter item response theory scale to estimate latent levels of disorder on each block face and defined a function using kriging to estimate physical disorder levels, with confidence estimates, for any point in each city. The internal consistency reliability of the resulting scale was 0.93. The final measure of disorder was positively correlated with US Census data on unemployment and housing vacancy and negatively correlated with data on owner-occupied housing. These results suggest that neighborhood physical disorder can be measured reliably and validly using virtual audits, facilitating research on possible associations between physical disorder and health. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article offers an interpretation of the domestic and global dimensions of the US housing, financial and economic crisis in a Marxian framework. My key argument is that the origins of the Great Recession can be fully understood only within an analysis of the system of globalised production and the corresponding division of labour manifest in the symbiotic relationship between the financialised US-centred core and the commodity-producing periphery. The imbalance between production and finance in the US economy mirrors the global imbalance between the ability to produce and the capacity to consume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most US house price models break down in the mid-2000s, due to the omission of exogenous changes in mortgage credit supply (associated with the sub-prime mortgage boom) from house price-to-rent ratio and inverted housing demand models. Previous models lack data on credit constraints facing first-time home-buyers. Incorporating a measure of credit conditions - the cyclically adjusted loan-to-value ratio for first-time buyers - into house price-to-rent ratio models yields stable long-run relationships, more precisely estimated effects, reasonable speeds of adjustment and improved model fits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents conceptual models analyzing material hardship in the U.S. The authors suggest models that focus on a single definition of material hardship are inefficient and offer models that compare hardship regarding physical necessities to those focusing on other areas using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) from the U.S. Census. The use of hardship measurements to define poverty in the U.S. is discussed. The authors favor the use of a model which separates hardship into health, bills, housing and food categories and comment on how such a model can support policymaking and research.

The housing crisis threatens to destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of value by causing homeowners with negative equity to walk away from their houses. We advocate a legal reform that would allow homeowners to reduce principal while giving mortgage holders an equity interest. Such a plan would give homeowners an incentive to keep or resell their homes, thus reducing the market value loss of homes while protecting the effective value of creditors’ interests. Two further elements of the plan are that it uses prices based on the average house price in a particular ZIP code; and it is automated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Financial structure is an important determinant of the efficiency and stability of financial systems and the channels through which monetary policy is transmitted. We document the substantial differences in the financial systems of the euro area, the UK, the USA, Japan, and non-Japan Asia. The traditional classification of bank-based and market-based systems is shown to be too simplistic. We focus on two particular aspects of financial structure: financial institutions and the housing and mortgage markets. It is shown that institutional investors differ in important ways across the regions considered. One recent change is that Central Banks, particularly those in Asia, have become significant institutional investors. Housing and mortgage markets differ even more. We are still a long way from understanding which kind of financial structure is best. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Examines the African American housing and home ownership in Evanston, Illinois, before the 1940. Information on the domestic service suburban in Evanston; Transition of existing neighborhoods; Conclusion.

Many scholars currently link the growth of a black underclass to the persistence of racial tensions and riots in American cities. However, nearly all previous systematic studies of race riots refute these claims. We propose an alternative explanation that rests on competition processes. In this article we extend Spilerman's 1971 analysis of community characteristics and race riots to include 1954-93. Our results parallel earlier Ones that found little evidence that black poverty or racial disparities in income, education, and occupation caused race riots. Furthermore, we find that the effects of black poverty are generally opposite from what most deprivation theories would lead us to expect. Both low income for blacks and dilapidated housing significantly depress the rate of racial unrest. Finally, we find that competition that is expressed as the contraction of job opportunities for minorities created by demographic pressures and unemployment significantly increases the rate of race riots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word "homelessness" is not a useful term to explain housing problems experienced by high school-aged youths. The term "housing distress" is preferable because it includes both teenagers who are homeless and those who are at risk of homelessness. Many teenagers feel that they have no place where they belong and seek alternative living arrangements for a variety of reasons. Housing distress is a problem for schools because students have difficulties achieving academic success when they have no consistent, safe place to live. To understand how much or how little housing distress is experienced by high school-aged youths, 3,676 high school-aged teenagers were surveyed in nine communities along the seacoast of New Hampshire and southwestern Maine. Between 5 percent and 10 percent of the teenagers surveyed reported that they had been homeless sometime during the past year. Up to 20 percent of the high school students lived in arrangements that could be considered to be distressing and to put them at risk of becoming homeless. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the impact of pending cuts in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) budget on low-income households. Low-income consumers of social work services will find that housing and employment are interrelated issues of central concern. These substantive areas will wedge their way prominently into social policy, social work methods and fields of practice and research. The proposed cuts in the HUD budget will reduce the supply of and access to affordable rental units. These cuts, in combination with reduced appropriations for income maintenance programs at federal and state levels for individuals and families, will make it more difficult for low-income consumers to find rental housing they can afford. Affordable units for low-income renters have been substantially lost through the demolition of distressed public housing projects, the conversion of apartment buildings and single-room occupancy hotels to condominiums, and what is called expiring use restrictions on many private for-profit housing developments. In the 1960, federal assistance shifted from constructing public housing to providing subsidies to private developers to construct housing for low-income people at affordable rents.

The article describes the design and selection of the General Social Survey (GSS) samples of African-American respondents. The basic methods include piggybacks or amalgams, large clusters, batch testing, disproportionate sampling, and networking. The aim of the piggyback and amalgam is to reduce screening costs on a per case basis. Larger cluster sizes tend to reduce the cost per case of data collection. Batch testing is a method that can reduce the cost per screener even further. Disproportionate sampling and networking are designed to increase the take rate, or the number of eligible units located per screener. The special black frame developed for the black GSS consisted of a sample of 51 blocks where National Opinion Research Center (NORC) staff compiled a complete enumeration of the dwelling units. The selection of individual dwelling units on the sample blocks constituted the final stage of the selection of the screening sample. The second sample of blacks was selected from the frame for the regular GSS. This sample consisted of additional dwelling units in the same segments where the regular GSS interviews were being carried out.

Child care and housing programs in the United States are marked by quality homogeneity, restricted eligibility, rationing, and copayments that increase as recipients' income rises. Why? I show that these programs can best be explained as attempts to reduce the child care or housing 'poverty gaps,' subject to constraints that require that recipients be treated quite well. Such constraints are justified when the public is really not sure whether the government is acting generously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]