Commentary

This paper was presented at the conference "Policies to Promote Affordable Housing," cosponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, February 7, 2002. It was part of Session 2: Affordable Housing and the Housing Market, and is a commentary on "The impact of building restrictions on housing affordability" by Edward L. Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko.Housing - Finance ; Housing - Prices ; Land use ; Construction industry ; Local government

The Form of U.S. In-Kind Assistance

Child care and housing programs in the U.S. are marked by quality homogeneity, restricted eligibility, rationing, and co-payments that increase as recipients' income rises. Why? I show that these program 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

What Shocks Precipitate Homelessness?

Income shocks appear to be the main shocks that precipitate homelessness. Rent shocks are less important

Burn-Outs: Fire Victims in North Jersey, the Red Cross, and the Housing Market

Poor families who became fire victims in North Jersey between 1987 and 1991 generally found housing quickly, but had to pay a lot more rent. However, a substantial number could not be located after the fire, and so the conclusion must be modified because some may have gone on welfare, left the area, or become homeless. This finding is consistent with the notion that some classes of low quality housing were disappearing in the late 1980's

"Causes" of homelessness: Understanding city- and individual-level data

Studies of homelessness that use city-level observations get systematically different results from studies that use individual-level data. I explain why. The findings are consistent with a model of homelessness as a condition requiring a conjunction of unfortunate circumstances

Coddling Fatalistic Criminals: A Dynamic Stochastic Analysis of Criminal Decision-Making

Decision makers who confront a long sequence of criminal opportunities act differently from those who confront a single opportunity. If the sequence is long enough, people will take big chances in return for very small gains, even if the provability of detection is very great and the scale of punishment very large. Risk neutral people will appear to love risk. For long enough sequences of future opportunities, raising the probability of detection increases the amount of crime committed, rather than lowering it. Constitutional safeguards are an important deterrent to crime

Managing Homeless Shelters

This is a formal analysis of how homeless shelters should operate: in particular, what quality of accommodations they should provide and how they should help their residents in securing conventional housing. I also examine timing. The results extend to cover optimal police response to street homelessness as well. I draw heavily on the unemployment insurance literature

Big-City Governments

Big-city governments are a fact of American life. Over 7.3 million people live in the 309 square miles in which New York City's government provides municipal services, and in 1989 74% of American employment in the fur goods industry, 35% of the American employment of securities brokers and dealers, and 22% of the American employment of entertainers took place within these boundaries [Vilain, 1991]. Even the 25th largest city in 1992, Austin TX, had 492,000 people in an area of 218 square miles. A political history of twentieth century America without, for instance, John Purroy Mitchell, Fiorello LaGuardia, Frank Hague, Anton Cermak , the Richard Daley's, and Carl Stokes would be seriously incomplete

Racial stereotypes and robbery

Robbery is a serious, widespread and sometimes violent crime resulting each year in costs to victims of several billion dollars. Data on the incidence of robbery reveals certain striking racial disparities. African Americans are more likely to be victims, arrestees and prisoners than are members of other demographic groups, and while black-on-white robberies are very common, white-on-black robberies are extremely rare. The disparities for robbery are also much greater than those for other crimes of acquisition. We develop a model of robbery that attempts to address these and other stylized facts. The key insight underlying the model is that robberies are typically interactions between strangers which involve a sequence of rapid decisions with severely limited information. Potential offenders must assess the likelihood of victim resistance, and victims must assess the likelihood that resistance will be met with violence. Racial disparities in the distribution of income can cause such probability assessments to be race-contingent, affecting crime rates as well as rates of resistance and violence. We argue that this model helps account for several empirical regularities that appear puzzling from the perspective of alternative theories of crime