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Housing Markets

Periodical
RAND Review: March-April 2023
The cover story describes how K-12 schools can build trust with students to increase threat reporting and strengthen school safety. The Q&A with Ashley Woo explores how restrictions on race- and gender-related topics are affecting teachers.
Mar 22, 2023
Commentary
To Help African Americans Gain Generational Wealth, Look to the Housing Market
African American families have significantly less wealth than White families, even after reaching the middle class. Home ownership is, for the vast majority of Americans, the primary vehicle for accruing wealth, and passing it down through generations. This is a crucial time for policymakers to consider policies that focus on improving home ownership rates for African Americans.
Dec 7, 2022
Commentary
Santa Monica's 'Builder's Remedy' Experiment Holds Lessons for the Region
More than 124 municipalities across Southern California are struggling to meet their state housing allocations. When Santa Monica fell out of compliance with state housing law, this triggered what is known as the ”builder's remedy“ and created a revealing natural experiment.
Nov 8, 2022
Tool
Permanent Supportive Housing in Los Angeles County: A Map-Based Tool
This tool is a comprehensive attempt to combine financing data, land use, and service operation records for permanent supportive housing projects in Los Angeles County into a publicly available map-based database.
Sep 27, 2022
Commentary
How Can Commercial Buildings Become Needed Housing?
Adaptive reuse has tremendous promise for making a dent in Southern California's housing shortage, but realizing its full potential will require thoughtful and timely policymaking.
Jun 6, 2022
Commentary
California Needs 1.2 Million New Homes. How Will It Get There?
Voluntary incentives foster increased production of affordable housing, while mandates alone increase the cost of producing housing, dampening both market-rate and affordable housing production. It is well past time to acknowledge the evidence and focus on the adoption of voluntary programs that incentivize the rapid creation of dense, infill housing available at both affordable and market rents.
May 13, 2022
Blog
Employing Insurgency in Ukraine, U.S. Hospital Prices, Reaching the Middle Class: RAND Weekly Recap
This week, we discuss the potential value of an insurgent campaign in Ukraine; addressing L.A.’s housing crisis; lessons from the 2017 battle for Raqqa; a look at U.S. hospital prices; Americans’ options for reaching the middle class; and how to help single mothers get out of poverty.
Apr 8, 2022
Report
Could Adaptive Reuse of Commercial Buildings Address L.A.'s Housing Crisis?
Repurposing underutilized commercial properties could provide 9 to 14 percent of the total housing Los Angeles County needs to produce over the next eight years. Conversion of hotels/motels is feasible, but reuse of office buildings depends on area-specific real estate prices and the size of new units.
Apr 6, 2022
News Release
Repurposing Commercial Buildings Could Help L.A. Meet Housing Needs, but Financial, Regulatory Barriers Exist
Repurposing underutilized commercial properties such as hotel/motels and vacant office buildings could provide about 9% to 14% of the housing Los Angeles County needs to produce over the next eight years.
Apr 6, 2022
Report
Transforming the Housing Choice Voucher System in California
What are the impacts and shortcomings of the housing choice voucher (HCV) program, and what are the potential effects of reforms to stabilize access to affordable housing for the most-vulnerable Californians?
Sep 29, 2021
Report
Effects of Project Labor Agreements on Affordable Housing Production
A project labor agreement requiring that a primarily union workforce be used for housing projects for people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles appears to be one reason that the city's $1.2 billion Proposition HHH ballot initiative is falling short of its goal.
Aug 2, 2021
News Release
Labor Regulations Attached to Proposition HHH Lowered Los Angeles Housing Production Through Increased Costs, Developer ...
A project labor agreement requiring that a primarily union workforce be used for housing projects for the homeless in Los Angeles appears to be one reason that the city's $1.2 billion Proposition HHH ballot initiative is falling short of its goal.
Aug 2, 2021
Journal Article
Rental Eviction and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Averting a Looming Crisis
This report recommends that the Executive Office of the President of the United States should consider establishing a task force to prevent rental evictions and mitigate housing instability caused by the pandemic.
Jun 29, 2021
Content
RAND Center on Housing and Homelessness in Los Angeles
The Center on Housing and Homelessness in Los Angeles works to address the challenges of providing affordable housing solutions in one of the most expensive housing markets in the nation and better understand and serve the needs of people experiencing homelessness.
Mar 25, 2021
Report
Estimating the incidence of a housing affordability gap across the Cambridge travel-to-work area
The aim of this study is to estimate the number of households living in the Cambridge travel-to-work area that fall into a housing affordability gap, i.e. earn below £45,000. Almost half (48.4%) of these households fall in the gap, varying locally.
Dec 9, 2020
Blog
Reopenining Schools, Affordable Housing, Unemployment: RAND Weekly Recap
This weekly recap focuses on the debate about reopening schools, how a decline in commercial real estate demand could help address the housing crisis, challenges facing the U.S. unemployment system, and more.
Jul 24, 2020
Commentary
Declining Commercial Real Estate Demand May Be an Opportunity to Address the Housing Crisis
The pandemic has led to an estimated 175,000 business closures this spring. And an estimated 40 percent of employed people are working from home full-time. This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reallocate portions of the built environment toward the urgent demand for affordable housing.
Jul 20, 2020
Journal Article
Does Large-Scale Neighborhood Reinvestment Work? Effects of Public–Private Real Estate Investment on Local Sales Prices, Rental Prices, and Crime Rates
We examine whether the substantial, combined public–private investments in Hill District, Pittsburgh, (a) increased that neighborhood's residential and commercial sales prices, (b) increased residential rental prices, and (c) reduced crime.
Mar 5, 2020
Journal Article
The Effect of Housing Wealth Losses on Spending in the Great Recession
This article represents the first U.S. study employing exclusively household-level longitudinal data spanning the Great Recession to estimate the response of household spending to negative wealth shocks induced by the sharp declines in house prices.
Sep 20, 2019
Journal Article
(Un)expected Housing Price Changes: Identifying the Drivers of Small Business Finance
In this paper, we use the Kauffman Firm Survey to examine the effect of housing price changes on small business financial variables.
Jan 10, 2017

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Researcher Spotlight

Jonah Kushner

Assistant Policy Researcher, RAND

Jonah Kushner is a Ph.D. student at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and an assistant policy researcher at RAND. His interests include workforce development and the future of work; affordable housing and homelessness; and health care delivery, health care payment, and social determinants of health.
Heather L. Schwartz

Director, Pre-K to 12 Educational Systems Program

Heather Schwartz is the director of the Pre-K to 12 educational systems program and a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation. She also co-directs the American School District Panel. She researches education and housing policies intended to reduce the negative effects of poverty on…

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