Subtenures and Housing Outcomes for Low Income Renters in New York City

Abstract

New York has devised a variety of policy approaches to improve the housing status of low-income households, including public housing, publicly subsidized private housing, rent vouchers, welfare shelter allowances, rent regulation, and tax incentives to landlords. Little systematic attention has been paid to how these various subtenures compare when judged by the housing outcomes they produce for low-income households in the city. Using data from the 1996 New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey, this article compares New York City's rental subtenures in terms of the following outcomes: housing quality, crowding, affordability, residential mobility/stability, and various indicators of neighborhood quality. Adjusting for differences in household and housing stock characteristics, we find that the tenant-based Section 8 program seems to produce the best set of overall outcomes for low-income renters in the city.New York City, wellspring of many of the major housing policy innovations in the United States, has not only the largest housing stock of any city in the nation (2.8 million units) but also possesses a relatively large proportion of government subsidized and regulated housing when compared to other US cities. Moreover, this government subsidized and regulated housing stock reflects a wide range of policy approaches that have been tried over the years. These approaches include publicly owned housing, publicly subsidized private housing, rent vouchers, welfare shelter allowances, rent regulation, and tax incentives. Most of these subtenures were designed, at least in part, to improve the housing status of lower-income renters, who historically have experienced great difficulty finding decent, affordable housing in the city (Plunz, 1990). However, relatively few studies have investigated the housing and neighborhood outcomes experienced by low-income households in New York City's various subtenures, and the studies that have been done do not account for significant differences across subtenures in house-

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