Brookings: Experts - Michael Stoll

The Suburbanization of Housing Choice Voucher Recipients

Kenya Covington, Lance Freeman and Michael Stoll — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Just as the suburbanization of poverty has gathered momentum, Americans who use housing choice vouchers (HCV) to help pay for their housing have increasingly moved into suburban areas as well.

Where HCV recipients can locate in suburban areas is critically important to their job prospects. During the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development implemented several policy changes aimed at giving HCV recipients more choices, but little is know about whether this is increasing the variety of housing opportunities for recipients in the suburbs, or whether suburban vouchers recipients are locating in higher-income, jobs-rich areas.

Where HCV recipients can locate in suburban areas is critically important to their job prospects. During the 1990s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development implemented several policy changes aimed at giving HCV recipients more choices, but we do not know a great deal about whether this is increasing the variety of housing opportunities for recipients when they move to the suburbs, particularly housing opportunities that connect well with employment opportunities.

This study analyzes the changing location of HCV recipients within the nation’s largest metro areas in the 2000s and finds:

Nearly half of all HCV recipients lived in suburban areas in 2008. However, HCV recipients remained less suburbanized than the total population, the poor population, and affordable housing units generally.

Black HCV recipients suburbanized fastest over the 2000 to 2008 period, though white HCV recipients were still more suburbanized than their black or Latino counterparts by 2008. Black HCV recipients' suburbanization rate increased by nearly 5 percent over this period, while that for Latinos increased by about 1 percent. The suburbanization rate for white HCV recipients declined slightly.

Within metro areas, HCV recipients moved further toward higher-income, jobs-rich suburbs between 2000 and 2008. However, the poor and affordable housing units shifted more rapidly toward similar kinds of suburbs over that period. By 2008 about half of suburban HCV recipients still lived in low-income suburbs.

Between 2000 and 2008, metro areas in the West and those experiencing large increases in suburban poverty exhibited the biggest shifts in HCV recipients to the suburbs. Western metro areas like Stockton, Boise, and Phoenix experienced increases of 10 percentage points or more in the suburbanization rate of HCV recipients.

These findings lead to recommendations that we provide greater incentives for multi-family housing, that we re-evaluate local zoning regulations, improve enforcement of fair housing laws, and facilitate the use of housing vouchers in higher-income suburban neighborhoods.

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Kenya Covington
Lance Freeman
Michael Stoll

Job Sprawl and the Suburbanization of Poverty

Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0400

In nearly all metropolitan areas in the United States, jobs have been moving to the suburbs for several decades. In the largest metropolitan areas between 1998 and 2006, jobs shifted away from the city center to the suburbs in virtually all industries. As the U.S. population also continues to suburbanize, larger proportions of metropolitan area employment and population are locating beyond the traditional central business districts along the nation’s suburban beltways and the more distant fringes.

Understanding the association between employment decentralization and the suburbanization of poverty is important because of the continued growth of the suburban poor. In 2005, the suburban poor outnumbered their city counterparts by almost one million. And during the first year of the recession that began in 2007, suburbs added more than twice as many poor people as did their cities.

The suburban poor face unique disadvantages. These include concentration in inner-ring, disadvantaged, and jobs-poor suburbs; overreliance on public transportation, which often provides inferior access to and within suburban areas; and spatial mismatch between where the suburban poor live and the locations of important social services.

An analysis of data on the location of people and jobs in the 50 largest U.S metropolitan areas in 1990 and 2006–2007 finds that:

The poor are more suburbanized in metropolitan areas with greater employment decentralization. Overall, the poor are generally less likely to live in suburbs than the non-poor (55.8 percent versus 70.9 percent). Metropolitan areas with both high suburbanization of poverty and job sprawl are somewhat larger and lie mostly in the South and West, including Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, Seattle, and Orlando.
Poor whites and Latinos are more suburbanized than poor blacks in metro areas with high job sprawl. This disparity is most marked in metropolitan areas with higher poverty rates, indicating that in such regions, poor blacks may be less able to suburbanize in response to the outward movement of jobs than other groups.
Metropolitan areas where jobs decentralized more over time experienced greater suburbanization overall, but not among the poor. This suggests that the outward movement of jobs in metropolitan areas in recent years does not by itself explain suburbanization of the poor during this time. Rather, other related factors may have propelled the decentralization of both the poor and jobs—such as lack of reverse commute public transit, or negative aspects of central cities.
Within suburbs, the poor generally live in communities that have somewhat below-average numbers of jobs. About 68 percent of all suburban residents live in areas with above average numbers of jobs compared with 62 percent of the suburban poor. Even lower shares of black and Latino suburban poor live in jobs-rich communities, particularly in higher-poverty metropolitan areas.

Together, these findings suggest that employment decentralization is a driver of the suburbanization of poverty. However, the responsiveness of the poor to the outward movement of jobs, particularly racial and ethnic minority poor, does not appear to be as strong as that for the population as a whole. Policies designed to minimize the frictions that limit broader access to jobs-rich suburbs, such as providing more incentives for multifamily housing, reevaluating existing zoning laws and development impact fees, using more housing vouchers in new suburban locations, and enforcing fair housing laws in suburban areas could go a long way toward easing mobility for the poor and enhancing their labor market outcomes.

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Read the Related Paper: The Landscape of Recession »

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Steven Raphael
Michael Stoll

Where Workers Go, Do Jobs Follow?

Michael Stoll — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Findings

Using data from the 1990 and 2000 Census of Population, an analysis of workers and jobs in the
central cities and lower- and higher-income suburbs of the largest 150 metropolitan areas indicates
that:

Roughly 65 percent of all residents and nearly 60 percent of all jobs are now located in the suburbs, with over a third of each in the higher-income suburbs. More individuals now live in the higher-income suburbs than in the central cities, and nearly as many jobs are in the higher-income suburbs as well.
Population grew strongly during the 1990s in the lower-income suburbs, while job growth was particularly strong in the higher-income suburbs. Residential populations grew by 36 percent in lower-income suburbs, compared to just 24 percent in the central cities and 16 percent in the higher-income suburbs; while employment growth was more rapid (at 26 percent) in the higher-income suburbs, than in the central cities and lower-income suburbs (18 percent each).
Population growth in the lower-income suburbs for blacks and Latinos has been especially dramatic, while their employment growth in these areas lags behind. Population growth in the lower-income suburbs is also especially pronounced for less-educated groups. But job growth lags behind population growth in the lower-income suburbs and exceeds it in the higher-income suburbs for all educational groups.
Most groups of residents in the lower-income suburbs must now commute out for work, especially to the higher-income suburbs. Major changes in commute patterns over the 1990s were observed among Latinos (and, to a lesser extent, high school dropouts), with the sharpest increases in commutes towards the higher-income suburbs occurring among members of these groups who live in the central cities and lower-income suburbs.
The accessibility of residents of lower-income suburbs to jobs in higher-income areas appears to vary greatly across metropolitan areas. Lower-income suburbs are largely contiguous to higher-income suburbs in some metropolitan areas (such as Baltimore and Boston) while they are mostly concentrated on different sides of the central cities in other areas (such as Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver).

These findings suggest that local labor market policy should better maximize access to good jobs and skill-building opportunities for all workers throughout the metropolitan area. Employer access to potential workers should be enhanced as well, regardless of where the workers and the jobs are located.

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Michael Stoll

Job Sprawl and the Spatial Mismatch between Blacks and Jobs

Michael Stoll — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Findings

An analysis of data on the location of people and jobs, including a "job sprawl" measure of employment decentralization, for metropolitan areas in 2000 finds that:

Metropolitan areas with higher levels of employment decentralization exhibit greater spatial mismatch between the relative locations of jobs and black residents. Detroit, for example, has one of the highest levels of job sprawl among the 102 largest metropolitan areas, and blacks are extremely physically isolated from jobs there. Conversely, Greenville, SC, and other southern and western metropolitan areas rank low on both job sprawl and spatial mismatch for blacks.

Greater job sprawl is associated with higher spatial mismatch for blacks, but not for whites. The relationship between these measures also holds for Latinos but to a lesser extent. Overall, metropolitan job sprawl is nearly twice as important a factor affecting spatial mismatch for blacks as for Latinos.

Blacks are more geographically isolated from jobs in high job-sprawl areas regardless of region, metropolitan area size, and their share of metropolitan population. Still, the gap in spatial mismatch for blacks between high and low job-sprawl areas is wider in the Midwest, in metropolitan areas with a larger black share of the population, and in small- to medium-sized metropolitan areas.

Metropolitan areas characterized by higher job sprawl also exhibit more severe racial segregation between blacks and whites. Adjusted for metropolitan area size, the average level of racial segregation is 15 percent higher in high job-sprawl areas than in low job-sprawl areas. This indicates that black/white segregation may be one mechanism through which metropolitan job sprawl translates into greater spatial mismatch for blacks.

The results strongly suggest that job sprawl exacerbates certain dimensions of racial inequality in America. By better linking job growth with existing residential patterns, policies to promote balanced metropolitan development could help narrow the spatial mismatch between blacks and jobs, and improve their employment outcomes over time.

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Michael Stoll

Modest Progress: The Narrowing Spatial Mismatch Between Blacks and Jobs in the 1990s

Michael Stoll and Steven Raphael — Sun, 01 Dec 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Findings

An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data on the location of people and jobs in U.S. metropolitan areas from 1990 to 2000 finds that:

In 2000, no group was more physically isolated from jobs than blacks. In nearly all metropolitan areas with significant black populations, the separation between residences and jobs was much higher for blacks than whites.
During the 1990s, blacks' overall proximity to jobs improved slightly, narrowing the gap in "spatial mismatch" between blacks and whites by 13 percent. Declines in spatial mismatch for blacks were smallest in metro areas in the Northeast, and in metro areas where blacks represent a relatively large share of the population.
Metro areas with higher levels of black-white residential segregation exhibit a higher degree of spatial mismatch between blacks and jobs. In metro areas that experienced declines in black-white segregation during the 1990s, such as Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN and Pittsburgh, PA, the spatial mismatch between blacks and jobs tended to decline as well.
The residential movement of black households within metropolitan areas drove most of the overall decline in spatial mismatch for blacks in the 1990s. By contrast, had black residential locations remained the same in 2000 as in 1990, the movement of jobs over the decade actually would have increased spatial mismatch for the metropolitan black population.

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Michael Stoll
Steven Raphael