Working Papers

"The Impact of Place-Based Housing Subsidy on Academic Performance" (Job Market Paper)

Housing affordability and accessibility is an ongoing policy debate in the United States. A key consideration that has been overlooked in empirical work is the extent to which housing affects human capital formation. In this paper, I combine the Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) database and the San Diego Unified School District data to identify the short- and medium-run effects of students residing in LIHTC developments. Combining matching methods and a difference-in-differences approach, I find an 8.73 percent decrease in absenteeism rate and a 0.05 standard deviation increase in standardized English scores. I also find positive effects on high school completion, college enrollment, and college completion.

"The Impact of Right to Counsel to the Poor: Evidence from New York City Housing Courts"

Access to formal justice system is presumed in our society, yet it remains out of reach to most poor. One crucial context is eviction in housing courts where access to justice is stark between landlords and tenants. To mitigate such disparity, New York City introduced a novel policy in 2018 to provide right to counsel in housing courts for income-eligible tenants facing eviction. Taking advantage of the staggered roll-out schedule on the zip code level, I estimate the causal effect of the policy change using a difference-in-differences approach. Despite no statistically significant impact on eviction filings, I find a 16.9 percent decrease in quarterly evictions. The results demonstrate positive impacts of tenant representation on evictions in the short run.

"The Effect of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits on Homelessness"

The largest placed-based policy in the United States, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), has provided more than twenty percent of multi-family developments since 1979. Although an increase in housing supply is observed, the effect on households at risk of homelessness is unclear. Combining point-in-time homeless counts from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the LIHTC dataset, and the American Community Survey 5-year estimates, I construct a panel dataset that allows me to examine changes in homelessness on the Continuum of Care level from 2009 to 2019. Controlling for confounding variables, I find a statistically significant decrease in homelessness with additional LIHTC units.

Work In Progress

“Social Capital Formation in the New York City Housing Court” (with Milan Markovic)

“Spatial Distribution of the Homeless Population in the United States”