New research finds restrictive land use laws directly increase homelessness rates by 9-12%, challenging certain (and more common than it should be) claims about housing policy
Interesting, but if I understand what I just read correctly, natural constraints, i.e. the underlying geography of a city, has greater power in explaining homelessness than the regulations that are featured in the title. And if those natural constraints and the regulations interact, i,.e, the regulations reflect the terrain (and experience suggests that they probably do, though not necessarily in a tidy one-to-one way) then what's actually being measured?
Think of this, geographic constraints also act as physical limits to housing supply (like in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Hawaii as being limited on how much land they can build on), not to mention other stuff the study didn't cover.
The study uses regression models to tease out the effects, and commented on how each of those effects impacts homelessness.
They are indeed physical constraints, as would be, say, a shortage of water supply or sewage treatment capacity.
I confess to an abiding skepticism about this type of study if the results are not backed up by corresponding field work (one could go ask the homeless why they're out there). Upfront, they are hard to design properly. And the results are easily taken too simply.
Interesting, but if I understand what I just read correctly, natural constraints, i.e. the underlying geography of a city, has greater power in explaining homelessness than the regulations that are featured in the title. And if those natural constraints and the regulations interact, i,.e, the regulations reflect the terrain (and experience suggests that they probably do, though not necessarily in a tidy one-to-one way) then what's actually being measured?
Think of this, geographic constraints also act as physical limits to housing supply (like in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Hawaii as being limited on how much land they can build on), not to mention other stuff the study didn't cover.
The study uses regression models to tease out the effects, and commented on how each of those effects impacts homelessness.
They are indeed physical constraints, as would be, say, a shortage of water supply or sewage treatment capacity.
I confess to an abiding skepticism about this type of study if the results are not backed up by corresponding field work (one could go ask the homeless why they're out there). Upfront, they are hard to design properly. And the results are easily taken too simply.