the impact of federal affordable housing programs on migration of wealthier residents.

148 Pages·2017·1.28 MB·English

University of Louisville
ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
12-2015
Trapped in the Tiebout model : the impact of
federal affordable housing programs on migration
of wealthier residents.
Yu-Chih Lin
University of Louisville
Follow this and additional works at:https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd
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Recommended Citation
Lin, Yu-Chih, "Trapped in the Tiebout model : the impact of federal affordable housing programs on migration of wealthier residents."
(2015).Electronic Theses and Dissertations.Paper 2339.
https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/2339
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TRAPPED IN THE TIEBOUT MODEL—
THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING PROGRAMS
ON MIGRATION OF WEALTHIER RESIDENTS

By
Yu-Chih Lin
B.A., National Chengchi University, Taiwan, 2007
M.A., National Taiwan University, Taiwan, 2010

A Dissertation
Submitted to the Faculty of the
College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy
in Urban and Public Affairs

Department of Urban and Public Affairs
University of Louisville
Louisville, Kentucky

December 2015
Copyright 2015 by Yu-Chih Lin
All rights reserved

TRAPPED IN THE TIEBOUT MODEL—
THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING PROGRAMS
ON MIGRATION OF WEALTHIER RESIDENTS
By
Yu-Chih Lin
B.A., National Chengchi University, Taiwan, 2007
M.A., National Taiwan University, Taiwan, 2010

A Dissertation Approved on

September 18, 2015

by the following Dissertation Committee:

_________________________________
Dr. Janet M. Kelly (Dissertation Director)

__________________________________
Dr. David L. Imbroscio

__________________________________
Dr. Sumei Zhang

___________________________________
Dr. Haifeng (Charlie) Zhang (External Examiner)
ii
DEDICATION

I would like to dedicate this book to my beloved family—
my parents and my younger sister, who have given me invaluable educational
opportunities and always been very supportive.
謹將此書獻給我最親愛的家人
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my major professor, Dr. Janet M. Kelly, for her guidance,
patience, and supports. Besides suggesting sources to find the economic literature and the
data I needed for my dissertation, she spent time checking the logic of my idea, reading
my manuscripts, and even giving me editorial suggestions. I would also like to express
my thanks to the other committee members, Dr. David L. Imbroscio, Dr. Sumei Zhang,
and Dr. Haifeng (Charlie) Zhang, for their comments and suggestions. The insightful
suggestions from each professor helped me significantly improve this dissertation.

iv
ABSTRACT
TRAPPED IN THE TIEBOUT MODEL—
THE IMPACT OF FEDERAL AFFORDABLE HOUSING PROGRAMS
ON MIGRATION OF WEALTHIER RESIDENTS
Yu-Chih Lin
September 18, 2015
Housing mobility programs have been implemented in America since the 1990s to solve
poverty concentration and to improve the economic self-sufficiency of low-income
families through housing subsidies. This policy was based on the assumption that
mixed-income neighborhoods provide better resources and opportunities to low-income
families so that program participants who relocate to low-poverty neighborhoods improve
their economic status. Currently, few studies examine the effectiveness of housing
mobility programs under a decentralized fiscal system. Specifically, the migration of
program participants may stimulate Tiebout’s vote-with-feet mechanisms and may limit
the duration of the newly-created mixed-income environment, leaving poverty
concentration and poverty unsolved. This research uses a dynamic economic model to
analyze the impacts of housing mobility programs on local taxes and public goods in both
the sending and receiving municipalities and the impacts of this change on further
migration of different economic classes. An ANOVA model and a MANCOVA model
were used to support the findings from the economic model. The ANOVA results indicate
that residents of higher-poverty municipalities did not pay more taxes for welfare and
v
health than residents of lower-poverty municipalities did because the expenses mostly
came from intergovernmental funds. However, the MANCOVA results show that the
percentage of population growth between 2000 and 2012 in the low-poverty
municipalities with more low-income affordable housing program participants was still
significantly smaller than that in the low-poverty municipalities with no/fewer
low-income affordable housing program participants. These findings accord with the
dynamic economic model, which suggests that even if the non-poor living with the poor
do not pay more taxes for the public goods used exclusively by the poor, like welfare and
health, further migration may still occur under a decentralized fiscal system. Property
taxation requires wealthier residents to pay more for each unit of other nonexclusive
public goods than the poor do. The research implies that funding anti-poverty programs at
the local level rather than the national level may stimulate the out-migration of wealthier
residents. As wealthier residents exit the newly mixed-income municipalities, poverty
may re-concentrate, limiting the effectiveness of housing mobility programs.

vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iv
ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ v
LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. x
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... xi

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1
CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................. 9
1. The Tiebout Model—Voting with One’s Feet ......................................................... 9
2. Ineffectiveness of the Tiebout Model ................................................................... 12
3. Impacts of Federal Policies on the Tiebout Model ............................................... 19
3.1 Federal policies that worsened the negative consequences ........................ 20
3.2 Federal policies that attempted to mitigate the negative consequences ...... 23
3.2.1 Definition of housing mobility programs ........................................ 24
3.2.2 Program theories of housing mobility programs ............................. 25
3.2.3 Outcomes of housing mobility programs ......................................... 28
4. Aim of the Research .............................................................................................. 38
CHAPTER III DYNAMIC ECONOMIC MODEL OF URBAN MIGRATION ............. 42
1. Assumptions .......................................................................................................... 43
2. Theory Construction ............................................................................................. 45
2.1 Two homogeneous municipalities ............................................................... 46
2.2 Impact of the poor’s out-migration on the poor sending municipality ....... 47
2.3 Impact of the poor’s in-migration on the rich receiving municipality ........ 49
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