Furman Center Research Featured in HUD’s Cityscape Journal

March 27, 2012: Two Furman Center research papers were featured in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Cityscape, a journal on policy development and research. Furman researchers, Samuel Dastrup, Simon McDonnell, and Vincent Reina’s paper “Household Energy Bills and Subsidized Housing” examines the incentives for different billing arrangements under the Project-based Section 8, Section 8 voucher, Public Housing, and Low Income Housing Tax Credit programs compared to unassisted properties. The study finds that assisted tenants’ rent is more likely to include utilities, which reduces the incentive for energy efficient investments. Research Fellow Vincent Reina and Data Manager Michael Williams’ paper “The Importance of Using Layered Data to Analyze Housing: The Case of the Subsidized Housing Information Project” features the Furman Center’s Subsidized Housing Information Project (SHIP) database, which combines more than 50 disparate data sets to provide extensive information on nearly 235,000 units of privately-owned subsidized rental housing in New York City. The article shows how the layering of data in the SHIP database provides a more accurate estimate of how many units have been developed, preserved, and may expire from their subsidy program, while the pooling of data allows for the analysis of financing trends for housing subsidy programs. Find the full papers here.