Do Residents Think Beyond Their Neighborhood? Measuring Support for Housing at Various Spatial Scales
Location: Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies | One Bow Street, 4th Floor, Cambridge
Michael Hankinson, JCHS Meyer Dissertation Fellow, Ph.D Candidate, Government and Social Policy Program
Previous research has shown potentially broad support for an increase in the local housing supply, but opposition to housing within one’s own neighborhood, a behavior known as NIMBYism for “Not In My BackYard.” This NIMBY behavior frames the housing supply as a collective action problem prone to free-riding, where individuals hope to enjoy the benefit of lower prices without contributing to cost of having new housing nearby. Can this collective action problem be overcome through a citywide ballot in support of new supply? If so, how does the spatial allocation of that new supply affect support?
This talk is part of the Center’s ongoing Housing Research Seminar Series, which gives faculty, senior researchers, and graduate students the opportunity to present and discuss current and recent work with a mix of scholars and practitioners.
