What is it about?
We test the effect of Seattle’s discontinuous sidewalk requirement, on the number of housing units per construction permit. The analysis uses Discontinuity Linear Regression (DLR) on a database of Seattle’s housing construction permits during January-2015 to January-2018, controlled by 51 socioeconomic, planning and geographic variables. We find that the discontinuous sidewalks requirement reduces the number of housing units in about 75% of a housing unit per permit, which at the aggregate level amounts to around 335 fewer housing units during the period of analysis.
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Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Besides directly testing the effect of a discontinuous in-kind development contribution, the research setup allows us to discuss a wider, more structural problem: the possibility of contributions avoidance due to spatial substitution. In contrast, spatially continuous (i.e. city-level) contributions cannot be avoided by performing spatial substitution, and they are internalized by the housing supply side (market-neutral).
Perspectives
This paper uses a case study to contribute to a more general discussion regarding the interactions between urban regulation, housing supply and prices.
Dr. Nestor Garza
California State University Dominguez Hills
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Housing supply and development contributions: a case study of sidewalks in Seattle, International Journal of Housing Markets and Analysis, October 2023, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/ijhma-07-2023-0090.
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