Some housing researchers have criticized the United States housing subsidy scheme referred to as the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program for failing to promote better opportunities for low-income persons. In this study, therefore, we examine the socio-economic and built-environment characteristics of LIHTC developments at the neighborhood level. Specifically, we aim to investigate the characteristics associated with LIHTC developments compared to neighborhoods without this kind of development. We focus on California statewide initially and then narrow our focus to examine LIHTC developments in Los Angeles County (LAC). We then compare the results from the two levels of government. We compiled data from several sources including the U.S. Census Bureau, the State of California, the Southern California Association of Governments, and other secondary sources; used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to aid in creating several location-based indicators; and employed logistic regression for analyses. Our results show that LIHTC developments at the statewide and county levels tend to be in racially/ethnically diverse neighborhoods with higher levels of economic hardship, lower rents, a higher percentage of renters, and spatial clustering of LIHTC developments. With LAC removed from the state-level analysis, economic hardship is not more likely to occur in LIHTC neighborhoods. This finding suggests, except for in LAC, state policies may be having some level of success in locating LIHTC housing outside of hardship areas. Finally, in examining additional built-environment variables in LAC, we find LIHTC developments were more likely to be in a neighborhood with a park than other neighborhoods in the county. We discuss these results further and conclude with a brief recap of results, policy recommendations, and suggestions for future research.

Scholars have recently reported the rise of neighborhoods at the extremes of the income distribution—both affluent and poor neighborhoods—and the loss of middle- or mixed-income neighborhoods. As the majority of studies on neighborhood change have focused on the cyclical process of neighborhood change, especially for poor or disadvantaged neighborhoods, this study contributes to the literature by exploring the mechanisms of affluent and poor neighborhoods’ persistence in their economic status over time. First, this research descriptively shows that affluent and poor neighborhoods within the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) as of 2010 were likely to retain their economic status during the 2000s, whereas other, relatively middle-income neighborhoods presented more diverse economic transitions. Second, by employing multilevel regression models, this research finds that several ecological and structural factors heterogeneously affect affluent and poor neighborhoods. The results suggest that affluent neighborhoods tend to respond more effectively to the decline process generated by ecological, economic, and structural forces than poor neighborhoods do. This study contributes to the urban neighborhood change scholarship by integrating different theoretical perspectives from the social science literature to understand how neighborhoods at the extremes of the income distribution are likely to persist in their economic status.

This study investigates the longitudinal and spatial patterns and spillover effects of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) developments on neighborhood-level income segregation. Focusing on all MSAs in the U.S., the results show that LIHTC units have been spatially clustered in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods over time. This research also explores the spillover effects of LIHTC units on neighborhood economic status by utilizing propensity scores and weighted linear regression to address a self-selection bias of developers’ decisions regarding the location of LIHTC projects. The results suggest that LIHTC developments, in general, are expected to increase the concentration of households that have lower income than the average household income of the MSA. However, in high-poverty neighborhoods, LIHTC developments yield positive spillover effects on neighborhood economic status. Moreover, providing LIHTC units in high-poverty neighborhoods where LIHTC units were built previously in the focal or any adjacent neighborhood also improves neighborhood economic status.

Previous studies highlight the role of walkable neighborhoods in improving the health status of residents, hypothesizing that there is a strong relationship between the built environment and individual physical activity. However, unlike theoretical prediction, the evidence is less established that residents in inner cities engage in more physical activity than residents in suburban areas. To address this gap between theoretical prediction and empirical evidence in physical activity studies, this paper investigates the links between the built environment and outdoor leisure activities under the individual time constraint. We conducted path analysis, employing the samples of Los Angeles County in NHTS (National Household Travel Survey, 2008–2009). Empirical results revealed that individual time constraints have a significant negative effect on leisure time spent in outdoors, but the influence was marginal. Surprisingly, the access to local resource (e.g., park area) still matters even after time constraints are controlled for. Regarding the effects of other covariates, safety (perceived), attitude, and disability showed the largest association with outdoor leisure activities amongst the independent variables with the expected sign. Based on these results, this study not only confirms that the lack of time plays a role as a barrier of the outdoor leisure activity, but also proves that park area can be considered as a facilitator. However, the behavioral decision for outdoor leisure activities is about more than time constraints and the built environment since the effects of both are much smaller than other key covariates.