Research

Housing Shortages and the New Downturn of Residential Mobility in the U.S. (with Dowell Myers and JungHo Park), Housing Studies 38 (6), 2023.   [Journal Link]

Housing shortages following the global financial crisis have been accompanied by a new, sharp downturn in rates of residential mobility, largely among renters. The Great Recession precipitated major, lingering housing disruptions, with local mobility declining by one-third in the US from 2010 to 2019. Slow construction despite employment recovery and burgeoning numbers of young Millennials led to intensified competition for vacancies. That ‘friction of competition’ is posited to delay moves and reduce overall mobility rates. Questions investigated are how urban area declines in renter mobility are related to slower housing construction than job growth, fewer rental vacancy chains released by home buyers, concentrations of young adults, and affordability. Analysis is with the American Community Survey for the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the US Mobility constriction is a new indicator of declining housing opportunity. Similar outcomes bear investigation in other cities and nations impacted by housing shortages and the shift to renting.

The Enduraing Structure of Suburbanization and Housing Supply Constraints

(Work in progress, USC Lusk Center Research Grant Funded)

This project builds on my broader research agenda examining how spatial and historical housing patterns contribute to present-day housing shortages and segregation. It investigates how postwar suburban design—particularly FHA-influenced single-family developments—contributes to persistent housing supply constraints. Using OpenStreetMap data and morphometrics, I calssify neighborhood typologies across U.S. metros and link these to housing growth outcomes from 1980 to 2020. A triple-difference design isolates the causal impact of historical development patterns on contemporary supply elasticity. A pilot study of the Los Angeles metro, presented at the 2023 NARSC conference, found that neighborhoods with homogenous single-family use and curvilinear streets saw significantly fewer housing units added in the past decade. The project is funded by the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate and contributes to the broader conversation on zoning reform, housing equity, and urban morphology.

How Many Units Are Needed? Measuring the Housing Shortages in the U.S., [Working Paper]

(Manuscript in preparation for submission to Housing Policy Debate)

This study investigates the growing crisis of housing undersupply in the United States, an issue now recognized at the federal level. While multiple public estimates of national housing need exist, they vary widely depending on methodology and data, and lack consistent scholarly grounding. This paper develops a unified framework for measuring metropolitan housing shortages using three theory-driven metrics: the Job-Household Growth Gap, the Missing Household Gap, and the Natural Vacancy Gap. Drawing on data from the ACS, Decennial Census, and BLS for 235 U.S. MSAs from 2006 to 2021, the study finds that housing shortages are not limited to high-cost coastal cities but are widespread and accelerating. Depending on the metric, the national shortage in 2021 ranges from 2.4 to 4.1 million units. Panel data analysis shows that these shortage indicators are strongly correlated and consistently associated with worsening housing affordability outcomes. The findings provide planners and policymakers with empirically grounded tools to measure local housing needs and inform supply-side policy responses.

Enough Housing for Workers? Shortages and Well-Being When Housing Grows Slower than Employment (with Dowell Myers)

(Manuscript in preparation for submission to Journal of American Planning Association)

This paper introduces a new method to estimate metro-level housing shortages based on the divergence between employment and housing growth. Using data from the Census Bureau, BLS, and building permits from 2012-2023, we construct a "delta" shortage index and demonstrate its strong correlation with adverse housing outcomes including suppressed household formation, reduced homeownership, and lower residential mobility—especially among younger adults. The analysis also uncovers how shortages reshape household labor composition, with more workers consolidating into fewer units and a decline in empty worker households who have no workers in the household. This research provides planners and policymakers with an accessible, employment-centered framework for measuring and communicating local housing needs.

Time Use and City Size (with Andrii Parkhomenko), [Working Paper]

(Manuscript in preparation for submission to Journal of Economic Geography)

This paper provides the first systematic empirical analysis of how daily time use varies with city size in the United States. Using data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), we find that residents of larger metropolitan areas spend significantly more time commuting and less time on leisure and socializing—differences that persist even after accounting for individual characteristics. These time allocation patterns are associated with lower subjective well-being and partially offset the urban wage premium; accounting for time losses reduces the city-size wage premium by roughly 25%. The paper further explores heterogeneity across socioeconomic groups and finds that women with children and high-income individuals experience distinctive trade-offs in large cities. Post-2020 data show that remote work has mitigated some of these urban time-use penalties. Our findings contribute to urban economics by demonstrating how the costs of city life extend beyond housing and wages into the lived experience of time.