please do not cite or circulate without permission of the authors

Joint Center for Housing Studies
Harvard University
Do Homeownership Programs Increase Property Value
in Low-Income Neighborhoods?
Ingrid Gould Ellen, Scott Susin, Amy Ellen Schwartz
and Michael Schill
LIHO-01.13
September 2001
© 2001 by Ingrid Gould Ellen, Assistant Professor, New York University, Wagner School of Public Service;
Scott Susin, Research Fellow, U.S. Bureau of the Census; Amy Ellen Schwartz, Associate Professor of Public
Administration, Wagner School of Public Service; Michael H. Schill, Professor of Law and Urban Planning,
New York University School of Law; Robert F. Wagner, Graduate School of Public Service. All rights
reserved. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission
provided that full credit, including copyright notice, is given to the source.
The research upon which this paper is based was funded by the Fannie Mae Foundation. All of the views
expressed, however, are those of the authors, alone. The authors would like to thank Ioan Voicu for excellent
research assistance and Frank DeGiovanni, Denise DiPasquale, Fran Justa , Bruce Katz, Susan Wachter, and
participants at the Joint Center for Housing Studies Symposium on Low-Income Homeownership for their
insightful comments. They would also like to express their gratitude to Jerilyn Perine, Richard Roberts,
Harold Shultz, and Calvin Parker of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and
Development and Sal D’Avola of the New York City Housing Partnership for providing them with the data
necessary to complete this research.
This paper was prepared for the Joint Center for Housing Studies’ Symposium on Low-Income
Homeownership as an Asset-Building Strategy and an earlier version was presented at the symposium held
November 14-15, 2000, at Harvard University. The Symposium was funded by the Ford Foundation, Freddie
Mac, and the Research Institute for Housing America.
This paper, along with others prepared for the Symposium, will be published as a forthcoming book by the
Brookings Institution and its Center for Urban and Metropolitan Policy.
All opinions expressed are those of the authors and not those of the Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard
University, the Ford Foundation, Freddie Mac, and the Research Institute for Housing America.