Jobs–Housing Balance Re-Re-Visited

Abstract

Problem, research strategy, and findings In many U.S. metropolitan areas housing costs have skyrocketed in recent years relative to average incomes. A worsening shortage of affordable housing in these metros may push households away from job-rich cities and expensive neighborhoods into outlying areas, where housing is cheaper but jobs are more distant. To examine this issue, we revisit the jobs–housing balance, a popular topic of research in the 1990s, with a focus on the relationship between housing and the spatial location of workers relative to jobs. Our analysis draws on data from the Longitudinal Employer–Household Dynamics Origin–Destination Employment Statistics (LODES) for cities in California in 2002 and 2015. In contrast to earlier jobs–housing balance research, we find that California cities are becoming less self-contained over time, defined as a decline in the number of workers who both live and work within a jurisdiction relative to the number of commuters who travel either into or out of a city for work. Statistical models show that self-containment was higher in cities with lower housing costs and, in 2015, in cities with a greater balance between jobs and employed residents. Takeaway for practice The deepening housing affordability crisis in many metropolitan areas like those found in California are pushing workers and jobs farther apart, increasing the economic, social, and environmental costs of commuting. Policies to increase the supply of housing in job-rich and high–housing cost areas could help reverse this troubling trend, though they are likely to meet with considerable resistance. Our findings also underscore the importance of efforts that include but extend beyond housing production, such as policies to better match job skills and housing prices to the characteristics of workers.