Moving to shared equity: locational outcomes for households in shared equity homeownership programs

Abstract

The impact of U.S. housing policy on household locational outcomes has primarily been studied in the context of rental housing assistance programs, but the impact of alternative homeownership models is less fully explored. In this study, we assess residential trajectories for households that have participated in shared-equity homeownership (SEH) programs such as Community Land Trusts and Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives. We examine changes in neighborhood characteristics that occur when households enter and exit SEH units, and compare those outcomes with similar households that entered traditional homeownership or continued to rent. We find that while entering SEH is associated with decreases in neighborhood opportunity measures, exiting SEH is associated with improvements in key measures including lower concentrations of poverty. We conclude that while entering SEH may entail moving to lower-opportunity neighborhoods, participation in SEH programs increases the long-term economic and socio-spatial mobility of participating households by enabling them to access a broader array of neighborhood contexts in their subsequent move.