The spillover effects of source of income anti-discrimination laws on public housing

Abstract

This paper examines how source of income (SOI) anti-discrimination laws in the United States affect the sociodemographic composition of households living in public housing. SOI laws make it illegal for landlords to discriminate against the source of rent payment, including housing vouchers. Landlord discrimination is a major barrier to voucher utilization, disproportionately affecting extremely low-income families and racial minorities. Thus, SOI laws may affect the pool of applicants and recipients of public housing that operate within the same local housing authority service areas. I use housing authority-level data and a difference-in-differences approach to examine the changes in the composition of households living in public housing. SOI laws significantly reduce the shares of poor and extremely poor residents in public housing, along with a decline in new entries to public housing. Results suggest potentially positive spillover effects of SOI laws, alleviating ‘concentration of poverty’ in public housing as a consequence of a policy attempt to improve accessibilities to an alternative program.