Yes or Not in My Backyard (YIMBY vs. NIMBY)? The Impact of New Social Housing Construction on Single-Family House Prices in Quebec City (Canada)

Abstract

The development of new social housing faces important resistance by local population, a phenomenon knows as the “not in my backyard” movement. One argument from residents to oppose such project is the idea that new construction will negatively impact property values. This is what this paper aims to investigate. The analysis is based on a complete recension of the new social housing projects built between 2000 and 2020 and on single-family house transactions that occurred between 2004 and 2020 in Quebec City (Canada). A repeated sales model integrating a difference-in-differences estimator is developed to isolate the net price premium related to the emergence of a new social housing building while accounting for the possible heterogeneity impact related to characteristics of the building, including the number of apartments and the type of clientele hosted as well as the local characteristics, such as the spatial concentration of social housing buildings and distance to the city center. The results show a complex net price premium rent function that leads to mixed conclusions and has important implications for the development of new social housing projects.