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Urban Renewal and Inequality: Evidence from Chicago's Public Housing Demolitions

Author

Listed:
  • Milena Almagro
  • Eric Chyn
  • Bryan A. Stuart

Abstract

This paper studies one of the largest spatially targeted redevelopment efforts implemented in the United States: public housing demolitions sponsored by the HOPE VI program. Focusing on Chicago, we study welfare and racial disparities in the impacts of demolitions using a structural model that features a rich set of equilibrium responses. Our results indicate that demolitions had notably heterogeneous effects where welfare decreased for low-income minority households and increased for White households. Counterfactual simulations explore how housing policy mitigates negative effects of demolitions and suggest that increased public housing site redevelopment is the most effective policy for reducing racial inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Milena Almagro & Eric Chyn & Bryan A. Stuart, 2023. "Urban Renewal and Inequality: Evidence from Chicago's Public Housing Demolitions," NBER Working Papers 30838, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:30838
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    Cited by:

    1. Donald R. Davis & Matthew Easton & Stephan Thies, 2025. "Segregation, spillovers and the locus of racial change," CEP Discussion Papers dp2125, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    2. Guillaume Chapelle & Laurent Gobillon & Benjamin Vignolles, 2025. "Building without income mixing: Public housing quotas in France," Working Papers halshs-05039367, HAL.
    3. Stephen J. Redding & Daniel M. Sturm, 2024. "Neighborhood effects: Evidence from wartime destruction in London," CEP Discussion Papers dp1986, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    4. Belloy, Lauriane & Candau, Fabien, 2025. "Promoting social housing : Insights from redevelopment policies in Paris," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    5. repec:ags:aaea22:343550 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Cody Cook & Pearl Z. Li & Ariel J. Binder, 2023. "Where to Build Affordable Housing? Evaluating the Tradeoffs of Location," Working Papers 23-62, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Yan Liu & Xujie Wang & Yinan Sun, 2025. "A Study on the Expected Risk Tolerance Mechanism of Child-Friendly Environment Transformation in High-Density Communities," Land, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-27, July.
    8. Brunåker, Fabian & Dahlberg, Matz & Kindström, Gabriella & Liang, Che-Yuan, 2024. "Revitalizing poor neighborhoods: Gentrification and individual mobility effects of new large-scale housing construction," SocArXiv g5rzn, Center for Open Science.
    9. Wang, Yixuan, 2024. "Urban Redevelopment and Gentrification: Evidence from the Atlanta BeltLine," 2024 Annual Meeting, July 28-30, New Orleans, LA 343550, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    10. Khalil, Umair & Sanfelice, Viviane, 2025. "Housing Improvement and Crime," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    11. Disa M. Hynsjö & Luca Perdoni, 2024. "Mapping Out Institutional Discrimination: The Economic Effects of Federal “Redlining”," CESifo Working Paper Series 11098, CESifo.
    12. Victoria Gregory & Julian Kozlowski & Hannah Rubinton, 2022. "The Impact of Racial Segregation on College Attainment in Spatial Equilibrium," Working Papers 2022-036, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, revised 27 Nov 2024.
    13. repec:osf:socarx:g5rzn_v1 is not listed on IDEAS

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I31 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General Welfare, Well-Being
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population
    • R28 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Government Policy

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