Toward suburbs: Examining neighborhood-level changes in naturally occurring affordable housing stock in Florida, USA

Due to a severe shortage of affordable housing in the United States, insufficient funding for housing programs, and the growing importance of preserving market-affordable rental units, it becomes increasingly imperative for housing scholars and policymakers to capture neighborhood-level changes in unsubsidized privately-owned affordable rental housing stock, also widely called naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) stock. In this study, first, we propose a unique way to estimate changes in the number of NOAH units at a neighborhood level by using the Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy and other secondary datasets. Second, applying this approach, we analyze neighborhood-level changes in NOAH stock based on the four largest core-based statistical areas in Florida from 2000 to 2016 with a particular emphasis on identifying the relative growth of NOAH units in suburban neighborhoods. Results derived from multivariate census-tract-level regressions reveal that although a large proportion of NOAH units is still located in urban neighborhoods, newly generated NOAH tends to be disproportionately located in suburban neighborhoods. The proposed approach to estimating changes in NOAH stock can help local municipalities that desire to identify neighborhood-level needs for affordable housing preservation align resources with changes in NOAH stock within a metropolitan area.