Place-Based Policies and the Housing Market

We study the economic effects of place-based policies in the housing market, by investigating the effects of a place-based program on prices of surrounding owner-occupied properties. The program improved the quality of public housing in 83 impoverished neighborhoods throughout the Netherlands. We combine a first-difference approach with a fuzzy regression-discontinuity design to address the fundamental issue that these neighborhoods are endogenously treated. Improvements in public housing induced surrounding housing prices to increase by 3.5%. The program's external benefits are sizable and at least half of the value of investments in public housing.