THE APPRECIATION OF PLACE: A CASE STUDY OF METRO WASHINGTON, D.C. NEIGHBORHOODS

Our paper is a critical examination of the relationship between median housing value and racial composition for neighborhoods in the Washington DC metro area. The effect of neighborhood racial composition on homeownership and the value of those owned homes have been the topics of considerable prior research, but little of that research has examined how the median home values, measured at the neighborhood level, behave across neighborhoods, for different racial groups within neighborhoods, and over time. Exploring the meaning of housing value in relation to racial composition is important for people purchasing houses in particular neighborhoods, but also for those who use neighborhood level data in multi-level models. The relationship between racial composition and housing value is quite complex, but even more complex is the relationship between racial composition and housing value change over a decade. Using tract level data from the 1980 and 1990 Censuses, we estimate seemingly straightforward regressions and use model criticism, as well as other EDA techniques, to demonstrate the complexity of the relationship between racial composition and housing value. Specially, we ask: Is the relationship between housing value and residential racial composition adequately capture