$200,000: The Cost of Living Near Good Schools

• April 20, 2012

by UrbanTurf Staff

A recently released report from the Brookings Institution reveals just how much more people have to pay to live near high-quality schools.

Oyster-Adams Bilingual Elementary School

Housing Costs, Zoning, and Access to High-Scoring Schools analyzed the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas. It concluded that on average, housing costs are 2.4 times as much (or $11,000 more per year) near a high-scoring public school as opposed to a low-scoring public school.

From the report:

This housing cost gap reflects that home values are $205,000 higher on average in the neighborhoods of high-scoring versus low-scoring schools. Near high-scoring schools, typical homes have 1.5 additional rooms and the share of housing units that are rented is roughly 30 percentage points lower than in neighborhoods near low-scoring schools.

The answer to reducing the housing cost disparity is zoning. The report found that metro areas with less restrictive zoning “have housing cost gaps that are 40 to 63 percentage points lower than metro areas with the most exclusionary zoning…eliminating exclusionary zoning in a metro area would, by reducing its housing cost gap, lower its school test-score gap by an estimated 4 to 7 percentiles.”

More from the report:

As the nation grapples with the growing gap between rich and poor and an economy increasingly reliant on formal education, public policies should address housing market regulations that prohibit all but the very affluent from enrolling their children in high-scoring public schools in order to promote individual social mobility and broader economic security.

This article originally published at http://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/200000_the_cost_of_living_near_good_schools/5446