A Spatiotemporal Analysis of Location Affordability and Job Accessibility in Los Angeles County, California

Juliana Phan
MASDS, 2025
HANDCOCK, MARK S.
Housing and transportation costs constitute almost half of the average American household's budget and are representative of a location's overall affordability. Investment in affordable housing and quality transportation infrastructure can significantly alleviate these costs and improve access to jobs and other resources, especially for people of color and low-income communities. This report examines the relationship between affordable housing, particularly Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) housing, public transit, and job accessibility in Los Angeles County, California, at the census block group level. I first adjust the official jobs proximity index published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by replacing straight-line distance with a more pragmatic measure based on street routes. I also distinguish between wages by creating two separate indexes—one based on overall job counts and a second based only on the highest wage category—to evaluate differences between income groups and the potential for economic mobility. I estimate the correlation between LIHTC projects and the new jobs proximity indexes by running a Gaussian regression on empirical logit transformed data and further explore the possibility of causation with propensity score matching (PSM). My main methodology involves two types of spatiotemporal point process modeling, Log-Gaussian Cox Processes (LGCPs) and Hawkes Processes, which expand on traditional regression by implementing LIHTC developments as events in both time and two-dimensional space. These models take into account the realities of how a project's location, year placed in service, and other characteristics can affect future developments. Understanding these patterns—how LIHTC housing has historically been developed, as well as how it has interacted with both other projects and the demography of the area—is crucial to effective policy. Results indicate that transportation has a clear relationship with both job access and LIHTC-funded housing. Higher transportation costs impede job proximity, while LIHTC projects are typically developed in areas with more public transit ridership. The interactions between jobs and LIHTC housing are more complicated, especially given the fact that LIHTC projects evolve with their environment and are therefore not purely causal. While the presence of LIHTC housing reduces the job proximity index, the index increases as the number of projects increases. Moreover, although some models indicate a positive correlation between the number of LIHTC projects and job proximity, the opposite is true for higher-paying jobs specifically.
2025