Projekt: There Goes the Neighbordhood

It is now a conventional wisdom that artistic, bohemian, and gay populations increase
housing values in the neighborhoods and communities they inhabit. But these groups
are small, and the evidence of their effect on housing prices is anecdotal. We argue
that artists, bohemians and gays through two kinds of mechanisms: aesthetic- amenity
premium and a tolerance or open culture premium. To examine this, we introduce a
combined measure of bohemian and gay populations - the Bohemian-Gay Index. We
conduct statistical analysis to test the efficacy and performance of this measure
against other variables that are expected to effect housing values: income, wages,
technology, and human capital. The findings indicate that the Bohemian-Gay Index
has substantial effects on housing values across all permutations of the model and
across all region sizes. It remains positive and significant alongside variables for
regional income, wages, technology and human capital. The Bohemian-Gay Index
also has a substantial direct effect on other key variables, particularly income, and
because of that has an additional indirect effect on housing values.