Shelter in place: the impact of refugee accommodation on neighbourhood appeal

The opening of refugee shelters is regularly met with protest from the surrounding community. Often, such opposition is driven by the fear that the presence of a shelter devalues the neighbourhood, either because of a concrete decrease in the quality of local amenities and public life, or because of neighbours and prospective residents’ prejudicial beliefs (or a combination of both). At the same time, it is unclear whether protests by individual residents reflect the preferences of the entire community, and whether fears over the arrival of refugees are held strongly enough to affect residents’ concrete decisions over where to live. In this article I combine information on property listings between 2012 and 2019 with data on all refugee accommodation facilities in Munich, Germany to examine whether the opening of a refugee shelter affects the desirability of the surrounding neighbourhood, decreasing local property prices relative to elsewhere. Results from the staggered difference-in-difference design find no evidence that the presence of a shelter impacts the value of surrounding properties, or changes the demand for or supply of local housing. Complementary survey findings suggest that increased contact may be driving this null effect: the presence of a nearby refugee shelter increases casual encounters between natives and refugees, which may reduce prior fears over refugees’ negative impact on the local community.

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