Reducing gun-related homicides would have a positive impact on housing prices in cities across the United States, according to a Center for American Progress report released this week.

The report studied violent crimes in eight cities across the country and found that reducing the rate of homicides corresponds to rising housing prices. According to the report, cities like Boston and Philadelphia would see increases in home prices worth billions of dollars:

On average, a reduction in a given year of one homicide in a zip code causes a 1.5 percent increase in housing values in that same zip code the following year. We applied these findings to available data on the value of the housing stock in the metropolitan areas of all eight cities. The estimated increases in the value of the housing stock for the eight cities and their immediate metropolitan areas, following a 10 percent reduction in homicides, range from $600 million in Jacksonville and the surrounding area to $800 million in the Milwaukee area, to $3.2 billion in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs, and $4.4 billion in the Boston area. Unfortunately, inconsistent reporting of other types of violent crime—rapes, assaults, and robberies—preclude a reliable analysis of the impact on housing values of changes in the incidence of those crimes.

Boosting housing values in these areas and others would help cities and states solve their dire budget situations as well, since it would increase the amount the cities and states take in through property taxes. That would help avoid cuts to education and other vital programs that have been crunched during the recession and recovery.

And because two-thirds of homicides are committed with handguns, this report makes it clear that reducing the amount of handguns in our communities — and thus reducing the amount of violent crime committed with those guns — has positive economic benefits.

In light of the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling today upholding the Affordable Care Act as constitutional under Congress’ power of taxation, Congressional Republicans moved quickly to spin this loss as a “massive tax increase.”

But if these Republicans believe that individual mandates constitutes a tax increase, they must therefore believe that Mitt Romney raised taxes in Massachusetts when he signed RomneyCare into law. Here are just some of the scores of House and Senate Republicans who apparently believe Romney is a tax raiser:

1. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): The Supreme Court has spoken. This law is a tax. The bill was sold to the American people on a deception
2. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH): House Republicans remain committed to #FullRepeal of the president’s health care law and all its tax hikes, fees and mandates
3. House Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA): #ObamaCareInThreeWords –> Huge Tax Increase. < -- ‪#FullRepeal ‪#ObamaTax
4. Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL): Check out this interview with President Obama from 2009 when he “absolutely” rejects the idea that the healthcare…
5. Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-KS): Flashback: White House sold #Obamacare as “NOT A TAX” in 2009http://1.usa.gov/LDAWsH #hcr #tcot
6. Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL): We must now face 2 realities: 1 the Pres #healthcare plan is a new tax & now the law of the land & 2 that #FullRepeal has to be top priority
7. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS): Health care law still jeopardizes access to quality care for many in KS & stifles job growth via higher taxes & costly regs. #FullRepeal
8. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH): By imposing coercive tax on Americans, hc law is an unprecedented fed overreach into personal lives. Will continue to fight to repeal it.
9. Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV): #ObamaCare has now been affirmed as a colossal #TaxIncrease on middle class Nevadans & @Berkley4Senate voted for it.
10. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX): Ways & Means: Supreme Court’s Health Law Decision Leaves in Place 21 Tax Hikes Costing Taxpayers More Than $675 Billion

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The Supreme Court ruled today that the Affordable Care Act, the comprehensive health care reform package signed by President Obama in 2010, is constitutional. The Court upheld the law’s most controversial provision, the individual mandate, ruling that it is constitutional under the government’s authority to levy and collect taxes.

Republicans have falsely claimed the mandate was the “biggest tax increase ever in American history,” so of course, conservatives immediately jumped on the idea that the individual mandate was a massive tax hike on the middle class, reviving an argument Republicans have made since the law passed more than two years ago:

WISCONSIN GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R) declared that it was a “massive tax increase.”

INDIANA SEN. DAN COATS (R) said “Right now we have something with a big tax and the American people who rejected that in 2010 are going to have a chance to break the tie in 2012.”

LOUISIANA GOV. BOBBY JINDAL (R) said “Ironically, the Supreme Court has decided to be far more honest about Obamacare than Obama was. They rightly have called it a tax. Today’s decision is a blow to our freedoms.”

IDAHO SEN. MIKE CRAPO (R) touted that the mandate was ruled a tax. “Now, we’re back into that argument,” he said.

Watch Coates:

The mandate can indeed be characterized as a tax, as the Court found. But it is not a massive tax hike on the middle class, much less the biggest tax hike in American history. The tax imposed by the individual mandate amounts to either $695 or 2.5 percent of household income for those who don’t have insurance and are not exempt based on income levels. By comparison, the payroll tax cut extension Republicans repeatedly blocked earlier this year would have added 3.1 percentage points to the tax and cost the average family $1,500 a year.

The mandate, meanwhile, would hit a small amount of Americans — somewhere between 2 and 5 percent — according to a study from the Urban Institute. The number could be even lower depending on the law’s success: in Massachusetts, the only state with an insurance mandate, less than 1 percent of the state’s residents paid the penalty in 2009.

The majority of the Affordable Care Act’s other taxes, such as a payroll tax increase and a tax on high-cost health plans, are aimed at upper-income Americans. In exchange, millions of jobs will be created as new people enter the health care system and millions of people will gain access to affordable, quality insurance that they otherwise would not have. And, as we detailed earlier today, the Court’s decision to uphold the entirety of the law will have significant benefits for the nation’s economy.

Tell Congress that you stand with Obamacare by adding your name here.

The Supreme Court today upheld the Affordable Care Act, the health care reform law signed by President Obama in 2010, ruling 5-4 that the law was constitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts joined Justices Sonya Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan on the opinion. The individual mandate, the requirement that all Americans purchase health insurance or pay a fine, was upheld as legal under Congress’ taxing ability.

Health care reform isn’t important just because it expands access to quality, affordable care, but also because rapidly rising costs and the fact that 30 million Americans don’t have insurance are weighing down the American economy. Here are four reasons why the Court’s decision is good news for the still-struggling economy:

1) Obamacare will reduce the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2011 that Obamacare will reduce the federal deficit by $210 billion over the next decade. The law is expected to save about $1 trillion over its second decade, according to other CBO analyses. The CBO found that repealing the law, as Republicans attempted to do in 2011, would increase the deficit by $230 billion over the next 10 years.

2) Health care costs for young Americans won’t skyrocket. More than 3.1 million young Americans have insurance thanks to Obamacare. Without the law, the cost of acquiring an equivalent health care plan would have risen dramatically at a time when young people are still struggling with the effects of the Great Recession.

3) Millions of jobs will be created. Health reform will help create roughly 4 million jobs over the next decade, according to a 2010 Center for American Progress report, by reducing the cost of health care and making it cheaper for businesses to hire. The law will create between 250,000 and 400,000 jobs a year, and they will be spread across sectors: according to the study, the law will help create more than 200,000 manufacturing and 900,000 in the service sector by 2016.

4) It will be cheaper for employers to provide health care. American businesses are under tremendous pressure thanks to rising health care costs, and these costs are often passed on to customers (one study estimates that each car sold by General Motors contains $1,200 in built-in health costs). The ACA, however, will make it cheaper for businesses to provide care, and not just by reducing the cost of care. Small businesses are already receiving tax credits contained in the law to help insure their employees, and it has already offered more than $4.7 billion in reinsurance payments to companies that are providing health care to retirees who aren’t yet eligible for Medicare.

Even a judge who was a finalist for appointment to the Supreme Court under George W. Bush agreed that striking down health care would have had disastrous consequences for the American economy. “States’ rights are important in many spheres, but the benefits of a national economic policy must also be considered,” federal appeals court Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote in February. “A vibrant economic order requires some political predictability, and the prospect of judges’ striking down commercial regulation on ill-defined and subjective bases is a prescription for economic chaos that the framers, in a simpler time, had the good sense to head off.” Fortunately, a majority on the Supreme Court agreed.

Tell Congress that you stand with Obamacare by adding your name here.