The effects of cohousing on the social housing system: the case of the Threshold Centre

This work aims to assess whether cohousing communities might generate positive effects in terms of social housing. Cohousing projects are “supportive” communities where many types of informal support networks arise, referring to the concept of sharing spaces, facilities, but also properties, the decision-making process, and experiences. The costs of the sites and construction are often higher than a “normal condominium” (especially if they are resident-led communities), and sometimes, they might be responsible for the failure of the groups: inhabitants of those communities born spontaneously, without any kind of public aid, are mainly from a medium–high socio-economic status. However, in the UK, where cohousing follows mainly a grassroots model, some communities are able to keep the costs down, in particular by the creation of mixed tenure systems, collaboration with Housing Associations and self-building processes. The Threshold Centre in England allocates 50 % of the residential units for social housing. The collaboration with a Housing Association produced a “good housing” model, which allowed both a reduction in construction time and a guarantee of the creation of a heterogeneous group (but with a compact identity), as well as the inclusion of socio-economically vulnerable people.     

POLICY REVIEW

What was the record concerning housing for very low-income households under US President Bill Clinton? This paper reviews the record of federal funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and assesses how three major indicators changed between 1993 and 2000: the number of people who were homeless or who faced other serious housing problems; the net new number of affordable housing units added, including the net new number of households served by HUD housing programs; and changes in the rate of home ownership. The paper also presents a summary of how two major rental housing programmes fared during the Clinton presidency. In the concluding section, comments by a number of key observers, including several former HUD officials from the Clinton administration, are presented, along with a summation of Clinton's achievements in providing housing for very low-income households. Overall, the Clinton record is mixed at best, but on balance, inroads on the housing problems facing this group were not nearly as substantial as had been hoped and the needs continue to be acute.     

Towards Effective City Planning—The Case of Cape Town in Identifying Potential Housing Land

Vacant land in cities is an important resource as it presents opportunities for urban renewal and revitalisation and can contribute to municipal revenue. In a context of growing informality and homelessness in cities of the South, the presence of large tracts of vacant land is a sign of inefficient urban planning and a dysfunctional land market. It is therefore critical for local governments to have reliable data of the extent of vacant land parcels in cities and their potential for housing development, particularly affordable housing for the poor. This paper will detail and discuss the “Potential Housing Land Model” developed by the Cape Urban Observatory, part of the African Centre for Cities, based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. South African cities, and in this case the city of Cape Town in particular, face huge constraints in terms of suitable, well-located and affordable land for low-cost housing development. A tool like the “Potential Housing Land Tool” is one tool which could assist decision-makers in identifying such land parcels. Besides identifying land that can potentially be used for housing; the model can also allow officials to pin-point areas that are not well-serviced. The deployment of the model on the World Wide Web makes the tool available to a range of users including municipal officials, academic researchers and organised sectors of civil society who might benefit from this kind of information. The responsible and strategic use of this model and the information it provides, can facilitate a broad-based discussion about vacant land and its potential use in the city, allowing for more transparent and participatory planning. The application of tools like the “Potential Housing Land Tool” can therefore greatly assist in improving urban governance and can contribute towards more efficient and sustainable urban planning and management systems.     

Redeveloping Public Housing

The debate surrounding recent substantial changes in U.S. public housing policies and the emergence of a consensus favoring broader income mixing overlooks important historic lessons. From the 1950s through the 1970s, frequently in response to local business-led political coalitions, urban renewal programs forcibly displaced poor minority people without allowing their meaningful participation in redevelopment planning, without allowing their adequate compensation, without sufficient replacement housing, and without the possibility of their returning to the redeveloped area. These projects simultaneously destroyed indigenous social communities as they frequently replaced existing residents with much higher income households. More recently during the 1990s, reconstruction of the 1,195-unit Tech-wood and Clark Howell public housing developments in Atlanta, Georgia, as the 900-unit Centennial Place mixed-income community, evolving federal housing policies and funding, and insufficient federal oversight contributed to the Atlanta political regime and the Atlanta Housing Authority producing markedly similar results. National research to measure the representativeness of this case is needed, as is legislation mandating asset retention, meaningful resident participation in redevelopment planning, and relocation and replacement housing.     

THE DELIVERY OF HOUSING SERVICES: DETERMINING NEED AND PROVIDING FOR EQUITY WITHIN A LOCAL POLITICAL FRAMEWORK*

This article reports on a survey research project undertaken in South Bend, Indiana that attempted to determine if housing services provided by the city were delivered to those who needed them and if they were distributed equitably. With the implementation of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, decisions affecting the delivery of housing services shifted from a federal to a local political framework. The study showed that South Bend was able to successfully satisfy both federal program requirements and demands generated by important political constituencies, but it was not able to ensure that the housing services were delivered equitably to all residents.     

The housing provision chain as a comparative analytical framework

This article argues a number of points, some to do with comparative analysis and some with political choices. In relation to comparative housing study it argues that: Ex‐socialist systems in transition are seeking to learn partly by drawing on western housing experience; comparative study to form the basis for this learning depends upon a sound analytical framework; the Housing Provision Chain model provides one such framwork; the “private/public” division is better seen as a “democratic/non‐democratic division”; the various stages of the Chain and the various forms of subsidy input need to be clearly separated out. In relation to policy‐making it argues that: The notion of housing provision by “free market plus safety net” is fallacious; all western markets are carefully regulated; the central financial question concerns the distribution of state support between supply and demand side subsidies; the central political question concerns the distribution of power, money and initiative between the Democratic and Non‐democratic sectors; the questions of the optimal tenure mix needs to be approached pragmatically not ideologically.     

The lost history of urban renewal

Contrary to common understanding, the US government's policy of “urban renewal” was conceived as an alternative policy to slum clearance. Bitterly opposed to public housing, conservative housing‐industry trade associations sought a way to reform the urban redevelopment formula of clearance and public housing established in the Housing Act of 1949. In the early 1950s, the industry groups seized on citizens' neighborhood fix‐up efforts, particularly the Baltimore Plan, to conduct a national campaign to popularize code enforcement, rehabilitation, and private low‐cost housing development as methods to restore and stabilize city neighborhoods. At conferences organized by House and Home magazine and in the President's Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs, the housing industry associations fashioned policies, now named “urban renewal,” which were codified in the Housing Act of 1954. But private industry's venture in urban policymaking failed in implementation. Home builders proved reluctant to participate in the new programs, public housing hung on, and hundreds of thousands of homes fell to the wrecking ball. As urban renewal became synonymous with slum clearance, neighborhoods continued to decline. In the end, ironically, housing rehabilitation reemerged as a populist tool for reviving the inner city.     

Housing First: Considering Components for Successful Resettlement of Homeless People with Multiple Needs

‘Housing First’ programmes in the US involve the provision of mainstream scatter sited permanent housing at the initial stage of support for homeless individuals with multiple needs. This is in contrast to dominant approaches (in the US and Europe) that assert the need for successful progress towards treatment goals (usually whilst living in temporary congregate accommodation) prior to resettlement. Evaluations of Housing First indicate, however, that even those considered farthest from being housed can, with help, successfully maintain a mainstream tenancy of their own. It is asserted here that one locally based agency managing both the housing and assertively providing holistic non time-limited support packages may be important factors in the success rate of Housing First programmes. However, a caveat is added—to robustly assess the effectiveness of Housing First (and homelessness policy per se) requires continued consideration as to what ‘success’ refers to in the resettlement of formerly homeless people.     

Rights to Housing: Reviewing the Terrain and Exploring a Way Forward

Exacerbated by the specificity of housing as a welfare good, debates on housing, citizenship and rights are complex and often confusing. This article attempts to clarify the debate on rights-based approaches in the field of housing, shelter and homelessness. It focuses on the philosophical distinction between “natural” and “socially constructed” rights, and suggests that a plausible “third way” may be found by using Martha Nussbaum’s “central human capabilities” approach as a foundation for universal human rights. “Citizenship” is proposed as a conceptual bridge between the philosophical discourse on rights and its practical application in specific political contexts. For this purpose, T.H. Marshall’s classic division between “civil” and “social” citizenship rights is translated into a distinction between “legal” and “programmatic” rights to housing. The article demonstrates that it is possible to object to the notion of natural and/or human rights in the housing field, and still be in favour of clearly delimited legal rights to housing for homeless people and others in acute need. Conversely, one may be in sympathy with the discourse of universal moral rights, but be sceptical about the allegedly “atomizing” implications of individually enforceable legal rights.     

ANALYZING EVIDENCE FOR THE STRUCTURAL THEORY OF HOMELESSNESS

ABSTRACT: Structuralists believe that increased homelessness over the past two decades was caused by loss of affordable rental housing and increasing numbers of poor people in large cities. This viewpoint regards the tightening of the aggregate low income housing ratio as the primary cause and the relatively high rates of personal disabilities of homeless people as selection factors. The author uses microdata to analyze trends in low income housing supply, the low income housing ratio, and crowding in low income rental units. He shows that the claimed near 100% tightening of the low income housing ratio is only 26% and rates of overcrowding in affordable units increased by only 1%. The macrolevel trends that structuralists say cause increasing homelessness exist but are not nearly as dramatic as they believe. The author argues that theory and policy must place greater weight on the personal disabilities of homeless people that structuralists have deemphasized.     

From deficient planning to “incapable tenants”. Changing discourses on housing problems in Sweden

Since the mid 1970s, discourses on housing problems and problem tenants in Sweden have changed significantly. This article, which is based on official reports and an urban case study, accounts for this transformation at the national, the urban, as well as the work‐practice level of discourse from a constructivist perspective.

The government's understanding of high vacancy rates were, in the 1970s, associated with deficient planning and building. However, in the 1980s, focus was diverted to a crisis in the public housing sector, which in turn highlighted the “noisy neighbour” as the source of their negative image. At the urban level the shifting discourse is signified by the municipal housing companies’ more selective policy in the 1980s, and the local social authorities’ growing role in housing for homeless clients. Contradictory demands from the role as landlords and as social workers, at the level of work‐practice, resulted in a redefinition and revaluation of homeless clients. In the beginning of the 1990s, these new practices at urban and street‐levels were sanctioned at the national level, thereby completing the shift from structural to individual accounts for housing problems.     

REJOINDER TO “ANOTHER LOOK AT HOUSING ALLOWANCES”

Housing allowances do not perform as well as other subsidy approaches along many important dimensions. Limiting allowances to the very poor guarantees failure of the program, as it is the very poor who are least able to find decent housing on the private market. Studies of the Section 8 Existing Housing program demonstrate the inadequacy of the housing stock to meet low-income households' shelter needs. And the various forms of housing discrimination further reduce access to vacant units. Finally, the reduction in subsidy levels proposed in the Housing Payment Certificate program, compared with the Section 8 program, makes the program's “shopper's incentive” illusory. The program likely will result in higher rents and will exacerbate the affordability problem it was designed to alleviate.     

The new housing policy — a critique

This paper considers whether the Housing Act 1988 and other recent housing measures will succeed in their aims. The 1988 Act is necessary for the revival of private renting and the diversification of choice for low income tenants. But it is unlikely to be sufficient; too many reforms are needed for one Bill. Substantial transfers from council tenure are unlikely until local authority housing finance is reformed by the next housing Act. A long‐term replacement for BES will be needed. Artificial land shortages will continue to hamper the solution of housing problems. Housing associations are inadequate alternatives to local authorities because of their small scale finance structure and public sector ethos. Present arrangements for subsidy and transfers may ensure a housing association monopoly in low rent housing. Suggestions are made for encouraging genuine competition in this sector.     

Ballot-Box Zoning,Transaction Costs,and Urban Growth

Planning through ballot-box zoning is becoming increasingly common across the nation. Unfortunately, little empirical work has been done to assess the consequences of ballot-box zoning on urban growth and development activity. This article uses a transaction-cost approach to land use planning to assess how public referenda on site-specific rezonings impact development activity in cities. An analysis of housing unit activity from 1980 to 1994 in 63 Ohio cities finds consistent and robust evidence that subjecting rezoning decisions to public referenda created a housing unit “growth penalty” for cities. Moreover, the empirical results were consistently negative irrespective of whether the city rejected or accommodated the proposed rezoning.     

The British housing market: contained and exploding1

While the long run trend in housing prices in the UK has been upwards since the mid‐1950s the post 1998 boom represents short term volatility and threatens stability in the wider economy. This paper argues the fundamental reason driving both the rise in the real price of housing and its increased volatility is the increasing constraint on the supply or urban space applied by the British system of land use planning and its attempts to contain urban areas. Housing is an economic good and the supply of available housing space is allocated through the market. As incomes rise people try to purchase more space. This not only drives up the price of space and so housing but it also makes the supply of housing more inelastic and so the price more volatile. Housing increasingly behaves like a financial asset marker rather than a market for housing services.     

Do residents of Affordable Housing Communities in China suffer from relative accessibility deprivation? A case study of Nanjing

Affordable housing has emerged as a key issue in urban development in a wide range of countries. Themes in research on affordable housing development across the world are reviewed. Affordable Housing Communities for low income households have been built on a large scale in developing countries such as China during the last two decades, mainly in urban fringe areas. Evidence on the impact of the location on access of residents to services is rare. Studying Nanjing, this paper compares spatial access to services between Affordable Housing Communities and Other Housing Communities by measuring distances and imputing walking time between residential land parcels and facilities. Affordable Housing Communities have significantly poorer access than Other Housing Communities, because of poor neighbourhood provision of low order services and poor access to high order services. A household survey of Affordable Housing Communities and Other Housing Communities records the daily lives, degrees of satisfaction and community attachments of residents. Residents in affordable housing have low degrees of satisfaction, weak community attachments and desire to move. The findings emphasize that service provision should be planned to keep pace with Affordable housing construction, so that these communities become better places to live.     

The supply of private rented housing in Canada

Canadian housing policy objectives are generally pursued through a market framework. There is little provision of non-market housing. Thus, while Canada has a substantial private rented sector, it has only a small social rented housing sector. About a third of all dwellings belong to private landlords for market renting and only six percent are owned by public and private landlords for non-profit renting. The supply of dwellings newly constructed specifically for private market rental has fallen over the last 20 years. This fall has been compensated for in part by the supply of existing dwellings that have been transferred from other tenures. There has also been a fall in the proportion of private market rented dwellings owned by corporate landlords and an increase in the proportion owned by small-scale individual landlords, including individuals buying existing dwellings in other tenures to convert to private renting. These recent supply-side changes have been in response to three factors. First, changes to the federal tax system and direct supply incentives have reduced the attractiveness of investing in private renting for corporations but increased it for individuals. Second, the demand for private renting has fallen amongst middle- and high-income households because of demographic and tax changes. This has reduced the numbers of private renting households able to pay the rents needed to make new construction profitable. Third, other public policies have also had an impact on supply, including rent controls imposed by provincial governments and land use planning restrictions and building standards imposed by local authorities. An important feature of the Canadian private rental market is its geographical diversity, with supply-side trends varying in different provinces and urban areas in accordance with variations in demand and local policies. Tony Crook is Professor of Town & Regional Planning and Head of Department at the University of Sheffield. His main current research interest is housing policy, especially the investment decisions of private landlords and housing associations and the relationships between housing policy and land use planning. His research work has been funded by DoE, ESRC and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It has been widely published in books and in academic and professional journals. He is currently Chair of the Conference of Heads of Planning Schools. He is also active in the worlds of policy and practice. He is a member of the RTPI Housing and Renewal Panel, trustee of two housing associations, and an independent director of one of the new Local Housing Companies.     

Humanism and the Teaching of Architecture

Abstract

“Urban Threads” was an architectural installation that explored the ways in which those without land, money, and power shape the urban fabric, in particular the private territories that are staked out in the public realm and the spatial practices that connect them. All creative works in the installation were produced by women who were homeless in the context of a support group, TimeOut @ The Place, run by a collaboration of welfare agencies in Melbourne. Nine sites, located in minor lanes and alcoves in Melbourne's Central Activities District, each housed “bedrooms” and “WAR(d)robes,” a “dining room,” and a “Living Room.” The “Path of Most Resistance (and Least Distance)” was marked out between them. The installation was conceived of and curated by the author as part of a PhD by Creative Works. The question “to what extent can architecture be 'tactical' (de Certeau's definition)” is at the basis of the project.     

Rationing housing to the homeless applicant

Local authority housing departments have rationing systems where demand for public housing outstrips supply and the homelessness legislation, Housing Act 1985 Part III, is the formal method of rationing housing to the homeless applicant. Little has been noted about the ways in which housing may be rationed to the homeless although the issue of access to housing through homelessness has been brought to the forefront of debate by the DOE consultation document. This paper considers formal and informal methods of rationing housing to the homeless applicant. Rationing by eligibility rules, withholding information, deterrence, delay and dilution are discussed together with the use of discretion in the rationing process.