Local housing policy and residential segregation

The focus of the article is on the relationship between local housing policy and residential segregation. The former is specified as decisions concerning type of tenure and the location of new dwellings, the latter in terms of class and income. Three structurally similar Swedish cities are compared. The results show that, the more market orientated local housing policy and the less “mixed housing” is, the stronger residential segregation. One planning implication seems to be that the development of housing segregation according to class and income, indeed, may be influenced by local planning. If desegregation is given a high priority in a city, housing production should be directed to accomplish this aim.     

The effects of highways on school segregation

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of interstate highway building on school segregation in US cities. The simple ordinary least squares (OLS) model might suffer from endogeneity bias and therefore an instrumental variables (IV) model is employed to account for endogeneity of highway routes. Dissimilarity and interaction indices are used to measure segregation and the results of the OLS and IV models indicate that school segregation increased due to the additions to the highway system. The estimates suggest that highways can explain 7–10% of the variation in school segregation.     

Adaptive reuse of office buildings into housing: opportunities and risks

One way of adapting and reusing vacant office buildings is conversion into housing. Former research has shown possibilities for this type of conversion, and has delivered instruments for determining the conversion potential of vacant offices. Although adaptation and renovation of outdated offices can prove to be a successful property (real estate) strategy, conversions into housing still only occur on a small scale. There are several reasons for this, including uncertainty about financial feasibility and little knowledge about the opportunities and risks of building conversions. A meta-study of the conversion of 15 office buildings into housing in the Netherlands is used to reveal the drivers for office-to-housing conversions as well as the opportunities and risks that arise in the conversion process. The findings show that various legal, financial, technical, functional and architectonic issues define the opportunities and risks of building conversions. These insights can be used to support the decision-making processes for dealing with vacant office buildings in order to minimize the risks and increase the opportunities.     

Modelling direct and indirect water requirements of construction

Water consumed directly by the construction industry is known to be of little importance. However, water consumed in the manufacture of goods and services required by construction may be significant in the context of a building's life cycle water requirements and the national water budget. This paper evaluates the significance of water embodied in the construction of individual buildings. To do this, an input–output-based hybrid embodied water analysis was undertaken on 17 Australian non-residential case studies. It was found that there is a considerable amount of water embodied in construction. The highest value was 20.1 kilolitres (kL)/m² gross floor area (GFA), representing many times the enclosed volume of the building, and many years worth of operational water. The water required by the main construction process is minimal. However, the water embodied in building materials is considerable. These findings suggest that the selection of elements and materials has a great impact on a building's embodied water. This research allows the construction industry to evaluate design and construction in broad environmental terms to select options that might be cost neutral or possibly cost positive while retaining their environmental integrity. The research suggests policies focused on operational water consumption alone are inadequate.

L'eau consommée directement par l'industrie de la construction ne représente pas un volume important. En revanche, l'eau consommée pour la fabrication de biens et de services nécessaires à la construction peut être importante dans le contexte des besoins en eau du cycle de vie d'un bâtiment et dans celui du budget « eau » national. Cet article évalue l'importance de l'eau intégrée dans la construction de bâtiments individuels. À cet égard, on a procédé à une analyse hybride de l'eau intégrée, à l'entrée et la sortie, portant sur 17 études de cas de bâtiments non résidentiels en Australie. On a constaté qu'il existait un volume considérable d'eau intégrée dans la construction. La valeur la plus élevée était de 20,1 kilolitres (kl) m² en surface hors-d'oeuvre brute, ce qui représente plusieurs fois le volume fermé du bâtiment et de nombreuses années d'utilisation de l'eau. L'eau nécessaire au processus principal de construction est minime. En revanche, l'eau intégrée dans les matériaux de construction est considérable. Ces résultats suggèrent que le choix des éléments et des matériaux a une grande importance sur l'eau intégrée d'un bâtiment. Cette recherche permet aux industriels de la construction d'évaluer les concepts et la construction en termes environnementaux pris au sens large afin de choisir des options qui pourraient être neutres sur le plan du coût ou, éventuellement, être positives sur le plan du coût tout en retenant leur intégrité environnementale. Cet article laisse à penser que les politiques fondées sur la seule consommation d'eau opérationnelle sont inadéquates.

Mots clés: construction, eau intégrée, impact environnemental, indicateurs clés, eau, consommation d'eau, Australie     

Housing segregation and the poor: New trends in French social rented housing

Traditionally, French social housing was housing low‐paid workers with a regular job. The very poor were in private dilapidated housing. Today a new pattern is emerging: the very poor and the deprived are in the most dilapidated fraction of social housing. Far from improving their social integration, dilapidated social housing estates are stigmatizing them. Social tenants are still second‐class citizens.     

The use of direct democracy to decide housing site allocations in English neighbourhoods

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reclaim the democratic legitimacy of self-selecting and informed publics in citizen engagement in housing development planning. It argues for an approach to public participation in which the issues, and the articulation of conflicting attachments to those issues, are understood as the occasion for democratic politics. The article illustrates this approach in an analysis of the use of direct democracy to decide housing allocations in the policy of neighbourhood planning in England. Drawing on literature from Science and Technology Studies and actor–network theory, it evidences the public articulation of house-building as a matter of concern and identifies the agency of housing in enrolling publics, translating interests and in fostering debate and contention. It concludes that the articulation of conflicting interests can deepen democratic engagement in housing development planning and open up the exclusions through which this issue is currently framed.     

Towards the comparative exploration of public housing segregation in England and the United States

This paper is an exploration of the treatment of racial minorities by public sector housing agencies in Britain and the United States over the last several decades, with the objective of describing empirical and policy differences and similarities. Public housing programmes in each country have been, at differing points in time, important cornerstone's of the welfare state but each has become a residualised sector of the housing delivery system. In the context of such residualisation, the key issue to consider is whether British council housing is likely to reproduce the patterns of racial segregation, impoverishment, and discrimination which are endemic in the American public housing system.

A variety of administrative agency reports and data, court cases, as well as case studies of race and public housing policies in the US and England have been used in this paper (Smith and Whalley, 1975; Commission for Racial Equality seriatim; Hirsch, 1983; Bauman, 1987; Department of the Environment; Smith, 1989). Unpublished tables for the English Housing Trailer for the 1988 Labour Force Survey were provided by the Department of the Environment.

Despite the presence of such information, there are a number of resource and data gathering concerns that affect the understanding of the interrelationships between race, class, and public housing policy on a comparative basis including: constrained research resources; unreliable data collection procedures; unavailability of time series data; and chronically limited research on civil rights/organisational effectiveness (Liebert, 1981). Despite these shortcomings, there are a significant number of both academic and applied studies in the area which suggest basic themes, issues and hypotheses for future examination.     

The direct and indirect photolysis of 4,4'-dichlorobiphenyl in various surfactant/solvent-aided systems

Surfactant and organic solvents have individually been shown useful in assisting the solubilization of hydrophobic organics out of contaminated soil and promoting UV-induced photodecay at a succeeding treatment process. A newly proposed process is to use the mixtures of surfactant and solvents together in achieving better performance. This study was to explore some basic variables and conditions that may be useful in optimizing the performance of surfactant/solvent-aided UV systems through the selection of surfactant micelles, the adjustment of the reaction pH levels, and the addition of photosensitizer and hydrogen sources. A PCB monomer 4,4'-dichlorobiphenyl (DCB) was used as the target compound for this study; about 1.3 to 2.3 times greater DCB photodecay rate enhancements were observed by using surfactant/acetone or surfactant/triethylamine (TEA) combinations at their optimal conditions. Overdose of these additives (acetone and TEA) will result in retardation of the reactions. However, the use of surfactant with a multisolvents system (surfactant/acetone/TEA) shows an add-on effect in amplifying the overall decay rate for more than 12%, suggesting that a more complicated mechanism is involved than the simple parallel-reaction assumption.     

直接式与间接式污水源热泵系统的比较

介绍了两种系统的具体形式,分析了两种系统蒸发温度相等时蒸发器传热面积的差异及蒸发器传热面积相等时蒸发温度的差异。比较了两种系统的经济性、运行能耗及可靠性。结果表明,当蒸发温度相等时,间接式系统污水换热器的换热面积是蒸发器传热面积的3~5倍,直接式系统蒸发器的传热面积比间接式系统大0.4~0.7倍;而当蒸发器传热面积相等时,直接式系统蒸发器的蒸发温度比间接式系统低3~4℃才能提取相同的热量;直接式系统的投资不一定低于间接式系统,其能耗最多低4%~5%,相对于间接式系统而言,是不可靠的。     

The impact of the direct payment of housing benefit: evidence from Great Britain

In recent years, a number of welfare reforms have been introduced in the UK by Conservative-led governments. The most high profile of these is Universal Credit (UC), which is currently being rolled out across the country. A key feature of UC is a change in the way the income-related housing allowance for social housing tenants (Housing Benefit) is administered, as under UC, it is paid directly to tenants (direct payment), who are responsible for paying their rent. This represents a step change for them as for more than 30 years landlord payment has been the norm in the UK. There has been little research into direct payment. This paper seeks to address this gap in knowledge by presenting the key findings of an initiative designed to trial direct payment. It finds that many tenants experienced difficulties on direct payment. Reflecting this, landlords' arrears rose markedly.     

Stability,advocacy and voice: opportunities and challenges in resident-led preservation of affordable housing

Abstract

The role of safe, stable affordable housing has been found to play an outsized role in the ability of residents to access opportunity. However, low-income and moderate-income households face disproportionate impacts of changes in urban neighbourhoods, including poor conditions, evictions and rising rents that threaten that stability. Over the past decade, the deep subsidies that created or redeveloped affordable housing between the late 1960s and 1980s have expired, putting not only the residents of those buildings. Meanwhile, market-affordable housing is at risk due to increasing market pressure in appreciating neighbourhoods. In Washington, DC a combination of programmes, laws and traditions have created a tenant-led preservation policy that has preserved the affordability of tens of thousands of units since the early 1980s. This paper investigates DC’s tenant-based preservation policy to understand the preservation challenges and opportunities for low-income and moderate-income residents in changing communities.     

Housing market dualization: linking insider–outsider divides in employment and housing outcomes

Abstract

Past decades of economic growth, relatively widespread employment security and expanding mortgage markets promoted growing homeownership. Recent years have witnessed this growth undercut across advanced economies, evidenced by a rise in other tenures and increasing housing precarity. Studies have shown that these housing outcomes follow more fundamental changes in labour markets. By adapting the established concept of labour market dualization to housing, this paper examines how employment and housing positions are intertwined under late capitalism, and how their relationship has changed through the Global Financial Crisis. Examining the salient case of the Netherlands through household-level data from the LISS panel, we demonstrate that being a labour market ‘outsider’ vastly increases the likelihood of being an ‘outsider’ across housing market dimensions, in terms of housing equity, affordability and prospective asset accumulation. Comparing housing and labour dualization over 2008 and 2016, we further show that the share of multiply disadvantaged households has grown substantially, both among labour market insiders and outsiders.     

The anti-apartment movement in the U.S. and the role of land use regulations in creating housing segregation

In the U.S., typically, poor and minority households are concentrated in central cities, which are ringed by middle class suburbs which contain a majority of the population of the metropolitan area. The resulting segregation is largely the outcome of public policy and institutional arrangements, rather than the excesses of a free market. Land use regulations have played a central role in creating segregation among the types of housing that are affordable to different income groups. Single family only zoning is a central institution in suburban areas; often multifamily housing is limited to a very tiny portion of the land zoned for housing. Land use policies regarding housing are formulated on a municipal level, in which states have only a minimal role and the federal government has no role. Decentralization of revenue sources and fiscal support for local services, including education, provides incentives for local zoning policies which exclude groups which are viewed as more costly to service, while decentralization of zoning powers make these policies possible. This article describes 1) the basic contours of the housing stock and population distribution in metropolitan areas, 2) the evolution of the single family only policy, and 3) recent efforts to counteract housing segregation patterns, which have had little success. Kenneth K. Baar is a attorney in the Berkeley, California and has a Ph.D. in urban planning. From 1991 to 1993, he was a Fulbright professor at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences. In 1994–95 he was visiting professor in the Urban Planning Department at Columbia University in New York City.     

The Danish housing market: Housing policies for different housing tenure

Since 1987 interest and publication in Norwegian housing policies have increased significantly. This article deepens and widens my earlier published work on Norwegian housing policy, and it responds to some earlier reviews of my work. The central themes of the article are that Norway has used state policy to develop its housing sector over many decades; that since the mid‐1970s policy makers have had to adjust their housing system to national and international macro‐economic change; and that in a comparative perspective, Norway has pursued housing policies which have important anti‐poverty elements, some egalitarianism, and some useful choice and efficiencies. Norway has used balanced state, market, and self‐help roles to develop its housing sector, and the institutional framework in which these roles operate has been reformed since the late‐1970s in the light of changing economic, social, and political conditions. Changes in the international economy have been particularly significant as Norway depends upon the international economy to sustain its living standards, including its housing standards.     

The health effects of improvements to housing: A longitudinal study

Although housing conditions were an integral part of the emergence of the Public Health movement, there has been relatively little research on the relationship between housing and health compared to that on social inequalities in general. This is surprising in view of the fact that one of the major links between social inequalities and health is adverse housing conditions. Findings from previous investigations in several countries of the presence of damp and mould in housing and symptoms in the occupants have indicated that the associations may well be causal. However, there have been no studies which have assessed the health of the residents before and after the elimination of dampness/mould. This paper describes a longitudinal study designed to evaluate the effects of an improved heating system on the symptoms of children living on a peripheral housing estate. The results suggested that the elimination of dampness/mould prevented a further deterioration in health rather than bringing about an improvement. The presence of other factors known to influence health status, such as financial difficulties and other housing problems, may have offset any benefits arising from the new heating system. The methodological issues that arose in conducting the study in an area of severe social disadvantage are described. It is suggested that the complexity of the interactions between bad housing and low income, should not detract attention from the need for intersectoral co‐operation to address the issue.