Tracking mobility in the housing choice voucher program: a household level examination in Florida,USA

Previous research on the housing choice voucher (HCV) program has focused on neighbourhoods where voucher holders reside at one point of time. Little is known about mobility of voucher households during their tenure in the program. Using an administrative dataset that spans 11 years for the state of Florida, this study evaluates how often voucher households move and their mobility outcomes, measured by the change of neighbourhood poverty. Findings reveal that HCV households moved frequently beginning in the early years of program participation. Between 2007 and 2013 there was a notable decrease of voucher presence in high-poverty areas. Regression analysis further suggests that rental housing market conditions are significantly associated with mobility outcomes. White, non-Hispanic households and those with higher incomes were more likely to move to lower poverty neighbourhoods, whereas disabled and formerly homeless households moved more frequently and were not as successful in accessing lower poverty areas.     

Converting a public housing project into a tenant-managed housing co-operative: A Canadian case study

The conversion of the Alexandra Park public housing project into the Atkinson Housing Co-operative took place from 1992 to 2003. The new co-operative represents an attempt to increase resident participation in the management of their housing community. Although there have been other efforts to increase resident participation, this is the first conversion of its kind in Canada, and as a result a new housing model has been created. This paper discusses this new model, referred to as a hybrid structure that contains elements of the co-operative and public housing models.     

The geographic concentration of housing vouchers,Blacks, and poverty over time: a study of Cincinnati,Ohio, USA

Using data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) concerning Housing Choice Voucher (HCV, formerly called Section 8) recipients, the authors provide a spatial analysis in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. ‘Hot spot’ analysis is utilized to detect areas with significant densities of voucher recipients compared with the surrounding environs. Results show that the implementation of Cincinnati's HCV program between 2000 and 2005 in conjunction with public housing transformation has not led to a greater dispersion of voucher recipients and either poverty or racial deconcentration. Many HCV households remain concentrated in hot spots. The implications for US low-income housing policy are discussed.     

The present and future of income‐related housing support: debates in Britain and the Netherlands

This paper examines income‐related housing support in Britain and the Netherlands. It considers the main issues that are at stake in current policy discussions, compares the arguments that are put forward in the two countries and draw conclusions about the future of income‐related housing support. In both Britain and the Netherlands political discussions about the possible introduction of housing vouchers are observed. The most complicated issues are the poverty trap and unemployment trap, and housing consumption incentives. Moral hazard concerns can result in complicated anti‐fraud measures that may add to the burden of administering income‐related support. It is expected that the way in which income‐related housing support schemes in both countries are designed and administered may come under closer scrutiny. Politicians want these schemes to be in tune with the need for labour and housing market mobility, wage flexibility, and the need to bring the public budget under control.     

‘Between a rock and a hard place’: the failure to agree on regulation for the private rented sector in England

The private rented sector in England presents a number of widely-acknowledged problems for the policy maker including relatively poor property conditions and sometimes low management standards. There are a number of intractable obstacles to dealing with these problems, including an inability to agree on how the sector should be regulated, extreme variation in letting arrangements, a lack of clarity on the relationship between regulation and supply, industry distrust of regulation, and an anti-landlord culture.     

How to determine the financial possibilities of Dutch housing associations

The mission of Dutch housing associations is to helpfulfil the social housing tasks in the Netherlandswithout endangering their financial continuity.Furthermore, any financial resources that they do notneed to secure their financial continuity must be usedin the interest of social housing. Therefore it isimportant to determine the financial scope ofhousing associations. Their financial possibilitiesare dictated largely by the value of their housingstock. The estimated value of the stock, and thereforeof the financial possibilities, is partly determinedby the method that is used to value the housing stock.This paper will focus on the relationship between thefinancial position of the housing associations and thevaluation of their housing stock.     

Becoming a landlord: strategies of property-based welfare in the private rental sector in Great Britain

Ongoing neoliberal policies have realigned the links between housing and welfare, positioning residential property investment – commonly through homeownership and exceptionally also through landlordism – at the core of households’ asset-building strategies. Nonetheless, the private rented sector (PRS) has been commonly portrayed as a tenure option for tenants rather than a welfare strategy for landlords. Drawing on qualitative interviews with landlords across Great Britain, we explore landlords’ different motivations in engaging in landlordism; and the ways in which their property-based welfare strategies are shaped by the particular intersection of individual socioeconomic and life-course circumstances, and the broader socioeconomic and financial environment. By employing a constructionist grounded approach to research, our study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the different ways that asset-based welfare strategies operate within the PRS. We draw attention to an understudied nexus between homeownership and landlordism which we argue represents a promising route for future research.     

Alternative strategies for urban redevelopment: A case study in a squatter housing neighborhood of Ankara

Since the 1980s, the redevelopment of squatter housing settlements has been a primary policy focus of the local and central authorities in Turkey. Their strategies have adopted two different models: one approach was not effective at generating redevelopment activity and produced low quality living environments, and the other approach resulted in dislocation and gentrification. The literature stresses three issues. First, redevelopment sites are areas where market forces failed; thus, they are perceived as high risk, low-demand, and low-return investments with high transaction costs. Second, institutions that lower transaction costs boost market forces and increase economic performance in property development. Third, local authorities remain active in urban redevelopment; despite having no direct tools for local economic development, they do have tools for urban development. This study reformulates the basic transaction cost thesis and hypothesizes that local authorities can boost urban redevelopment by making changes to institutions or ‘the rules of the game’ by increasing information flow, positive externalities and perceived returns and by decreasing transaction costs, negative externalities and risks, all of which motivate land owners and house-builders. To test this hypothesis, I have conducted household surveys and semi-structured interviews with house-builders in a squatter housing neighborhood undergoing a gradual transformation. The goal of this study was to search for the impacts of the local authority’s strategies on homeowner inertia, private sector disinvestment and the implications of urban redevelopment. My findings revealed that the local authorities can produce desirable results for less attractive neighborhoods with the help of marketing, institutional strategies and effective land use planning without leading to dislocation and gentrification. Overall, this study suggests that ‘institutional’ strategies are crucial for urban policies and future urban redevelopment activities.     

Understanding changing housing aspirations: a review of the evidence

Abstract

This article reviews the literature on changing housing aspirations and expectations in contemporary housing systems. It argues that there is a conceptual and definitional gap in relation to the term ‘housing aspirations’, as distinct from expectations, preferences, choices and needs. The article sets out working definitions of these terms, before discussing the evidence on changing housing (and related) systems. Emerging research has begun to consider whether trends such as declining homeownership, affordability concerns and precarious labour systems across a range of countries are fundamentally changing individuals’ aspirations for the forms of housing they aim to access at different stages of their lives. Whilst much of the research into housing aspirations has been considered in terms of tenure, and homeownership in particular, this article suggests that research needs to move beyond tenure and choice frameworks, to consider the range of dimensions that shape aspirations, from the political economy and the State to socialization and individuals’ dispositions for housing.     

Ventilation strategies for urban housing: lessons from a PoE case study

Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery is still not widely used in UK housing, but with insulation and air-tightness standards becoming increasingly strict, it is likely to become more common. Operable windows are almost a given for housing and the UK climate is rarely extreme enough to restrict people's use of those windows for natural ventilation. This is a potential problem for the use of heat-recovery systems and could greatly reduce their energy efficiency. The paper takes the Iroko housing scheme at Coin Street, London, as a post-occupancy evaluation (PoE) case study to investigate the questions raised with respect to how well the occupants of the houses cope with balancing both natural ventilation and mechanical systems to achieve thermal comfort energy efficiently. First, the optimum balance of mechanical and natural ventilation is estimated and used to determine the maximum potential saving it could give when compared with natural ventilation alone. Short-term monitoring of the building in question together with the results of questionnaires showed why this theoretical balance is not achieved and that the energy consumption is likely to be worse than for natural ventilation alone. Noise, perceived control, perceived freshness and misunderstanding are all discussed as possible causes for the apparent disjunction. Misunderstanding on the part of residents was shown to be a critical determinant, so information about the heat recovery system was distributed to the residents and the paper ends by looking at what theoretical energy savings might be made as a result of this act.     

The commodification of land and housing: the case of South Korea

The developmentalist state in South East Asia has played an important role in guiding and promoting economic growth. Although an implicit theme of much of the discourse is the role of the state in controlling the factors of production, this is not located within the decommodification/commodification debate. Proceeding from the premise that underlies much of economic theory, namely that land values at a time reflect the residual (or surplus) of economic activity that requires land as a factor input, the purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the Korean state has managed the commodification of urban development and the distributional effects of this process. In spite of private land ownership the state has had a major impact on the processes by which land has become commodified, using extensive land expropriation and land‐use planning powers. The Korean state used different strategies to manage trends to commodification at different times: land readjustment projects were used from the 1950s to the 1970s and Public Management Development projects were the main mechanism of urban development from the 1980s. The urban development system was feasible because of the state's extensive control over access to housing finance (decommodified money). In the mid‐1990s there was a shift towards greater private sector involvement in urban development. The distributional effects of the urban development process have been highly inequitable. Subsidised home ownership for middle‐income families has been favoured over provision of public rental housing for low‐income families, driven in major part by cash flow considerations of the developmentalist state. Further, the basis of selecting beneficiaries has been very arbitrary. The system has promoted significant land concentration and land speculation particularly by private companies, including the large chaebol (corporations).     

从公共住房到租金优惠券——美国低收入阶层住房政策演化解析

本文对美国低收入阶层住房政策的演化过程作了介绍 ,分析了其中三种典型住房政策的实施效果。在把握我国国情的基础上 ,借鉴美国住房政策演化过程的经验教训 ,为建立我国弱势人群住房政策提出了建议。     

Investigating housing tenures beyond homeownership: a study of informal settlements in Kolkata,India

Improving the lives of households in informal settlements is a major development challenge. Though ownership is the predominant housing tenure arrangement pursued in national and international housing policies, there is a growing consensus that forms of tenure beyond homeownership may provide greater benefits to some households. In Kolkata, informal settlements (bastis) are the primary source of affordable housing for the urban poor. Relying on detailed household survey data, we investigate the utility gained from the diversity of housing tenure arrangements in bastis and the factors that increase the length of time a household lives in a settlement, using multinomial logit and ordinary least squares regression specifications. Our analyses show that in comparison to ownership, leasing or renting benefits large households and new migrants. Our findings suggest that policies targeted at households who rent and lease, along with improving housing and supporting infrastructure, can be effective mechanisms for improving household well-being.     

Patterns of exits from housing in a homelessness system of care: the case of Calgary,Alberta

Public officials around the world seek to target subsidized housing as purposely and efficiently as possible. With limited availability of subsidized housing, it is helpful to know which household types require specific types of housing support and for how long. With this in mind, we undertake survival analysis and hazard models on clients placed into housing funded by the Calgary Homeless Foundation (CHF) to characterize patterns of exit from Calgary’s homeless system of care. To do this, we use data from Calgary’s Homelessness Management Information System from 1 April 2012 until 31 March 2015. We find singles without dependents to require housing support for the longest period of time, while families require the support for the least amount of time. One important finding is that women require housing support for longer periods of time than men (even though we control for employment and income).     

The effect of market conditions on the housing outcomes of subsidized households: the case of the US voucher programme

Abstract

Since being created in the 1970s, housing vouchers have become the primary mode of federal housing support for low-income households in the US. The voucher programme was designed to provide recipients with the mobility needed to secure higher quality housing in neighbourhoods of their choice. Decades of analysis suggest that the programme has failed to produce the favourable outcomes envisioned by policymakers. To add to our understanding of the outcomes of this important federal programme, this paper seeks to underscore the importance of context-dependent policy analysis. In particular, this study analyses the impact of housing market conditions on the outcomes achieved by voucher recipients. Using neighbourhood and housing outcome data from the American Housing Survey, and median rent and rental market vacancy data, this paper demonstrates the important role that market conditions play in programme outcomes. The results from this study suggest that voucher recipients are successful at improving housing unit quality outcomes regardless of market conditions, but the ability to move to a better neighbourhood is a function of vacancy rates.     

Journey to Home: development of a conceptual model to describe Veterans' experiences with resolving housing instability

Abstract

Recent research has focused on risk factors for Veteran housing instability and programmatic responses. However, little is known about Veterans’ experiences of becoming unstably housed and navigating available resources to resolve housing crises. This qualitative paper, based on open-ended interviews with Veterans (n?=?60), presents the Journey to Home conceptual model, which offers a framework for understanding Veterans’ journeys through housing instability, including the factors that contribute to vulnerability, the range of housing conditions that Veterans describe as inadequate, how Veterans connect to assistance through VA and community providers, and barriers and facilitators to connecting with and using available assistance, resulting in either continued housing instability or successful housing outcomes. Ongoing efforts to end Veteran homelessness should prioritize strategies that respond to complex vulnerabilities.     

On the margins of urban Europe: housing policies in a secondary city (Cluj,Romania)

This paper discusses recent housing developments in Cluj, a secondary city in Romania. The city is at a point in its development where it is being affected by forces initiated by Romania's accession to the EU. While new housing provision is largely dominated by the private sector, public housing policies are also taking advantage of the new opportunities provided by membership of the EU.     

Rental housing management as surveillance of Chinese rural migrants: the case of hillside compound in Dongguan

Governance of numerous rural migrants has always been crucial to China’s social stability. Through a Foucauldian lens, this paper discusses surveillance of rural migrants and studies a new local approach called rental housing management (RHM). During recent years, local authorities in Dongguan have been developing RHM into an operation of incremental Panopticism that consists of gradually reinforced surveillance techniques—partitioning, monitoring, digital entrance guarding, and local registration—in retrofitted rental residences. The RHM enforces local authorities’ inspection and control of migrants, and induces migrants’ self-reporting, self-inspection, and self-protection. This creates difficulties with migrants’ social interaction and community building. This paper reveals that local authorities have been transforming surveillance approaches from management based on hukou (household registration) into RHM that furthers localized spatial governance of rural migrants in the hukou reform.     

Emergency housing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: an assessment of the FEMA travel trailer program

Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States in 2005. More than 1800 persons died, and the disaster stands as the costliest in U.S. history. Over 200,000 former residents of New Orleans continue to reside elsewhere. The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) emergency housing program, and specifically the design, manufacture, and deployment of its travel trailer housing units, remain the subject of controversy. The FEMA travel trailer program is critiqued, as is recent empirical evidence on the deleterious health outcomes experienced by many trailer occupants. The results of a pilot investigation are reported, whereby the post-occupancy assessments of a group of occupants of single-site FEMA trailer installations were compared to a group residing in two FEMA trailer park communities in New Orleans. Among the findings, the travel trailer unit was assessed by occupants as difficult to personalize to occupants’ preferred patterns of use, inadequate in size, affording few site amenities, and little overall privacy, and the unit itself functioned as a source of chronic environmental stress. The findings are translated into a theoretical/operative model of person-environment interactions, to assist in further research on this subject.

How knowledge and political ideology affects rental housing policy in Ontario,Canada: application of a knowledge paradigms framework of policy change

A case study of the Tenant Protection Act in Ontario, Canada is presented. A Conservative government elected in 1995 introduced an Act to deregulate rents and amend the Ontario Human Rights Code to allow use of income criteria to screen potential tenants. Document review and in‐depth interviews with tenant advocates were applied to understand how tenant advocates in Toronto used knowledge and other strategies to influence the legislation in the context of a new framework of policy change. The findings revealed that while different forms of knowledge, scientific, anecdotal and critical, had some influence on the process, the political ideology of the government played a significant role in determining the influence of opponents to legislation. The research concludes that while the neo‐liberal political ideology of the government did not consistently influence policy making in all areas, housing policy was particularly sensitive to political ideology. While the views of tenants did not influence the Conservative government, they did influence the policies of the Opposition parties that called for the restoration of social housing and rent control. On 2 October 2003, an Opposition party supporting these positions was elected in the Ontario general election.