Social Disadvantage, Tenure and Location: An Analysis of Sydney and Melbourne

This article focuses on the role that housing markets play in structuring patterns of social disadvantage in Australian cities, specifically Sydney and Melbourne. It explores the relationship between housing tenure and social disadvantage at the local scale (Census collector districts) for the two cities, following a discussion of the various stands of literature on housing tenure and socio-spatial polarisation in Australian cities. It analyses the relationship between areas of high social disadvantage and housing tenure. The analysis, which uses the ABS Index of Disadvantage, distinguishes locations where comparable levels of social disadvantage are associated with very different housing markets, one where public housing is prominent and others which are primarily areas of private sector housing. The social profiles of both types of area are described, drawing out differences between the two cities, as are changes in the extent of these areas over time. The policy implications for the areas of private sector housing are then discussed.     

Social Capital and Housing Tenure in an Adelaide Neighbourhood

In this article we compare and contrast elements of social capital across different housing tenures in an Adelaide neighbourhood. Using the results of 530 self-completion questionnaires and in-depth qualitative interviews with 16 people we assess perceptions of conflict across housing tenures and between socio-economic groups, feelings of acceptance and belonging in the local neighbourhood, and levels of involvement in local formal and informal networks. While only a small number of questionnaire respondents reported negative views of socio-economic diversity in the area a theme emerging in the qualitative data indicated that housing tenure was relevant to some of these negative perceptions. Respondents from across different tenure types also reported differences in feelings of acceptance in the neighbourhood, and involvement in formal and informal networks. The study findings suggest that housing tenure is relevant to the development of neighbourhood-based social capital, and that this factor needs to be considered by social planners, housing policy makers and others involved in implementing social mix policies. In addition, the findings indicate the need to consider the community housing and public housing tenures in their own right, given the different models of housing provision, rather than collectively under the common banner of social housing as most research studies do. It is recommended that the full diversity of housing tenure is considered in any future analysis.     

Social Capital and Housing Tenure in an Adelaide Neighbourhood

In this article we compare and contrast elements of social capital across different housing tenures in an Adelaide neighbourhood. Using the results of 530 self-completion questionnaires and in-depth qualitative interviews with 16 people we assess perceptions of conflict across housing tenures and between socio-economic groups, feelings of acceptance and belonging in the local neighbourhood, and levels of involvement in local formal and informal networks. While only a small number of questionnaire respondents reported negative views of socio-economic diversity in the area a theme emerging in the qualitative data indicated that housing tenure was relevant to some of these negative perceptions. Respondents from across different tenure types also reported differences in feelings of acceptance in the neighbourhood, and involvement in formal and informal networks. The study findings suggest that housing tenure is relevant to the development of neighbourhood-based social capital, and that this factor needs to be considered by social planners, housing policy makers and others involved in implementing social mix policies. In addition, the findings indicate the need to consider the community housing and public housing tenures in their own right, given the different models of housing provision, rather than collectively under the common banner of social housing as most research studies do. It is recommended that the full diversity of housing tenure is considered in any future analysis.     

Evaluating Tenure Mix Interventions: A Case Study from Sydney,Australia

Policies of tenure mix, by removing concentrations of social housing or through the application of inclusionary zoning-type powers to new developments, are being pursued throughout Australia and in the USA, the UK and New Zealand. Implementing this tenure mix policy agenda requires significant intervention into urban areas that currently have concentrations of social housing, through programmes of regeneration or renewal. Despite this policy agenda, research on the benefits of tenure mix has produced inconclusive evidence, both in Australia and internationally. The paper reports on research undertaken in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, which tests a method of evaluating tenure mix policy. The exploratory method uses dwelling price data as a proxy for measuring amenity or ‘neighbourhood quality’ changes from tenure mix interventions.     

Relocating Disadvantage in Five Australian Cities: Socio-spatial Polarisation under Neo-liberalism

During the mid-1980s, the Australian political discourse shifted decisively towards a neo-liberal political agenda that has remained the dominant policy paradigm ever since. Arguably, a key outcome of this has been an increase in social inequality. However, there has been little acknowledgement of this process in Australian urban policy debates. Yet these social outcomes have been accompanied by distinctive impacts on the socio-spatial structure of the Australian city. Using Census data over a 25 year period between 1986 and 2011, this paper analyses the trend towards a marked suburbanisation of the most disadvantaged households in the five major Australian cities. Its conclusions have relevance for current metropolitan planning strategies and their capacity to address what is emerging as Australia’s version of the now more widely recognised “urban inversion” of the last quarter of a century.     

Exploring Dual Housing Tenure Status as a Household Response to Demographic,Social and Economic Change

This article proposes that single housing tenure categories do not enable an understanding of the ways in which households use, occupy and own residential properties in the context of broad demographic, economic and social changes. Adapting work on sub-tenure housing choice, housing tenure is overlaid with ownership of residential property to develop four tenure types: Owner, Owner-Owner, Renter and Renter-Owner. Applying this typology in the Australian case provides valuable new insights, with 1.5 million households having dual housing tenure status, including almost one in eight private renters. More broadly, reconceptualising housing tenure to include ownership of other residential property can contribute to theoretical debates about household income and wealth; social status and identity; and social practices and life planning, potentially generating new research questions such as the extent to which Renter-Owners reflect new patterns of living or a response to affordability constraints, and the social identity and political affiliations of those with a dual tenure status.     

Housing Tenure and Neighbourhood Social Capital

Prior research finds a positive association between social capital and community well-being, ranging from decreased crime to greater local economic development and resiliency. Using a nationally representative sample from Canada, this study explores the specific impact of housing tenure (homeownership vs. renting) on three forms of neighbourhood social capital: bonding (trust, exchanges among neighbours and sense of belonging to one’s community), bridging (participation in local organizations) and linking social capital (voting in municipal elections). Findings suggest a positive association between homeownership and forms of bonding social capital and, to a lesser degree, linking social capital, but no clear effect on bridging social capital. Length of residence, having children at home, education, being a visible minority and region also emerged as significant in many models. We argue that exploring further housing stabilization and community-building efforts among rental properties – both public and private – might yield important social capital returns.     

Delivering Mixed Communities: The Relationship between Housing Tenure Mix and Social Mix in England's Neighbourhoods

For a number of years, housing and regeneration policy in Britain has focused on creating social mix through changing housing tenure mix, particularly in deprived social housing areas. Policies are founded on the perception that segregation of rich and poor is increasing, and this reinforces disadvantage. Little work has examined the degree of correspondence between social and tenure mix. We examine the relationship between these variables in English neighbourhoods, using occupational mix to measure social mix. We examine the regional differences in this relationship. We show neighbourhoods are generally more mixed in occupation than tenure. Tenure mix has a positive relationship with occupational mix, but the relationship is moderate and contrary to conventional wisdom; occupational mix and tenure mix increase with level of area deprivation. Regional analysis shows that tenure mix is higher in the tighter housing markets of London and the South. If policy is genuinely concerned with increasing social mix, attention needs to focus on affluent areas.     

From Prisons to Penthouses: The Changing Images of High-Rise Living in Melbourne

The high-rise housing market in Melbourne has been undergoing dramatic growth in the last ten years. This emerging housing style is in stark contrast to the familiar traditional low-density suburban dwelling scouring Australian metropolitan cities. This paper traces the representations of high-rise housing since its first appearance in the 1960s to today. Discourses of high-rise housing that have seen this housing type change from one characterised by urban decay and family disorganisation to that which unproblematically glorifies this new housing form will be explored. These new and inviting images of high-rise living today are juxtaposed with the understandings of high-rise public housing that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. High-rise public housing was once seen as a solution to housing the impoverished and arresting the spread of slum conditions. High-rise housing today is being celebrated amongst government, developers, planners and occupiers as saving the inner city from decay and indicative of a re-vitalised CBD.     

Tenure type landscapes and housing market change: a geographical perspective on neo-liberalization in Sweden

Abstract

Discussions of tenure mix have received renewed interest as many have suggested that neo-liberalization has made way for gentrification of neighbourhoods and increasing segregation. Yet, few scholars have studied country-wide changes in tenure mix, due to the lack of data and appropriate methods. In this article, we propose to use tenure type landscapes to analyse changes in housing policy. We do so while acknowledging the evolution of housing policies in Sweden since 1990. Using individualized and multi-scalar tenure type landscapes to measure change in neighbourhoods, we analyse housing clusters in 1990 and 2012. We show that the tenure landscape in 1990 at the height of the welfare state was fairly diverse and mixed. During the next 22 years, however, the landscape changed to become more homogenized and dominated by ownership through tenure conversions and new housing. We argue that awareness of these changes is essential to understanding present and future segregation and gentrification processes.     

Building the Connection Between Housing Needs and Metropolitan Planning in Sydney,Australia

The theme of a more compact city has been a central feature of planning policy for Sydney's development over the last two decades. Urban consolidation, in the form of attached dwellings in medium- and high-density configurations, has become the predominant form of new residential development since the early 1990s. One of the largely untested claims for this policy is that it provides more housing choice for an increasingly diverse population and that simply building larger amounts of smaller housing in high-density concentrations will be sufficient to meet that demand. As a result, planning for higher density housing has been undertaken with little explicit recognition of the housing sub-markets higher density housing caters for or their specific spatial characteristics within the city. These issues are examined by an analysis of the socio-economic characteristics of areas with high concentrations of attached housing. These data are processed by factor analysis to identify and locate the range of sub-markets within attached housing and additional small area data used to fill out the market profiling. The results reveal that a range of specific housing needs are met by this form of housing with discriminative characteristics in certain locations. In other words, higher density housing is associated with a range of locationally specific and spatially distinctive sub-markets. These findings are particularly relevant and timely as a new metropolitan strategy is in preparation for Sydney where an estimated 60–70 per cent of new dwelling provision in the next 30 years will take place within existing suburbs through higher density redevelopment. Planning for such development must take into account the local markets for such accommodation which have very different characteristics in different parts of the city.     

我国流动人口住房租购选择及其影响因素——基于 2017 年 CMDS 的实证分析

基于 2017 年中国流动人口动态监测数据,从就业因素、流动因素、个人因素和城市经济因素四方面构建全国和不同层级城市的流动人口租购选择影响因素评价模型,并运用 Logit 回归法进行分析。结果表明:流动人口住房选择以租房为主,不同层级城市流动人口租购选择比例有差异。其中一线城市流动人口的购房比例最小,租房比例最大;四线城市购房比例最大,租房比例最小。上述四方面因素对流动人口的租购选择有显著影响。不同因素对不同层级城市流动人口的租购选择影响存在差异,尤其城市经济因素中房价要素差异显著。一二三线城市房价与租购选择呈现正“U”型关系,四五线城市呈现倒“U”型关系。     

Re-employment,Housing Tenure and Squatter Settlements in Turkey: An Empirical Analysis

Although the change in the Turkish economy in the last 14 years is historical, the primary question for public and academic circles remains unanswered: why hasn’t the growth translated into more and better jobs? This paper intends to develop a better understanding about the dragging structural unemployment by investigating the contribution of a possible labour immobility to the unemployment in Turkey. This is the first study that examines the unemployment duration and its relation to residential mobility, more specifically housing tenure in Turkey. It uses the first and only longitudinal survey, Survey of Income and Living Conditions, which became publicly available in 2011. Unlike in developed countries, homeowners in Turkey are often migrants from rural to urban areas living in semi-illegal dwellings. We use this “squatter” effect to reduce the endogeneity problem in estimations, which indicate that residential immobility has a serious impact on unemployment durations in Turkey.     

Housing need assessments in San Francisco,Vancouver, and Melbourne: normative science or neoliberal alchemy?

Abstract

Governments in much of the Global North have responded to dramatic increases in house prices and rents by setting supply-side targets for new housing in regional and local plans, based on calculations of need. We apply social constructionism to assess widely divergent needs assessments underlying housing strategies in San Francisco, US; Vancouver, Canada; and Melbourne, Australia. In San Francisco, authorities use an approach required by the state government that ignores overcrowding and other ‘invisible’ criteria. In Vancouver, authorities have taken an ambitious approach that goes beyond a minimum quantum of affordable housing to discuss limits to market production. In Melbourne, the state government has chosen to ignore its own commissioned needs assessment to de-prioritize concerns around affordable housing shortages. We conclude by recommending that planners apply greater rigor in housing needs assessments, that can inform public debates around more equitable housing policy.     

Welfare Safety Net or Tenure of Choice? The Dilemma Facing Social Housing Policy in England

This paper considers the future role of social rented housing in England. It is based on an analysis of policy trends over the past 30 years, and a critical examination of current policy dilemmas. The central contention is that there are fundamental tensions underlying the present government's policy objectives to maintain the ‘safety net’ role of social housing but at the same time widen access to the sector so that it becomes a more mixed ‘tenure of choice’. The paper charts the marked change of direction seen since 2000, with a switch from a highly rule-bound approach emphasising equity in housing allocations, to a more consumerist system stressing choice. Survey data and statistical returns are analysed to illustrate the changing mix of households entering social rented housing and to reveal the sector's varying role in regions characterised by contrasting housing market conditions. The paper charts the spread of the ‘choice-based lettings’ approach and discusses the possible implications of this development for the pattern of rehousing outcomes, and for the sector's broader role. It is concluded that, in higher demand regions such as London and the South, it remains very difficult to see how a social sector continuing to contract can widen its role from that of safety net for the most disadvantaged.     

Children in Housing Disadvantage in Australia: Development of a Summary Small Area Index

The importance of suitable, affordable housing in promoting the well-being of children is widely acknowledged. However, despite growing interest in geographic differences in child well-being, little is known about the spatial distribution of characteristics associated with housing disadvantage for Australian children. This paper seeks to develop knowledge in this area by creating a headline indicator of child housing disadvantage. It uses spatially disaggregated Census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Census of Population and Housing 2006 capturing overcrowding, public housing tenure and dwelling type, and creates synthetic estimates of housing stress using spatial microsimulation techniques. These variables are then combined into a single index of housing disadvantage. Next, the spatial microsimulation techniques and index creation methodology are described, and the results of the validation process, including sensitivity analysis of alternative index creation approaches, are presented.     

Investigating the Social Dimensions of Transport Disadvantage II: From Concepts to Methods through an Empirical Case Study

This article is the second of two papers that review the field of spatially sensitive social scientific research into the links between social status and transport disadvantage. The first paper undertook a comprehensive review of the social scientific and transport planning literature to mark the level of development in the field and identify conceptual and methodological issues and constraints in this field of inquiry. The present article supports the advancement of socially and geographically sensitive transport research by opportunities for the development of more sophisticated spatial analytical methodologies. The approach we present is able to account for factors not previously addressed in either social or transport planning research, in particular the temporal dimensions of transport service accessibility. The article articulates the methodology through an empirical case study of socio-spatial transport disadvantage within the Gold Coast City. The article demonstrates that there are important theoretical and practical lessons to be gained for researchers and policy makers in addressing the social dimensions of transport and infrastructure provision. Further, the article argues that an attentiveness to new ways of combining and representing social and transport data-sets can promote policy relevant empirical social inquiry. The article also contributes in a productive way to the empirical knowledge of Australia's sixth-largest metropolitan area, which is often overlooked by urban scholars.     

Investigating the Social Dimensions of Transport Disadvantage II: From Concepts to Methods through an Empirical Case Study

This article is the second of two papers that review the field of spatially sensitive social scientific research into the links between social status and transport disadvantage. The first paper undertook a comprehensive review of the social scientific and transport planning literature to mark the level of development in the field and identify conceptual and methodological issues and constraints in this field of inquiry. The present article supports the advancement of socially and geographically sensitive transport research by opportunities for the development of more sophisticated spatial analytical methodologies. The approach we present is able to account for factors not previously addressed in either social or transport planning research, in particular the temporal dimensions of transport service accessibility. The article articulates the methodology through an empirical case study of socio-spatial transport disadvantage within the Gold Coast City. The article demonstrates that there are important theoretical and practical lessons to be gained for researchers and policy makers in addressing the social dimensions of transport and infrastructure provision. Further, the article argues that an attentiveness to new ways of combining and representing social and transport data-sets can promote policy relevant empirical social inquiry. The article also contributes in a productive way to the empirical knowledge of Australia's sixth-largest metropolitan area, which is often overlooked by urban scholars.     

Place and Disadvantage: The Need for Reflexive Epistemology in Spatial Social Science

The relationship between place and disadvantage, and particularly the question of whether, and how, geographical concentration of disadvantaged households exacerbates disadvantage is of growing concern to social science and urban policy. Despite many calls for a subtle and complex approach to constructing knowledge about these issues, a positivist approach based on statistical indicators, appears to dominate policy making. This approach reifies place and distracts attention from strategies which might effectively address disadvantage at the local level. This article describes two examples of small area redevelopment where such an approach has been used to suggest that redevelopment and dispersal of public housing concentrations are in the interests of current residents, whose lives would be improved through replacement of existing housing forms with more diverse, or at least tenure-mixed, suburbs. Yet the process by which this improvement will occur is yet to be explicated or even adequately theorised by spatial social science. The indicators used to measure the 'success' of redevelopment, such as small area employment, education and crime statistics, are likely to reveal little about the impact of such projects on the lives of the individuals most affected. A more reflexive and 'deeply engaged' research methodology is called for.     

Transforming Social Housing: Taking Stock of New Complexities

The last 10 years has been a period of rapid change in the social rented sector, reflecting broader changes in the nature of housing problems, structures of housing provision and patterns of housing consumption in the UK, rooted in fundamental shifts in the political, economic and social landscape. By way of introduction to this special issue, this paper cuts across conventional frameworks of analysis to explore the pressures and challenges raised by these changes for the social rented sector through consideration of three key facets of the contemporary housing system: market change, community dynamics and modes of governance. Within this framework, patterns of increasing differentiation and fragmentation within the UK housing system are revealed and the extent to which the transformation of the social rented sector is working with the grain of these changes is considered.