Early Housing Research Articles

Using Public Housing to Achieve Self-Sufficiency: Can We Predict Success?

In the United States since the mid-1980s, self-sufficiency programs have sought to transform public housing developments from permanent housing into way stations for low-income people. This article presents exploratory research on the predictors of success in these programs. Statistical analysis of longitudinal survey data from participants in an early public housing self-sufficiency program points to lack of previous welfare experience and the presence of prior vocational training as being predictors of program success. In-depth interviews suggest that having a high-school education is important for success, and any additional education prior to participating in a self-sufficiency program is helpful. Interviews also indicate that successful program graduates alienate themselves from social groups that discourage self-sufficiency.

リチャード・ノイトラの初期住宅作品における設計手法について : 1920年代後半及び30年代の実験的工業化住宅を中心として

リチャード・ノイトラの初期住宅作品における設計手法について : 1920年代後半及び30年代の実験的工業化住宅を中心として

Recent Tree-Ring Studies of Early New England Buildings: An Evaluation

Some members of the VAG may remember presentations by the author at meetings in the 1970s about the early architecture of New England. Others may have participated in the North American VAG tour in the fall of 2004 during which several of the buildings mentioned in this paper were viewed. The author evaluates the findings of recent tree-ring dating of fifteen seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century houses and compares the dating results to the dates, derived from the documentary record and typological studies, that he assigned to those buildings in his Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay 1625–1725. Dating results were much more likely to place construction at a later date than expected (by a ratio of 17:4). Certain stylistic and construction features in the buildings are discussed; the timing of their use reinforces the perception that retardation in visible features of style will always outweigh, by a large margin, conservatism in construction features normally hidden from view.

Sacrosanctum Concilium: Vatican II Time Bomb

In the wake of the Second Vatican Council there were remarks about the Decree on Religious Freedom being a time bomb, because its views on freedom of conscience would have revolutionary impact if applied to the life of the church itself. There was more general recognition of the fundamental shift in ecclesiology that was implied in Lumen gentium and Gaudium et spes. As for Sacrosanctum concilium (SC), the document on liturgical revision, it obviously pointed to important shifts in Catholic liturgical activity, but it was not seen as a theologically innovative document. It may well be, though, that SC will prove to have the most radical and revolutionary effect on the thought, the life, and the structure of the church.That SC effected an important shift in the church's thinking and liturgical practice has been undeniable. However, like so much that was achieved in the Council, the profoundly revolutionary implications of the document are only beginning to be realized. To the extent that it is understood and implemented, the Constitution on the Liturgy points to a reversal of eighteen centuries of thinking about the church and its sacramental rituals. Clearly, this is an audacious statement, but basically what is asserted is that the understanding of sacramental liturgy is moving away from the notion of instrumental causation and towards appreciation of the effectiveness of ritual as such. There was not, of course, a formalized theology of sacramental liturgy eighteen hundred years ago that explicitly employed the idea of instrumentality. However, already in the second century there was a noticeable move away from the communitarian outlook that characterized the liturgies of early house churches. In its place the up-and-down view of liturgy's effectiveness in which the ordained person stands between God and the assembly, channeling prayer upwards and blessing downward, is expressed in the prayer for the ordination of a bishop in the third-century Apostolic Tradition.

The Law: Congressional Access to Presidential Documents: The House Resolution of Inquiry

The resolution of inquiry is a House procedure that seeks factual information from the executive branch, either from the president or department heads. The resolution is privileged and may be considered at any time after it is reported or discharged from committee. It applies only to requests for facts—not opinions—within the administration's control. Even when a resolution of inquiry is reported adversely from a committee and tabled on the floor, it frequently leads to the release of a substantial amount of information from the executive branch that can alter presidential policy in both military and domestic affairs.

Early origins of allergic disease: a review of processes and influences during early immune development.

With the disturbing increase in allergic disease, there is a pressing need to determine the causes, pathogenesis and safe avenues for disease prevention. Although events in early life appear important, no causal pathways have been identified. This review examines new developments in the area of foetal and early postnatal immune maturation. It secondly addresses early predisposing influences and protective factors that may have a future role in allergy prevention. New developments in the understanding of the ontogeny of allergen-specific immune responses in atopic infants are discussed, including the role of early type 1 and 2 immune responses, and how these are influenced by perinatal antigen presenting cell and T-cell immaturity. The controversial role of early dietary exposures including breastfeeding, food allergens, hydrolyzed formulae and other dietary factors including omega-3 fatty acids are discussed in the context of the most recent literature. Equally contentious, the role of early house dust and pet allergen exposure is discussed in light of new epidemiological studies and disappointing early results of multicentre allergen avoidance studies. Finally, a number of studies in animals and humans suggest that bacterial products can influence early immune development, providing a new potential therapeutic avenue for disease treatment and prevention. Complex multifactorial genetic and environmental interactions make research in this area difficult and apparent associations with allergic disease may not be causal in nature. Many current targets for prevention, such as early allergen exposure and infant feeding practices, are proving to be ineffective and may not be directly implicated in rising rates of disease.

Housing Neolithic Farmers

The world's earliest houses were not merely shelters from the elements or the setting for food preparation, childrearing and other domestic activities, but mysterious places rich with symbolism and even magic. The author synthesizes decades of research on the Neolithic, one of the most critical stages in human development, and addresses the many questions that remain about the relationship of early farmers to their domestic environment and the impact of settled life on the development of civilization.

SOME ASPECTS OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE ROMAN DOMUS BETWEEN LATE ANTIQUITY AND THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

This essay concerns some aspects of the transformation of the Late Roman domus into the Early Medieval house and focuses on the spaces designed for reception and entertainment. First, I will consider the use and the development of the reception areas of wealthy houses, and their relationship with the growth in private patronage in Late Antiquity. Second, I will examine the transformation of this late antique model of elite housing into the new type of upper-class dwellings that emerged in Early Medieval Italy. In particular, I will focus on the transferral of reception halls and banqueting chambers to the upper story, and on the social and architectonic implications of this feature.

Ernst May and the Campaign to Resettle the Countryside: Rural Housing in Silesia, 1919-1925

In 1919 Ernst May became the head of rural housing for the province of Silesia in eastern Germany. Silesian agriculture had long suffered from rural flight. The situation worsened in 1922 when the partition brokered by the Allies brought chaos in the mining industry and a flood of refugees. As head of the provincial stabilization effort called interior colonization, May was in charge of settlement programs to aid three constituencies of special concern: the farmworkers, the miners, and the refugees. Between 1919 and 1923, Germany's national rural housing effort employed a contradictory strategy of modernization set within corporative ideology, a "third way" that trumpeted a quasi-feudal social order as a path to political accord. May's Silesian work chronicles the impact of Modernism and corporatism on early Weimar housing: his settlements for farmworkers and miners celebrated their unique cultural traditions, while he experimented in rationalization techniques to increase housing production and reduce costs. With corporatism's decline after Germany's return to economic stability in 1924, modernization was increasingly accepted as an unalloyed virtue, and the veil of corporatism lifted. In 1924, challenged by the circumstances of the refugee housing program just at the moment the corporative compromise came to an end, May engaged in a series of experiments in polychromy, prefabricated construction, mass production, and standardization that reflected a more purely modern approach to the housing problem.

The Miles Standish House, Duxbury, Mass., and its British Antecedents

An archaeological excavation at the Miles Standish site in Plymouth colony, Massachusetts, in the 1860s revealed two conjoined buildings which are here interpreted as an example of the unit system. It is compared to a Welsh and an English farmhouse of similar layout and to two other early New England houses which show resemblances of plan. The Miles Standish house illustrates the adaptation of traditional English and Welsh forms to unfamiliar conditions and their rapid abandonment when the possibilities of the new environment began to be exploited.

"In the Face of the Court...": Law, Commerce, and the Transformation of Public Space in Boston, 1650-1770

Boston's seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century town houses accommodated town and provincial government, courts of justice, and merchant activities. Occupying a central site in Boston's town plan, the buildings all dominated the primary thoroughfare leading up from the wharves. They brought together under one roof government sessions, court proceedings, and a merchants' exchange. As the Massachusetts legal community gained coherence as a profession in the mid eighteenth century, however, lawyers looked to distance themselves from commercial activities and to establish an exclusive venue for court proceedings. Courthouses constructed throughout Massachusetts in the late eighteenth century legitimized that emerging legal profession and allowed for such a separation.

Comparison of grassland management systems for beef cattle using self-contained farmlets: effects of contrasting nitrogen inputs and management strategies on nitrogen budgets, and herbage and animal production

Past research on nitrogen (N) inputs, losses and surpluses focused on separate components of grassland management, i.e., grazed or cut swards and the impact of fertiliser or slurry applications. In practice, however, grassland is both grazed and cut for conservation, and N fertiliser is supplied from both organic and inorganic sources. A whole systems approach was used to evaluate the effects of combinations of management strategies designed to reduce N losses on N budgets, and herbage and animal production in South West England. Three systems with contrasting N inputs were compared: CN, conventional mineral N application and broadcast slurry; TN, tactical mineral N application with slurry injection and the early housing of cattle; GC, a mixed grass/white clover sward with no mineral N addition and slurry injection. Comparisons were made on two contrasting soil types: a freely-draining sandy loam (Gleysol, Site 1), and a poorly drained clay (Luvisol, Site 2). 1 ha farmlets were grazed to a target sward height by beef cattle for a 5-year (Site 1) or a 4-year (Site 2) period. Herbage surplus to grazing requirements was cut for silage. On average, 185 kg N ha −1 was applied annually to treatment TN compared with 280 kg N ha −1 for CN. An additional 76, 102 and 67 kg N ha −1 was applied in slurry to treatments CN, TN and GC, respectively. Substantial reductions in N surpluses were achieved for both treatments TN and GC compared with treatment CN (N surpluses ha −1: 254, 168 and 119 kg at Site 1, and 247 kg, 190 and 73 kg at Site 2, for CN, TN and GC, respectively). The highest N input for treatment CN was associated with the greatest animal and herbage production. More land was required for grazing on treatment GC and less herbage was cut for silage so that self-sufficiency was not attained for winter fodder on this treatment. The early removal of cattle on treatment TN did not result in a significant increase in the amount of herbage cut for silage. It was concluded that the combinations of mitigation options used were successful in reducing N surpluses compared with the conventional N management system, but animal and herbage production was reduced.

An Early Coffee House Periodical and its Readers: the Athenian Mercury, 1691–1697

The influential work of Jürgen Habermas has elicited a growing interest in the function of coffee houses in the construction of a 'bourgeois public sphere' in eighteenth-century England. Much remains to be discovered, however, about the nature and influence of coffee houses and their popular literary output. This survey examines the relationship between an early coffee house periodical, John Dunton's Athenian Mercury (1691-1697), and its readers. It uses textual evidence and a range of contextual information to test the accuracy of a contemporary engraving, the 'Emblem of the Athenian Society' (1692), which depicts the periodical's authors receiving letters from a socially diverse group of readers. This paper argues that the 'Emblem' was largely accurate, and that the Athenian Mercury's core readership was among men and women of the middling sort. The influence of Dunton's periodicals, it is argued, extended far beyond the coffee houses into wider metropolitan society and the provinces. The encouragement that the Athenian Mercury lent to the education of the middling sort was the key to its popularity, and contributed to the rise of an increasingly 'democratic' public sphere.

掘立から礎へ : 中世後期から近世にいたる棟持柱構造からの展開

掘立から礎へ : 中世後期から近世にいたる棟持柱構造からの展開

Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia by Jo Ann Kay McNamara

Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns through Two Millennia. By Jo Ann Kay McNamara. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1996. Pp. xiii, 751.$35.00 hardcover;$18.95 paperback.) This monumental study explores the history of Catholic sisterhood from the first century to the end of the twentieth century. It provides Catholic women religious with a much-needed and long-overdue distinct historical identity which they have been denied in traditional histories of monasticism. The title of this work, Sisters in Arms, is taken from the military metaphor of nuns as soldiers of Christ. As part of that elite army women religious were subjected to rigorous training and discipline; they shared a special comradeship. Over the centuries these militia Christi found themselves in the forefront of the Church's battles against enemies of religion; many also fought against misogynist elements within the Church which denigrated and constrained their efforts. Despite their invaluable participation, some churchmen maintained that these virgin troops had no place on the battlefield among the militia Christi. This impressive survey begins with the Apostolic period and the first communities of celibate women found in the early house churches, and concludes with a look at the difficulties of female monasticism in the late-twentieth century. The first half of the study focuses on women religious from the Roman period through the high Middle Ages. The second half surveys the period from the fifteenth century through the twentieth century, with a final chapter, Toward a Third Millennium. McNamara examines patterns of continuity and change in the opportunities and roles of female religious and their institutional affiliations, against the complex social and ecclesiastical backgrounds of this twothousand-year period. She discusses the involvement of women religious across the centuries in missionary work, their major commitment to charity, and their work in hospitals. She notes the special opportunities which prophecy and mysticism provided female religious. The author also furnishes fascinating insights into the religious lives of women along with specific contributions of a number of extraordinary abbesses and nuns. She has singled out figures from Thecla, the companion of St. Paul, to Sister Mary Therese Kane, who, in 1979, urged Pope John Paul II to consider the recognition of women as full members of the Church and their ordination as priests. As noted by McNamara, the book calls attention to foremothers who, for two millennia, have broken new paths for women in a hostile and forbidden world. They served their god and their church and in doing so they fulfilled themselves and laid a foundation for all women. Without the daring and sacrifice of these nuns, it is impossible to imagine the feminist movements of modern times finding any purchase in the public world. They created the image and reality of the autonomous woman. They formed the professions through which that autonomy was activated. They still devote their lives to the care and development of human beings everywhere (p. 6). One of the major themes of Sisters in Arms, and also treated by McNamara in other works, is that of syneisactism, namely, the ideal and practice of chaste cohabitation by religious men and religious women with a basic recognition of equal spiritual capacities. McNamara notes that during the first millennium the gender system was essentially syneisactic. …

Early house moves, indoor air, heating methods and asthma

Objectives: To assess whether house moves or certain housing conditions are a risk factor for the development of childhood asthma. Design: A case-control study of asthmatic and non-atopic children aged 4–16 years. Subjects: One hundred children with confirmed asthma in a group general practice of 11 000 patients in Plymouth, U.K. Each was matched by age and gender with a child with no history of wheeze, eczema or hay fever. Main outcome measures: House moves and main heating methods, prior to the age of onset of asthma in cases and controls. Results: There was a non-significant association between early house moves and the subsequent development of asthma. No association was found with heating methods, except for ducted-air heating which, because of the small numbers involved could have occurred by chance. None of the other factors studied affecting indoor air showed an association. Conclusion: Moving house at an early age may increase the risk of developing asthma, or may be associated with other more important risk factors, such as increased general mobility and hence, exposure to viral infections. Heating methods or other factors likely to affect the indoor air quality in early life were not useful predictors of subsequent asthma in children.

Evolution of the Pre-Cornish Beam Engine House

Over many years the author has made a study of beam engine houses. In this article he analyses the standing remains of early pre-Cornish engine houses, which are defined as buildings for housing engines with indoor vertical cylinders operating outdoor pump-rods via an overhead beam. An Appendix lists some 40 engine houses with substantial above-ground remains.

The “Building Parson” - The role of Reverend David Hall in the solution of Ireland's early twentieth-century housing problems

The analysis of the role of decision makers in the creation of the urban landscape, often Government or local authorities, lends to suggest a powerful, monolithic and impersonal body at work. However, sometimes just one person can be the catalyst for a whole new way of doing things. This paper is concerned with the work and influence of a man whose role in the solution of Ireland's housing problems has been almost forgotten, yet his impact was profound. The work of the first operational public utility society in Ireland is examined, indicating some of its links to the garden city movement. It is argued that the influence of this St Barnabas public utility society, and its founder, the Reverend David Henry Hall, was far greater than might be suggested by the small number of houses which it built. It is also suggested that the role of public utility societies as agents in housing provision throughout Ireland was far greater than has been heretofore recognised.

Willingness to Pay for Better Housing in Hong Kong: Theory and Evidence (of Dwelling Space)

The standards of Hong Kong's public housing have been widely criticised and today housing improvement is a major on-going concern. The cost of redeveloping early public housing presses hard on the territory, and the task is complicated by the fact that the households have diverse demands and preferences, amid their dissatisfaction. Although improved housing gives tenants a better living environment, the Hong Kong Housing Authority seems to have been reluctant to raise housing standards because of high costs. One way of recovering these costs is to charge higher rents—that is, to let tenants pay a greater share of the cost of public housing. But how much are households willing to pay for better housing? This paper addresses these problems by investigating the willingness to pay for housing amongst the tenants of existing early housing estates in Hong Kong, given their dissatisfaction with the current standards. First, we present the background of this study. Section two then provides an analytical framework which spells out the notion of willingness to pay in the context of demand for better housing; and specifies the willingness to pay model and its assumptions for demand analysis. Section three presents empirical evidence on satisfaction and willingness to pay for more dwelling space among tenants, and tests the relationship between willingness to pay and independent variables. Finally, the concluding part looks at the supply-side questions: if the tenants are willing to pay more, what is the housing authority's capacity to supply, having regard to the cost of provision? This final section also makes recommendations.

Owners of Last Resort: The Track Record of New York City's Early Low-Income Housing Cooperatives Created between 1967 and 1975

As housing abandonment became a major problem in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a program emerged which both rehabilitated abandoned multiple dwellings and created a system of cooperative ownership by low-income former tenants. This became the first program in the United States which transferred ownership of privately held buildings to low-income tenants. The program expanded rapidly so that by 1973 there were 136 properties, which included a total of 286 buildings, at various stages of the process. However, only 42 of these properties had completed rehabilitation and conversion when the program was aborted as a result of the New York City fiscal crisis in 1975. This paper assesses the track record of the 42 cooperatives over the years since that time. It finds a mixed, but disappointing, record, and explores the reasons for this. It then weighs the viability and significance of the strategy to the current crisis in the private low-income rental housing market. Finally, it raises questions concerning recent HUD initiatives encouraging both management and ownership of public housing developments by their tenants in the light of the track record of these early low-income cooperatives.