Housing Policy Development Research Articles

Housing Market Spillovers: Evidence from the End of Rent Control in Cambridge Massachusetts

Understanding potential spillovers from the attributes and actions of neighborhood residents onto the value of surrounding properties and neighborhoods is central to both the theory of urban economics and the development of efficient housing policy. This paper measures the capitalization of housing market spillovers by studying the sudden and largely unanticipated 1995 elimination of stringent rent controls in Cambridge, Massachusetts that had previously muted landlords’ investment incentives and altered the assignment of residents to locations. Pooling administrative data on the assessed values of each residential property and the prices and characteristics of all residential transactions between 1988 and 2005, we find that rent control’s removal produced large, positive, and robust spillovers onto the price of never-controlled housing from nearby decontrolled units. Elimination of rent control added about $1.8 billion to the value of Cambridge’s housing stock between 1994 and 2004, equal to nearly a quarter of total Cambridge residential price appreciation in this period. Positive spillovers to never-controlled properties account for more half of the induced price appreciation. Residential investments can explain only a small fraction of the total.

Increasing the Value of MTO Research for Housing Policy Development

The Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program (MTO) has estimated the effects of two concrete reforms of low-income housing policy on one important group affected by them. Reforms of this type have received, and will continue to receive, serious consideration in housing policy debates. At this stage, it is not feasible to estimate the effects of the MTO reforms on all of the people significantly affected by them. However, it is feasible and desirable to estimate the effects of two similar reforms that would have almost the same effect on the families studied in MTO. These reforms would have no effect on the number of families that receive housing assistance. Instead, they would affect the nature of the housing assistance offered and the taxpayer cost of providing it. One alternative would almost surely have generated cost savings and additional revenue exceeding the cost of the vouchers, thereby providing greater benefits than the current system at a lower taxpayer cost. The MTO results supplemented with estimates of their taxpayer cost would provide a reasonably comprehensive analysis of their effects. This commentary suggests how the taxpayer costs of the alternative reforms might be estimated. Doing it would significantly increase the value of MTO research for housing policy development.

The Maturation of the Neo-liberal Housing Market in Urban China

Neo-liberalism has dominated policy formulation and implementation for three decades and been influential in reshaping urban housing provision in different countries. However, the nature and impact of neo-liberal housing policy developments are also affected by previous arrangements, the exact nature, timing and pace of policy change and by how governments and markets have responded to emerging global and local challenges. This paper examines neo-liberal urban housing reform and market development in China and focuses on market performance and government responses following initial reform. The era of neo-liberal housing policy has been associated with turbulence, market changes and unequal housing and asset distribution. Housing reform and regulation policies have changed frequently in response; and this maturation of the neo-liberal system has important implications for policy and the structure and operation of the market.

Social housing, community empowerment and well‐being: part one – empowerment practice in social housing

PurposeThis paper gives an account of the development and pioneering management practices of a community‐owned and managed agency, Walterton and Elgin Community Homes (WECH), locating these in the context of continuing concerns and emerging aspirations over the role of social housing, with developing UK national policy and a proposed statutory “Right to Transfer” for tenants.Design/methodology/approachThis report provides a narrative of the recent development of social housing policy development and the evolving practice of WECH. This is the essential historical and social policy background to a recent study into the health and well‐being benefits of empowerment through community ownership of social housing. This first paper refers to and discusses the wider implications of the data collected during the well‐being research and literature review, indicating that the population of the WECH estates experience a sense of belonging, and of being involved, which contrasts markedly with statistics for comparable populations in comparable areas of deprivation. Further analysis of the key findings of the original study will be published in Part two.FindingsThe benefits of more community‐owned services include the more efficient and holistic management of properties. Community‐based, resident‐controlled housing associations offer a secure foundation for building in additional services as part of the continued drive to devolve public services to the local level, including hosting of a substantial range of community services, for example the reintegration of the Police into the community. The principle of community ownership of council estates is also valuable in its own right for informing the direction of housing management and policy and where to target effort. The experience and practice of WECH supports the proposition that community ownership of social housing may be an exceptionally effective means for improving and sustaining wellbeing in poor neighbourhoods.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper argues that Government policy should actively support mass mutualisation as a means for improving wellbeing on council/social housing estates and for empowering poorer communities to take greater responsibility for their welfare. Regardless of the extent of mutualisation, many of the practices involved are transferable to non‐mutual social landlords, and may be seen as markers of good practice for agencies intending to taken on social housing via transfer.Originality/valueThere is continued interest in the transfer of social housing stock to new provider agencies. WECH has been the only large‐scale statutory transfer until now of council housing in England and Wales to a mutual, community‐owned housing association. WECH's experience is especially relevant for evidencing the significant advantages governments could obtain through encouraging many more transfers of council estates to community housing associations.

A Comparative Housing Policy and Policy Transfer between Countries with Respect to Low-Income Housing in Korea

Korea has experienced a remarkable economic achievement since the 1960s. However, behind this facade of growth and progress, a chronic housing shortage in the capital region, declining owner-occupation, rising housing costs, and polarization in housing conditions between the better-off and the worse-off clearly illustrate the impasse and crisis in housing that Korea now faces. In addition, the IMF crisis and the late global financial crisis shocked the Korean housing market. The Korean government has made significant policy changes to improve housing security for less-privileged groups. In order to achieve housing policy development, the Korean government has tried to employ of advanced countries. What are the benefits(merits) and dangers(demerits) of housing policy transfer between countries? This paper emphasizes that we must recognize about 'differences' rather than 'commonalities' between countries with respect to policy transfer. It also maintains that the government should play a main role as an enabler rather as a provider of 'low-cost' housing.

Housing, social capital and community development in Seoul

The nature of Korea’s tenure system and its future development has become an increasingly important aspect of housing policy and community development. A major question being posed is what are the implications of housing tenure differences in social capital for housing (estate) development? Are there differences in levels of social capital between ‘homeowners and tenants’ as well as ‘public rental tenants and private rental tenants’? The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast elements of social capital across different housing tenures in the Seoul Metropolitan Region. Using the results of 260 questionnaires and we assess three commonly recognized elements of social capital: social trust, norms and networks. Respondents from across different tenure types reported differences in feelings of acceptance in the neighborhood, and involvement in formal and informal networks. This study found that some of the elements of social capital differed significantly between housing tenures and that housing tenure was also relevant to negative perceptions of socio-economic diversity in the area. This article concludes housing tenure is relevant to the development of neighborhood-based social capital and that this needs to be considered by those involved in implementing housing (estate) development and sustainable communities in Seoul.

Recent changes in Spanish housing policies: subsidized owner-occupancy dwellings as a new tenure sector?

The conventional model of social housing in Spain is a peculiarity within European housing policy, in that it is almost entirely owner-occupied. Subsidized owner-occupancy housing maintains the status of social housing for a set number of years, during which time it cannot be sold against market prices. After that period, its status changes, and the housing concerned becomes part of the free housing market. However, recent developments in Spanish housing policy suggest that this model might change in the future. In some Spanish regions, subsidized owner-occupancy housing is now considered as a separate and permanent tenure category and not as a temporal subsidy arrangement. This paper discusses the background and the possible implications of this new policy perspective.

Rethinking Gender in U.S. Housing Policy

The federal government's complicity in racial discrimina tion in the development and administration of housing policy has been well documented,1 but the government's role in reproducing gendered federal housing policies in the United States has been largely unrecognized in political science. U.S. housing policy in the twentieth century is inextricably linked to perceptions of gender and the single family home, and the traditional nuclear family has been rendered a hegemonic entity. The politics of housing cannot be understood without an analysis of the effects that conceptions of gender have had on housing policy and in turn of the effects of such policy on the cultural and social norms surrounding gender. Although current housing policies reflect changed policy commitments from politi cally conservative administrations, pres ent access to housing remains family composition specific, which means that gender?alongside the more commonly recognized factors of race and class?is an integral part of the complex policy making matrix. Contemporary federal low-income housing programs continue to bear the mark of early housing pro grams, characterized by nuclear family and single-family home rhetoric orga nized around a male-breadwinner model, and thus reinforces the nuclear-family ideal. Nuclear-family-centered ideology crystal lized in the 1920s under the Hoover administration, escalated in the 1950s through suburbanization and urban disinvestment, and developed into policymaking that was increasingly punitive in the 1990s for those outside the nuclearand nuptial-family norm. Although federal housing policies have been shaped by numerous competing interests, the nuclear family has acted as the legitimate norm around which policy has been organized. Both the federal government and the courts have contributed to this gendered structure of housing policy; the federal gov ernment, through the creation of public policies and the sup port of private business interests and the courts through the adjudication of housing-related issues, both of which tolerate, nurture, and endorse gender-stratified policies. Obtaining and maintaining housing relies on the performance of gender, and, more specifically, on the formation of nuclear or quasi-nuclear families. Refraining Gendered Social Policy

The Changing Housing System in Northern Ireland 1998–2007

This paper examines changing housing provision and policies in Northern Ireland during the period 1998–2007. The theoretical framework derives from the political economy of housing and the focus is on the extent to which devolution has impacted upon housing provision and policy since 1998. The distinctive history of housing provision in Northern Ireland since partition is reviewed. The period since the Good Friday Agreement has been characterized by periodic suspensions of the Northern Ireland Assembly and most housing policy initiatives, as between 1971 and 1998, have come from direct rule ministers following Westminster developments. Some distinctive features of social housing administration have been retained, with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive still playing a major role, despite a high level of sales to tenants. Housing provision in Northern Ireland has come also more to resemble the situation in the Republic of Ireland, where a long economic boom has been associated with rapid growth in house prices despite greatly increased levels of new building. It is concluded that there is no significant evidence that devolution after 1998 has resulted in distinctive housing policy or housing provision developments in Northern Ireland and that, as in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland, housing provision has become increasingly market-driven.

Simulation Framework for Analysis of Elderly Mobility Policies

The population in developed countries is aging. Literature has paid minimal attention to the effects that population aging may have on transport demand and sustainability. These effects are believed to be more pronounced in urban areas. A policy framework is presented. It can be used as a template for the development and evaluation of policies that directly or indirectly relate to the effect of population aging on transport in urban areas and thereby inform the planning process. A component of the proposed policy development framework is an urban transport simulation model that is used to simulate policy scenarios over time. Integrated Model for Population Aging Consequences on Transportation (IMPACT) is a conventional transport simulation model coupled with a powerful demographic model that has the potential to project the population of traffic analysis zones over time, as it takes into account vital statistics (births, deaths) and migration rates. Two types of policies were investigated. The first regards elderly driver's license renewal; the second is related to new housing development policies. The results indicate that such a system can produce results that can inform policy regarding elderly automobility.

Unfriendly Architecture: Using Observations of Inuit Spatial Behavior to Design Culturally Sustaining Houses in Arctic Canada

In the decades following the Second World War, Inuit of the Canadian Arctic were introduced to Euro-Canadian architecture in communities that were scattered throughout the North. These houses, and the settlements in which they were situated, were spatially designed around Euro-Canadian concepts of family, community, economics and administrative control. Direct observations of space use by Inuit families were carried out in a remote Canadian Arctic community, and interpreted using space syntax analysis and agency theory. The results of this study indicate that the programmatic categories typically used to structure Euro-Canadian houses, such as bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms and porches, are rarely adhered to by Inuit families. While this apparent mismatch between intended versus actual uses of space may appear arbitrary, it is, in fact, systematically matched to the spatial structure of the houses they inhabit. These interpretations have important implications for the development of aboriginal housing policy in northern Canada.

An Interplay Between Western and Confucian Concepts of Justice: Development of Hong Kong Housing Policy

The concept of social justice has been debated keenly, although consensus on its definition remains elusive. This paper examines and dissects various concepts of justice in the context of the development of housing policy in Hong Kong. It demonstrates how the conceptual complexity of justice involves the principles of needs, rights, deserts and equal opportunity and the ways in which the interpretation of these principles differ significantly and fundamentally within Western and Confucian approaches. The historical expressions of justice in the development of Hong Kong's housing policy can be divided into five broad periods, which illustrate the operation of different concepts of justice. Social justice may be pursued as an integral part of a housing policy, as a means to further other ends, or as a passive by‐product. A housing policy is inadequate if it wholly disregards justice. A housing policy that rests solely on justice, on the other hand, may prove equally inadvisable. Hong Kong is a place where East meets West, and where an interplay between Western and Confucian concepts of justice has an impact on formulation of housing policy. *Both this article and my forthcoming book rest mainly on my PhD research. Thus, there is some overlap of content between them.

Enabling Older People to Stay at Home: How Adaptable are Existing Properties?

A multiprofessional research project examined in detail the factors that affect the adaptability of existing housing and explored issues relating to the introduction of assistive technology into the existing homes of older people in order to provide them with the opportunity to ‘stay put’. The research reported here investigated the feasibility of adapting the existing stock of social housing and the resulting costs and outcomes of introducing assistive technology. This paper outlines that part of the project that examined in detail the adaptability of 82 properties representing a variety of property types to accommodate the needs of seven notional users, characterising the most common range of impairments of older people. The factors that affect a property's adaptability include property type and specific design and construction features. The implications for housing providers, clients and occupational therapists are discussed. The research identified the unique expertise of occupational therapists, spanning the areas of housing, older people and assistive technology, and it introduced methods and tools that can help to determine best housing outcomes as well as cost implications. It is crucial that the profession is proactive in contributing to the development of housing policies that address the needs of an ageing population effectively.

My Home Is My Castle-Housing in Old Age

During the course of the latter decades of the twentieth century, housing in old age became a central issue in discussions relating to the preparation for retirement as the growing cohorts of older people across Europe retired earlier and could look forward to increasing years in retirement, often in housing, which had been ideal for parents and children, but which would become increasingly cumbersome, particularly for the partner destined to survive into advanced old age. Towards the end of the 1970s, in response to a rapidly ageing population, the Danish Government established the world's first Commission on Ageing to develop a coherent, joined-up policy for older people, and housing was a key issue in the work of that Commission. Interest in these issues has not abated in the subsequent decades and at the turn of the twenty-first century there is still widespread research, and policy development in the field. In Denmark, where attractive, supported housing for older people has been a key element in housing policy development, both younger and older generations display a solid lack of propensity to move to housing, which would be more suitable in old age. Since 1987, the Danish Longitudinal Future Study (DLFS) has followed in three waves four generations originally aged 40–64 years, analysing and elucidating among other things their attitudes and expectations to housing in general, and to housing in old age. This paper presents the results of the study relating to the four generations of the study and considers the policy implications of the results.

Racialized Bodies

Racialized Bodies Stephanie Lewthwaite (bio) Natalia Molina. Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879–1939. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. 293 pp. Photographs, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $50.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). Now the adobe . . . has become a tenement for several families, and the courtyard has been honey-combed with shacks, and tents, and non-descript barn-tenements of one and two rooms . . . until one can think of nothing but the squalor of a Chinese city. Bessie Stoddart, "The Courts of Sonoratown," 1905 1 In her exposé of "the housing problem" in Los Angeles, Bessie Stoddart surveyed the rapidly changing contours of Sonoratown, the old Mexican Quarter of the city. By 1905, Mexican immigrants had arrived in greater numbers to work on the railroads and in agriculture. As a settlement house worker and a member of several pioneering municipal commissions in Progressive-era Los Angeles, Stoddart played an instrumental role in appointing the first district nurse and in establishing the city's first housing commission of 1906. Her career illuminates the development of public health and housing policy in Los Angeles at the turn of the century. But more than this, Stoddart's analysis of the impact of Mexican immigration upon the city was predicated on an important analogy: she framed her discussion within an existing racialized discourse, a discourse that made specific reference to Asia. In geographical terms, the old Mexican Quarter of Sonoratown bordered Chinatown in early-twentieth-century Los Angeles. Mexican and Chinese inhabitants were also entwined in the social imagination of the city's reformers and health officials. The parallels made by early-twentieth-century reformers such as Stoddart draw our attention to the ways in which immigrants—and their descendants—have historically been racialized in relation to both white and non-white groups. When examining processes of racialization, historians often underplay these complexities. Yet these nuances are brought out forcefully in Natalia Molina's Fit to Be Citizens? Molina examines the perception and treatment of Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican communities in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Los Angeles through the prism of public health. By analyzing how [End Page 482] public health discourse and policy racialized, excluded, and/or sought to reform different groups at different times in relation to one another, Molina moves us beyond the conventional mono-ethnic study. Whilst discourses on the Chinese and the Japanese framed the perception, reception, and racialization of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, health authorities treated these ethnic groups very differently, and their position within the racial hierarchy shifted over time. Molina demonstrates the fluid and socially constructed nature of race. Her emphasis on institutional practice, discourse, and the racialization of space also signifies that cultural geography remains a critical methodological tool with which to understand the mapping and remapping of race in the United States. Molina's work certainly falls within a recent body of critical literature that examines the intersection of race and geography, a focus evident in studies of LA as the "Latino Metropolis," and in work documenting the importance of spatial identities in Chicano/a literary and cultural production.2 Molina's historical dimension complements earlier studies of "barrioization," and the more recent "spatial turn" in Chicano/a, immigration, ethnic, and labor history.3 By examining how race is "regionally constructed," Molina's interdisciplinary study also enriches the recent scholarship that moves us beyond the black-white paradigm (p. 48). Ultimately, the focus of Fit to Be Citizens? falls upon Mexicans and Mexican Americans, and as Molina's comparative analysis unravels, we emerge with a greater understanding of why Latinos/as are located "at the intersection of several racializing dynamics" in contemporary America.4 Asian and Mexican immigration dramatically reshaped the economy and demographic landscape of California and the Southwest, and helped build Los Angeles as a city and metropolitan region. By examining the various waves of immigration and the significance of federal legislation such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act and the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, Fit to Be Citizens? is grounded within the existing historiography of immigration. Molina's analysis is partly structured through its attention to the nativism...

Housing Choice and Control, Housing Quality, and Control over Professional Support as Contributors to the Subjective Quality of Life and Community Adaptation of People with Severe Mental Illness

This research examined two premises of supported housing: (a) that consumer choice/control over housing and support and the quality of housing are important contributors to the subjective quality of life and adaptation to community living of people with mental illness, and (b) that apartments provide mental health consumers with more choice/control over housing and support than group living arrangements. To test these two hypotheses, we collected data from participants with mental illness housed through a government initiative in Ontario, Canada. A total of 130 participants completed a baseline interview, and 91 of those participants also completed a follow-up interview 9-months later. Support was found for both hypotheses. The results were discussed in terms of the paradigm of supported housing, previous research, and implications for housing policy and program development in the community mental health sector.

Housing and the welfare state: the development of housing policy in Britain

Introduction Perspectives on Housing Housing Before the Welfare State Housing and the Second World War Reshaping Housing Policy Housing and Welfare State Restructuring The New Housing Policy Housing, Wellbeing and the Market Social Change, Social Exclusion and Social Housing The New Organisation of Social Housing Conclusion

CATON ET AL. RESPOND

We appreciate Alexander-Eitzman’s interest in our article and welcome the opportunity to respond to his letter. We take issue with his assertion that our approach in this study of risk factors for long-term homelessness is one where the “tools define the problem,”1(pXXX) with the implication that our predictor variables were heavily tilted toward the assessment of psychopathology. Although our assessment battery did include standardized assessments of health and mental health status, the tools did not define the results. Our overall findings underscored the heterogeneity of the contemporary homeless, but a Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that participants who were younger and those who had better psychosocial adjustment, recent or current employment, earned income, and adequate family support experienced shorter durations of homelessness than those without these characteristics. In the Discussion section of our article we concluded that these findings suggest that new shelter admissions presenting with such characteristics might be offered assistance with job searches, temporary income support, or other supportive services that might provide a fast track out of homelessness. We reject the argument by Meyer and Schwartz2 that epidemiological analyses of social problems such as homelessness should be avoided. The identification of individual-level risk factors for chronic homelessness has practical implications for service delivery in that it suggests new preventive intervention approaches. Other findings we reported, specifically the characteristics of living arrangements prior to shelter entry and upon exit from homelessness, illustrate the scarcity of housing options available to this economically disadvantaged population. Although not predictive of duration of homelessness, widespread and long-standing mental health and substance abuse problems among our study subjects indicate a substantial unmet need for public health and mental health services in the disadvantaged neighborhoods from which these newly homeless men and women emerged. We agree completely with Alexander-Eitz-man’s recommendation that the longitudinal study of homelessness be broadened to include multiple levels of analysis. A strategy for the prevention of chronic homelessness should encompass interventions at both individual and population levels and should address housing, health, and mental health policy and program development issues.

Qualitative Methods and the Evaluation of Community Renewal Programs in Australia: Towards a National Framework

The emergence of public housing estate renewal programs in Australia in the last decade has been one of the most prominent developments in social housing policy. These programs have undertaken a broad mix of renewal activity, ranging from outright physical redevelopment and stock replacement for sale, to community development type initiatives to improve social and employment outcomes for residents. However, while a number of evaluations of these programs have been undertaken, the development of evaluation methodology has lagged behind that of other countries. This in part is due to the lack of federal government interest or involvement in these programs which are essentially state specific. The article reviews the evaluations that have been undertaken in the last 10 years in Australia and assesses the relative importance of qualitative methodologies in these evaluations. Despite a strong focus among policy makers on value-for-money aspects of renewal, the authors show that qualitative methods have been commonplace, if limited in range, and argue this is a result of both the difficulty of obtaining comparative quantitative information especially when comparing dissimilar programs between states. In this context, qualitative methods are more easily managed by researchers and offer more insightful assessments than quantitatively based approaches. The article concludes by arguing for a national evaluation methodology to assist in more rigorous evaluations and the extension of qualitative evaluation methods.

The housing fulcrum: Balancing economic and social factors in housing research and policy

We discuss the pivotal role that housing plays for both social and economic outcomes. All people need to be housed, and housing circumstances help determine social outcomes, especially for vulnerable groups. We outline an analytical framework that treats housing as a dynamic system, incorporating the life‐cycles of both individuals/households and houses. Each is long‐lived; decisions impact on housing for decades. This approach is relevant to the development of housing research and housing policy. We illustrate the issues with reference to the relationship between rental yields and measures of deprivation across New Zealand. The surprising nature of this relationship has consequences regarding potential poverty traps and wealth disparities. While highlighting an important housing market issue, any policy response to this issue is complicated by the need to take account of the life‐cycles of both individuals and of houses, and by the long‐lasting impacts of decisions.