Mixed-income Developments Research Articles

Public assistance, living environments, and food insecurity: A comparative community case study

Food insecurity continues to affect certain seg­ments of the U.S. population at the household and individual levels even when the economy is experi­encing growth. This recognition has led to the design and implementation of food assistance programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, targeting food hardship in low-income families. This is in addition to other types of government assistance, such as housing subsidies and public housing, as low-income households and individuals face similar challenges in housing security. Concern over “concentrated poverty” in traditional public housing environment has contributed to a shift toward mixed-income developments, envisaged to improve the living conditions and economic opportunities of public-housing residents. This paper provides a compara­tive assessment of food insecurity in traditional and mixed-income public housing communities. It also examines the effect of nonhousing public assis­tance on food insecurity and the temporal relation­ship between the timing of food hardship and the receipt of assistance. Administering a modified version of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Household Food Security Module to the majority of residents in the two communities, the researchers found negligible differences in food insecurity between recipients and nonrecipients of government assistance. Nevertheless, government assistance appeared to improve the probability of being food secure as it interacted with living envi­ronments, suggestive of greater beneficial effect in the environment of mixed-income housing. The results show that the number of households experi­encing reduced food intake was lowest in the first two weeks and highest during the fourth week of the month.

Choice and Opportunity: Housing Relocation, Neighborhood Change, and Family Well-Being in the South City Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) in Memphis, TN

Mixed-income development initiatives target distressed public housing for redevelopment and provide support to low-income families. These initiatives involve an involuntary move for families living in the sites targeted for redevelopment. The objectives of this study were to examine housing relocation, neighborhood change, and family well-being among families (n = 383) affected by the South City Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) in Memphis, Tennessee, using longitudinal administrative records merged with census data. Regression analysis and multilevel mixed-effects modeling were utilized to examine quality of life outcomes (e.g., perceived home safety, neighborhood safety, stress). Families who moved out of the CNI zip code improved their neighborhood quality compared to families who stayed. All families experienced improvements to home safety and neighborhood safety, but also experienced increased stress irrespective of decisions to leave or stay in the CNI zip code. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Promoting a geography of opportunity in Accra, Ghana: Applying lessons from mixed-income development successes and shortcomings

ABSTRACT Urban poverty in both the developed and developing world is often spatially organized with deprivation highly concentrated in segregated areas of cities. With the rapid urbanization and lack of effective urban planning in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa, segregation, economic deprivation and social exclusion are particularly severe challenges. In the United States, almost 30 years of poverty deconcentration policy has had mixed results and offers cautions to other countries looking to confront urban segregation. Accra, the capital city of Ghana, offers an intriguing example of a city with substantial clusters of poverty and slum areas, but also some neighborhoods with high existing levels of economic integration. Drawing on the theoretical and empirical context of poverty deconcentration efforts in the United States, this paper presents a conceptual framework with two alternative pathways for urban development: an inclusionary pathway and an exclusionary pathway. We use this framework to review and critique Ghana’s existing urban policy and offer implications for inclusionary urban policy in Accra and other similar cities in developing countries.

Social inclusion through mixed-income development: Design and practice in the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative

ABSTRACT Social Inclusion is an emerging term, used to encompass ideas of equity, social, economic and civic participation, and the proactive protection of human rights. In the United States, one potential vehicle for social inclusion is the development of mixed-income communities. Using a process perspective, this study explores the design and practice of social inclusion in the context of mixed-income development, by conducting a qualitative analysis of the federal Choice Neighborhoods Initiative. Utilizing a combined content analysis and grounded theory analysis of archival grant reports and conducted interviews, this study aims to answer the question: How do mixed-income development practitioners design and practice social inclusion? Through this analysis, the study generates a process theory of social inclusion through mixed-income development, identifying 57 practices, processes, programs, and structures that mixed-income development practitioners utilize in designing and practicing social inclusion.

Perceived benefits and risks of developing mixed communities in New Zealand: implementer perspectives

Abtsract In New Zealand, mixed communities are developed on green fields or to replace existing public housing as a way of increasing housing supply, and, in some views, improving outcomes for low-income residents. This paper identifies the effects of developing mixed communities as perceived by implementers of these projects – politicians, officials, developers, and housing providers – and places these in the context of the international evidence. The range of perspectives on potential benefits and risks of mixed-income development for public tenants, the mixed evidence base, and uncertainty about the applicability of research evidence across different urban contexts should inform a research agenda.

A study on employment of HOPE VI projects: Examining the impact of neighborhood disadvantage, housing type diversity, and supportive services

ABSTRACTThe present study tested the associations of housing type diversity, neighborhood disadvantage, and employment-related community supportive services with new job placements in 257 HOPE VI projects. This study used a merged data from quarterly reports by HOPE VI revitalization grantees, 2010–2014 American Community Survey, and the entropy index on housing type diversity of each HOPE VI site. This study first described the patterns of housing type diversity and the surrounding neighborhoods of the HOPE VI sites. Then, a negative binomial regression analysis showed that higher housing type diversity and a higher number of education programs were significantly associated with a higher number of new job placements. The results suggest that mixing residents with diverse housing types could yield positive employment outcomes. None of the neighborhood-level predictors was statistically significant. This paper is one of the first to apply the entropy index to diverse housing types of mixed-income developments.

Social housing on trial: Institutions + Policy design

ABSTRACTThe recent global crisis exposed vulnerabilities of housing markets pointing to the need to build resilience through better policy tools and sustainable provision of social housing. In the context of fiscal austerity social housing is on trial affected by changing politics, privatization and concentration of urban poverty. This special issue explores the differences and similarities in housing policies and practices by focusing on social housing institutions and their ability to influence affordability and quality of housing. The focus is on private and not-for-profit provision in mixed-income developments supported through partnerships and a mix of policy instruments.

Barriers to Integrating New Urbanism in Mixed-Income Housing Plans in Chicago: Developer, Housing Official, and Consultant Perspectives

This article explores the barriers to implementing mixed-income development plans that incorporate the social (income) and physical (new urbanism) mixing goals of HOPE VI. I examine a comparative case study of three HOPE VI planning efforts in Chicago, Illinois, that exhibit different results. I draw from 25 in-depth interviews across three primary types of actors involved in the development process: developers, housing officials, and consultants. This research uses the perspectives of these key actors to identify the barriers that constrain the implementation of new urbanist designs. Current research indicates that mixed-income developments vary in their degree of income mixing and how new urbanist strategies are implemented. However, there is little consensus on why this is so. Findings indicate implementation of new urbanism is constrained by limited interagency coordination, restrictive design policies, low community buy-in, and exclusive marketing and occupancy practices. Overall, the research offers lessons learned from which I recommend changes in planning practices to assist actors in the consistent implementation of new urbanism in mixed-income developments.

Mixed-income green housing in St George, Staten Island

This proposal sets out to find which policy measure pertaining to affordable housing would be most successful in revitalizing the St George neighborhood on Staten Island. St George has dealt with issues such as a lagging commercial district, difficulty drawing people to the neighborhood, homelessness, and a stagnant housing market. The emergence of affordable green housing units, mixed-income housing developments, and community-based initiatives focused on urban neighborhoods have become increasingly successful pieces in economic and infrastructural development throughout major urban areas. This paper will use scholarly research focusing on the role sustainably built affordable housing, mixed-income housing units, and community-based housing initiatives have in revitalizing urban neighborhoods. Findings from this study reveal that the introduction of mixed-income green housing units in urban areas can be successful in raising the socioeconomic standard of living within designated neighborhoods. It is suggested that a community-based housing initiative be established to introduce affordable mixed-income green housing units to the St George neighborhood of Staten Island.

The organizational challenges of mixed-income development: privatizing public housing through cross-sector collaboration

One of the largely undocumented dimensions of public housing transformation in the United States is the multi-sector, multi-organizational collaborations whose charge is to manage the local implementation of mixed-income developments. In Chicago, private real estate developers entered into partnerships with the Chicago Housing Authority to finance, design, build, and manage the new developments. Key topics considered in this paper include the structures and processes of new organizational working relationships that have been established, how they are evolving over time, and the key operational challenges confronted in creating and sustaining them. We argue that these cross-sector collaborations within the context of the privatization of public housing generate complex organizational roles and dynamics that would benefit from far greater intentionality, clarity, and support to promote effectiveness and accountability.

Do State Affordable Housing Appeals Systems Backfire? A Natural Experiment

Several U.S. states have supplemented traditional judicial review of local land-use regulation with a state affordable housing appeals system (SAHAS). Empirical evidence indicates that a SAHAS can increase the proportion of housing that is affordable to low- and moderate-income households. But some scholars have suggested that an effective SAHAS will ultimately backfire, by producing incentives to prohibit market-rate development, thereby rendering a state’s housing stock less affordable overall. We test this “backfire” hypothesis with a longitudinal comparison of single-family housing development from 1980 through 2007 in municipalities located in adjacent areas of Connecticut (which adopted a SAHAS in 1989) and New York State (which did not have a SAHAS during the study period). Contrary to the predictions of the backfire hypothesis, our fixed effects regression indicates that Connecticut's SAHAS was associated with increased single-family development relative to the New York State jurisdictions in our sample. This result suggests that a SAHAS can increase below-market rate and mixed-income development without impeding market-rate development.

Spatially integrated and socially segregated: The effects of mixed-income neighbourhoods on social well-being

Mixed-income development is the latest in a long line of policy interventions to improve outcomes in distressed urban neighbourhoods, particularly as an alternative to large scale public housing projects. Such developments are inherently integrationist, and have profound effects on the social lives and well-being of residents. After situating mixed-income developments within current residential demographic trends with regard to race and income, this article provides a comprehensive review of the 22 empirical studies addressing social integration in mixed-income developments in the United States, focusing on understanding the effects of spatial integration on social well-being. We discuss policy and practice implications to optimise the social well-being of residents, as well as strategies to improve scholarship in these settings.

Privatization in an Era of Economic Crisis: Using Market-Based Policies to Remedy Market Failures

Prior to the 2008 global financial crisis, Chicago’s agenda to privatize public housing had begun its ascent. As over 20,000 residents relocated, 10 mixed-income housing developments started to replace the areas where high-rise buildings once stood. In the postrecession context, however, the promised transformation proved financially difficult—if not impossible in certain geographic areas—to complete at the scale intended or with the continuum of socioeconomic diversity expected. That shift in the economic context, along with subsequent political responses, thoroughly altered the policy strategy. Sixteen years into Chicago’s public housing reforms, the former public housing sites remained underdeveloped. Chicago’s reforms provide a worthwhile case for empirical observation and theoretical extension about the nature of privatization within a city considered America’s testing ground for neoliberal urbanism. Drawing from nearly 2 years of ethnographic research, this article contributes to the literature by explaining how, in the context of extreme volatility, the mixed-income development strategy premised on market logics became untenable. When the tools and rationales for privatization no longer held up, Chicago’s reforms had to be reconstituted. It is shown that whereas the financial crisis resulted in disastrous impacts that called into question the reliance on private-sector actors and finance capital, local political actors nonetheless continued to seek new strategies dependent on the private market for the provision of affordable housing. The mixed-income strategy needs to be restructured so that it more equitably generates a mix of housing tenures, rather than subsidizing private development in gentrifying neighborhoods where market-rate populations are already attracted to move. Alternative policy options are needed, especially during inevitable periods of economic downturn and in more distressed, racially segregated neighborhoods.

Can new urbanism infill development contribute to social sustainability? The case of Orlando, Florida

The new urbanism promotes preferred design and land use patterns as a means to enhance quality of life through socioeconomic diversity, but many criticise these assertions of causality. Deriving community indicators for social sustainability – including housing affordability and socioeconomic diversity – and from studies assessing new urbanism as an infill development tool, we examine the impact of new urbanism infill development in Parramore, an economically distressed inner city neighbourhood, and Baldwin Park, a brownfield inner-ring suburb, with comparative control neighbourhoods in Orlando, Florida. In Parramore, active new urbanism implementation, including HOPE VI and the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, reflect revitalisation efforts through increased socioeconomic diversity. Meanwhile, the Baldwin Park plan incorporates many new urbanist best practices. The findings from these two distinct cases of infill development indicate that the new urbanism does not necessarily ensure social sustainability, though these principles are often integrated into publicly funded revitalisation initiatives dedicated to doing so through mixed use and mixed income development.

Integrating the inner city: the promise and perils of mixed-income public housing transformation

For many years Chicago's looming large-scale housing projects defined the city, and their demolition and redevelopment via the Chicago Housing Authority's Plan for Transformation has been perhaps the most startling change in the city's urban landscape in the last twenty years. The Plan, which reflects a broader policy effort to remake public housing in cities across the country, seeks to deconcentrate poverty by transforming high-poverty public housing complexes into mixed-income developments and thereby integrating once-isolated public housing residents into the social and economic fabric of the city. But is the Plan an ambitious example of urban regeneration or a not-so-veiled effort at gentrification? In the most thorough examination of mixed-income public housing redevelopment to date, Robert J. Chaskin and Mark L. Joseph draw on five years of field research, in-depth interviews, and volumes of data to demonstrate that while considerable progress has been made in transforming the complexes physically, the integrationist goals of the policy have not been met. They provide a highly textured investigation into what it takes to design, finance, build, and populate a mixed-income development, and they illuminate the many challenges and limitations of the policy as a solution to urban poverty. Timely and relevant, Chaskin and Joseph's findings raise concerns about the increased privatization of housing for the poor while providing a wide range of recommendations for a better way forward.

Deconcentration without Integration: Examining the Social Outcomes of Housing Choice Voucher Movement in Los Angeles County

This article reports on the social experiences of tenants moving from low–income neighborhoods in the City of Los Angeles to a racially mixed, lower poverty suburb—the Antelope Valley—using Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers. Voucher tenants experience significant social exclusion and aggressive oversight. Local residents use racial shorthand to label their black neighbors as voucher holders and apply additional scrutiny to their activity. They aggressively report voucher tenants to the housing authority and police, instigating inspections that threaten tenants’ voucher status. Tenants react to these circumstances by withdrawing from their communities in order to avoid scrutiny and protect their status in the program. These findings illustrate that the social difficulties documented in mixed–income developments may also exist in voucher programs, highlight the ways in which neighborhood effects may be extended to include social experiences, and suggest the limits of the voucher program to translate geographic mobility into socioeconomic progress.

Associations between Public Housing and Individual Earnings in New Orleans

This study uses a sample of the civilian labor force aged 16-64 constructed from the Decennial Census and American Community Survey, along with data from the HUD dataset Picture of Subsidized Households, to compare the likelihood for job earnings in relation to public housing developments in the New Orleans MSA before and after Hurricane Katrina. Results from a series of hierarchical linear models (HLM) indicate significant relationships are altered between time periods, including those from public and mixed-income developments, suggesting a fluid relationship between neighborhoods and economic outcomes during physical, demographic and economic restructuring.

Tract- and county-level income inequality and individual risk of obesity in the United States

ObjectivesWe tested three alternative hypotheses regarding the relationship between income inequality and individual risk of obesity at two geographical scales: U.S. Census tract and county. MethodsIncome inequality was measured by Gini coefficients, created from the 2000 U.S. Census. Obesity was clinically measured in the 2003–2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The individual measures and area measures were geo-linked to estimate three sets of multi-level models: tract only, county only, and tract and county simultaneously. Gender was tested as a moderator. ResultsAt both the tract and county levels, higher income inequality was associated with lower individual risk of obesity. The size of the coefficient was larger for county-level Gini than for tract-level Gini; and controlling income inequality at one level did not reduce the impact of income inequality at the other level. Gender was not a significant moderator for the obesity-income inequality association. ConclusionsHigher tract and county income inequality was associated with lower individual risk of obesity, indicating that at least at the tract and county levels and in the context of cross-sectional data, the public health goal of reducing the rate of obesity is in line with anti-poverty policies of addressing poverty through mixed-income development where neighborhood income inequality is likely higher than homogeneous neighborhoods.

Book Reviews

Planning Sustainable Cities and Regions: Towards More Equitable Development, Karen Chapple, NY, Routledge, 2015, 307 pp., US$155.00, ISBN 978-1-13-878966There have been a large number of books published on sustainability planning since the 1990s. For teachers or scholars of sustainability planning, one challenge is not a lack of choices but too many choices. This book by Karen Chapple, a Professor of the University of California, Berkeley, can be recommended. It distinguishes itself from competing choices by connecting 'planning dogmas' to 'changes that are occurring in our population, preferences, technology, and economy' (p. 14), and by presenting instructive real-world cases. It thus initiates intriguing discussions regarding how planning dogmas and practices have adapted to, and should adapt to the above changesChapters 1 and 2 serve as the introduction. They paint the big picture of contemporary cities/regions, their planning and the contexts where planning is embedded. The author argues that 'lively, safe, sustainable, and healthy' cities/regions are now commonly accepted across countries. But planning such cities/regions is a serious challenge. Planning as a profession has established paradigms regarding how to conceptualise and manage a series of relationships, 'between people and plans, economy and place, and the poor and their life changes', which have a lot to do with sustainability (p. 3). However, recent years have seen significant trends in population, preferences, technology and economy and this necessitates changes in planning paradigms so as to best deal with emerging opportunities and challenges. For instance, the US will become a country where the minority is the majority, where there are more millennials than baby boomers and where the youth is experiencing higher unemployment rates. This would engender challenges for planning and beyond where the region is a better unit of analysis and for interventions. Based on this, the author examines the evolution of regional sustainability planning in the US and surveys representative regional sustainability efforts outside the US. The introduction concludes with descriptions of sustainability planning in California and the San Francisco Bay Area, which the author treats as a leader.The main body (Chapters 3 to 13) has three parts: development, economic development and equity, which correspond to the triple bottom lines of sustainability. Each part re-conceptualises the aforementioned paradigms, supplemented by selected realworld cases. Part 1 describes the necessity and challenges faced by infill development and other planning and policy tools. It regards the former as one of the least challenging planning and policy tools. Each tool, however, says the author, can be instrumental and destructive to realising sustainability/ development goals. In San Francisco, for instance, the author shows that reactive infill development and mixed-income development have exacerbated gentrification rather than lessened it.Part 2 argues that developing high-quality jobs that match the skills of local disadvantaged workers should be at least equally important as those traditional approaches such as stimulating exports, promoting agglomerations and cultivating entrepreneurship. It uses various cases in California to back up this argument. Again, the author cautions readers that tools which work in Place A may not work in Place B. …

An Assessment of the Training and Developmental Needs of Employees in Nigerian Local Government

Mixed-income developments are becoming a common mechanism to transform public housing in urban communities. Housing authorities use this new form of housing to change the demographic profile of deteriorating inner city neighborhoods. The purpose of this study was to examine the conversion of public housing to mixed-income/mixed-use communities through a case analysis of the Broad Creek Renaissance Plan in Norfolk, Virginia. The researcher analyzed Broad Creek’s land-use patterns and socioeconomic factors to determine if the HOPE VI initiative is meeting its goals and objectives. The results of this study revealed that through revitalization the Broad Creek Renaissance neighborhood’s demographic profile was slightly changed from the pre-existing community to include individuals of different economic status, age ranges, and ethnic backgrounds.