Public Housing Program Research Articles

An incomplete megastructure: the Golden Mile Complex, global planning education, and the pedestrianised city

New experiments were taking place in Singapore from the early 1960s onwards, as pedagogies and practices of urban design were being circulated among global experts and multiple stakeholders. New attitudes towards modernisation and urban renewal were developed then. Post-war humanist ideals of ‘social’ Brutalist architecture and revisionist attitudes towards high modernism and the overdevelopment of automobile infrastructure coursed through Singapore’s Golden Mile Complex (GMC). This was a project that attempted to address the problems of increased density and economic imperatives in the urban realm. This article focuses on the GMC as a contested site and as a built megastructure, in an effort to chart a new relationship between architecture, urban design, and the missed opportunity to develop a pedestrianised city. Designed by William S.W. Lim and the Design Partnership (DP), the GMC was an experiment in pedestrianised urbanism that differed from what had emerged in the original centres of invention and intellectual discourse in Singapore. Partly coinciding with the GMC’s design conception and construction, the period between 1962 and 1973 raised warnings against the ‘bulldozer addicts’ of urban renewal. It also witnessed the socially levelling roles of shopping, alternative models of urban circulation, and the emergence of extra-large architectural forms. This was also a short period of democratic debate and experimentation with mixed-use typologies and strata-title private ownership in the increased commercialisation of the city, fuelled by Singapore’s ambition to become a global city. The need to attract global capital and private consumerist functions made polarising demands on the development around the GMC. Alongside its aggressive urban renewal, Singapore was also keen to gain social legitimacy through its public housing programmes. The circulation of globally relevant pedagogies in urban design and planning formed the backdrop to an incomplete conception and realisation of an avant-garde megastructure specific to an Asian discourse of urban densification.

’Borta bra men hemma bäst’? – Das schwedische miljonprogram in literarischen Darstellungen von seinen Anfängen bis in die Gegenwart

Abstract This article analyses literary approaches to the relation between the folkhem, the Swedish welfare state, and the miljonprogram (a public housing program between 1965 and 1974 implemented by the social democratic government with the aim to build 1 million homes to solve the housing shortage). Since its initiation, this housing program has been subjected to critique addressing, among others, issues with quality and the promotion of segregation and social exclusion. Literary discussions since the mid-1960s have both responded to this critique and challenged it. They have questioned the impact of welfare politics on a still divided society by drawing on negative aspects of miljonprogram-areas. Recent texts that negotiate class and ethnicity, however, reclaim these areas with positive descriptions. They highlight their meaning as homes for a large part of Swedish contemporary society and thereby re-connect to the original idea of the folkhem – a home for the people.

A quantitative evaluation of the Housing Provident Fund program in China

The Housing Provident Fund (HPF) is the largest public housing program in China. It was created in 1999 to enhance homeownership. This program involves a mandatory saving scheme based on labor income. Past deposits are refunded when the worker purchases a house or retires. Moreover, the program provides mortgages at subsidized rates to facilitate these home purchases. I calibrate a heterogeneous-agent life-cycle model to quantify the effects of these polices. My analysis shows that a housing program with these features is expected to raise the rate of homeownership by 8.7 percentage points and to increase the average home size by 20%. I discuss the economic mechanisms by which these outcomes are achieved and which features of the HPF program are most effective. I also consider several extensions of the model such as requiring employers to contribute to the program and allowing renters to withdraw funds from the HPF.

A Quantitative Evaluation of the Housing Provident Fund Program in China

The Housing Provident Fund (HPF) is the largest public housing program in China. It was created in 1999 to enhance homeownership. This program involves a mandatory saving scheme based on labor income. Past deposits are refunded when the worker purchases a house or retires. Moreover, the program provides mortgages at subsidized rates to facilitate these home purchases. I calibrate a heterogeneous-agent life-cycle model to quantify the effects of these policies. My analysis shows that a housing program with these features is expected to raise the rate of homeownership by 8.7 percentage points and to increase the average home size by 20%. I discuss the economic mechanisms by which these outcomes are achieved and which features of the HPF program are most effective. I also consider several extensions of the model such as requiring employers to contribute to the program and allowing renters to withdraw funds from the HPF.

The decision on unconstitutionality of earmarking and its impact on the housing access: Evidence from São Paulo State, Brazil

In September of 1997 the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the earmarking of tax revenues to public housing programme that was practised by the Government of the State of São Paulo. We explore this decision as an exogenous experiment to identify the impact of the earmarking prohibition on public housing deficit. We take advantage of the fact that the decision only affected the provision of public housing to households below a specific income threshold and estimate a difference‐in‐difference empirical model with probit estimators. Our results suggest that low‐income individuals faced an average decrease of 4.5% in the probability of living in a housing deficit condition after earmarking was revoked.

Message framing to reduce stigma and increase support for policies to improve the wellbeing of people with prior drug convictions

BackgroundIndividuals with drug convictions are at heightened risk of poor health, due in part to punitive public policies. This study tests the effects of message frames on: (1) public stigma towards individuals with felony drug convictions and (2) support for four policies in the United States (U.S.) affecting social determinants of health: mandatory minimum sentencing laws, ‘ban-the-box’ employment laws, and restrictions to supplemental nutrition and public housing programs. MethodsA randomized experiment (n = 3,758) was conducted in April 2018 using a nationally representative online survey panel in the U.S. Participants were randomized to a no-exposure arm or one of nine exposure arms combining: (1) a description of the consequences of incarceration and community reentry framed in one of three ways: a public safety issue, a social justice issue or having an impact on the children of incarcerated individuals, (2) a narrative description of an individual released from prison, and (3) a picture depicting the race of the narrative subject. Logistic regression was used to assess effects of the frames. ResultsSocial justice and the impact on children framing lowered social distance measures and increased support for ban-the-box laws. ConclusionThese findings can inform the development of communication strategies to reduce stigma and advocacy efforts to support the elimination of punitive polices towards individuals with drug convictions.

The New Deal, the Deserving Poor, and the First Public Housing Residents in New York City

ABSTRACTBetween 1934 and the time of the 1940 Census, the US government built and leased 30,151 units of public housing, but we know little about the residents who benefited from this housing. We use a unique methodology that compares addresses of five public housing developments to complete-count data from the 1940 Census to identify residents of public housing in New York City at the time of the census. We compare these residents to the larger pool of residents living in New York City in 1940 who were eligible to apply for the housing to assess how closely housing authorities adhered to the intent of the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) and the Housing Act of 1937. This comparison produces a picture of whom public housing administrators considered deserving of this public benefit at the dawn of the public housing program in the United States. Results indicate a shift toward serving households with lower incomes over time. All the developments had a consistent preference for households with a “nuclear family” structure, but policies favoring racial segregation and other discretion on the part of housing authorities for tenant selection created distinct populations across housing developments. Households headed by a naturalized citizen were favored over households headed by a native-born citizen in nearly all the public housing projects. This finding suggests a more nuanced understanding of who public housing administrators considered deserving of the first public housing than archival research accounts had previously indicated.

The use of markets in housing policy: a comparative analysis of housing subsidy programs

Many countries use demand-side housing subsidies to support low-income households. Unlike public or social housing programs, demand-side subsidies require recipients to enter the private market to use their benefits. The focus of this study is the experiences of assisted households in the private housing market and the outcomes they achieve. Given the link between policy design and program outcomes and because all housing subsidy programs are not created equal, one might expect the experiences and outcomes of recipients to also vary. To examine this relationship, using data from national housing surveys, this study analyzes cross-national variation in housing support programs and compares the housing and neighbourhood outcomes of subsidized households in the US, the UK, and the Netherlands. The findings of this study highlight that market context and policy design are associated with housing outcomes. In particular, the strong tenant supports and favourable design of housing assistance in the Netherlands is associated with favourable outcomes for subsidized households. In the US and the UK, subsidized households, in general, underperform their unsubsidized peers. This article underscores the importance of institutional context and program design when public assistance programs require recipients to enter the private market to use a benefit.

Korean public rental housing for residential stability of the younger population: analysis of policy impacts using system dynamics

ABSTRACTTo alleviate the burden of high residential costs for the younger population, the Korean government has recently implemented a public rental housing program for those who are vulnerable in their residential conditions and endure low quality of life. This program is not yet fully effective in achieving its policy aim because of lengthy construction periods and consistent vacancies (despite high demand). To address this issue, policy guidelines are sought. This study comprehensively models supply and demand of public rental housing and analyzes the effects of diverse policies on the rental housing system behaviour. To represent the rental housing system, system dynamics is applied which consists of continuous simulation based on causal relationships among variables encompassing their time-lagged effects (and in which system variables are highly interdependent). By testing the effects of policy variables of public rental housing delivery strategies upon the system, the developed model provides an in-depth understanding of policy impacts towards achieving a desired policy objective (in this case to accommodate more public rental housing demands by minimizing vacancy rates). The results provide guidelines for developing detailed policies for more efficient public rental housing project delivery, which can contribute to alleviating the residential problems of the younger population.

Public Housing Authorities in the Private Market

ABSTRACTDecreasing federal resources since the 1980s, policy devolution to the local level, and expansion of market-based approaches for affordable housing delivery have resulted in public housing authorities (PHAs) evolving from public organizations to hybrid organizations that encompass public and private characteristics. Although federal rules guide their implementation of U.S. Department of Housing and Development (HUD) programs, PHAs are created locally under state authorizing legislation. Under what conditions do PHAs create new affordable housing using their ability to employ both public and private means of service delivery? Although PHAs have the ability to create new units outside the traditional assisted stock, no clear estimate of the number of units created using these newer means exists, or even a count of how many PHAs are engaging in such activities. Descriptive analysis allows for estimates of this basic information. A multivariate analysis using data from a national survey of PHAs, content analysis of state enabling legislation, and publicly available data sets suggests that whereas the local market context partially predicts affordable housing ownership outside of the public housing program, state enabling legislation and local institutional relationships also facilitate housing production. We estimate that in 2013, PHAs owned more than 150,000 units outside of the traditional HUD-assisted housing stock.

Exploring the Adequacy of Massive Constructed Public Housing in China

Public housing programs are an effective strategy to provide adequate housing, not only in developed countries, but also developing countries. This study holistically investigates the sitting occupants’ perception of adequate housing towards their public housing units using Chongqing, a typical city in western China, as a case study. Results showed that generally, the public rental housing (PRH) programs were perceived to be adequate by their residents in the estates sampled. The components of neighborhood environment, housing unit, and affordability were the top three factors affecting the overall housing adequacy. The importance of physical aspects as well as the nonphysical aspects of adequate housing is likely to change according to their residential purpose. Therefore, the residential purpose of residents should be taken into consideration when planning the physical and nonphysical elements of public housing programs. Meanwhile, socioeconomic characteristics of age, family income, family members, residence length, and housing types have significant effects on overall housing adequacy and its components. These findings shed some useful insights on the sustainable development of public housing in China and provide a useful reference for future public housing developments in developing countries. The provision of adequate housing also helps to attract and retain talent, which consequently improves the competitiveness of the city.

THE LOWER SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS (LES) ADVERTISING SCHEMATA REALITY DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT STIMULI ADVERTISING SCHEMATA (MINDSET) OF THE LOWER SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS (LES) COMMUNITY

Purpose of Study: This study aims to examine how the reality digital environment stimulate the advertising schemata (mindset) of the LES community in Malaysia. This study also measures the advertising literacy of the LES community based on the two literacy models; cognitive model of media literacy and advertising literacy model in relation to flyposting. Methodology: To represent the low-income distribution, respondents from the Public Housing Program (PHP) were selected. This study used the survey method as a research design by distributing questionnaires which acts as the research instrument for data acquisition from a total of 574 respondents from five areas of Public Housing Program (PHP) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The advertising literacy instrument was used as the main tool to examine the advertising schemata and to measure the advertising literacy in relation to the flyposting phenomena amongst the low-income community. Main findings: The LES community are comprised of highly advertising literate individuals despite having low academic qualifications and low income due to technological factors. This study also identifies the significant relationship between the digital environment and the advertising schemata of the LES community since both aspects reinforce each other in explaining the media issues available in the society today. The LES community are able to access, analyse, evaluate, analyse, and construct their own meaning towards the advertisements available today. Applications of this study: This study is beneficial in contributing to the development of mass media and communication field specifically in the area of advertising literacy. The discussion provided in this study adds on to the debate of the current advertising research and presents consequent implications for the communication and advertising field. Novelty/Originality: This study has successfully developed an advertising literacy instrument based on two literacy models; cognitive model of media literacy and advertising literacy model. All the indicators tested in the instrument have its own strength in determining the advertising literacy level in the context of flyposting. Hence, the findings in this study may be beneficial to and act as a framework or a limitation for other similar studies in future.

The Emergence of the global and social city: Golden Mile and the politics of urban renewal

ABSTRACT This study discusses the conflicted ideas of urban renewal under the economically progressive but inexperienced leadership of a young Singapore government. As the site of this study, the Golden Mile shares its aspirational name with the first building built on it – the Golden Mile Complex. This district was planned to carry Singapore into the era of the global city. During the period of modernization in the 1960s, influential ideas were propagated through different United Nations experts. Singapore used these recommendations to legitimize an aggressive form of urban renewal, but it also encouraged greater participation by think tanks with greater intellectual and research sophistication. This marked Singapore’s most democratic period of public debate and participation in urban policy-making. The advancements made by the Singapore Planning and Urban Research group, and Lim’s built megastructure and unbuilt linear city came about under these liberal conditions. Consumerist functions and civic-minded forms were combined to produce unprecedented but ultimately incomplete socio-urban effects. This episode revealed that Singapore’s successful legacy of modernization was always exclusively narrated by the state, but there was an under-documented tussle was between the sociopolitical capital of Singapore’s public housing programme, and the economic acceleration of private and global consumerist functions.

Review of the Housing Policies and Programmes in Nigeria

Problem of inadequate housing faced by poor people around the world has been a matter of concern to governments in various countries especially in the developing world whereby significant portion of the population is mostly characterized by poverty. In such countries, the housing problem is not only that of quantity but also of the poor quality of available housing units. Private sector development in the Nigerian housing sector has been a standstill for more than a decade. With few exceptions, the private sector transactions that have taken place have been informal and on the fringe of legality. At the opposite of the spectrum, public sector activity is plagued with many problems. Instead of operating as a social policy, it operates more like a regressive lottery or patronage system. The results have been the simultaneous construction of some of the most luxurious subsidized housing in Africa, and general deterioration in housing conditions of most Nigerians, particularly the housing conditions of the poor. The recorded history of formal intervention into the housing sector in Nigeria dated back to the colonial administration, after the unfortunate outbreak of the bubonic plaque of 1928 in Lagos. This necessitated the establishment of the Lagos Executive Development Board (LEDB). This signifies the ushering of Nigerian public housing programmes intervention; which was during colonial era. The policies are modest with the ultimate aim of addressing the housing problem at a National scale. The policy focus then, was on the provision of expatriate quarters and some selected indigenous staff in Rail ways, Marine, Police and Armed forces. The construction of senior civil servant quarters in the capital city of Lagos and regional headquarters like Kaduna, Ibadan and Enugu are some of the practical efforts made at the same time some form of rent subsidy and housing loans.

"Without The Least Provision": Black and Desegregationist Resistance to Systemic Racial Discrimination in Private and Public Housing in Trenton, New Jersey, 1938-1965

Most historical scholarship on race and housing in the 20th-century United States examines public housing and private housing separately or focuses on large metropoles. This study seeks to understand the relationship between public and private housing discrimination, segregated residential patterns, and desegregationist advocacy in mid-20th Century Trenton, New Jersey. To do so, it utilizes archived documents of local civil rights organizations, correspondence between activist groups and local public officials, and local newspaper articles along with secondary literature on race and housing. This thesis argues that the introduction of federal public housing programs in the 1930s, intended to increase quality housing access, allowed Trenton’s government officials to place black residents in segregated projects, thereby reinforcing existing segregated residential patterns. Simultaneously, financial institutions and realtors infringed upon black Trentonians’ agency in the private market through discriminatory lending and realty practices that discouraged integration. City leaders’ segregationist attitudes furthered systemic racial discrimination, confining black Trentonians of all socio-economic classes to poor quality, overcrowded housing. Black and segregationist activists resisted segregationist practices by asserting their right to fair representation as taxpayers through letters, community meetings, and public demonstrations. By the 1960s, they gained an ally in Trenton’s mayor, but the mass exodus of white Trentonians in the postwar period prevented integration efforts from coming to full fruition. These findings suggest that racial discrimination in private and public markets coalesced to systemically limit black families’ ability to access decent and sufficient housing conditions throughout the country.

Robust Multiclass Queuing Theory for Wait Time Estimation in Resource Allocation Systems

In this paper, we study systems that allocate different types of scarce resources to heterogeneous allocatees based on predetermined priority rules—the U.S. deceased-donor kidney allocation system or the public housing program. We tackle the problem of estimating the wait time of an allocatee who possesses incomplete system information with regard, for example, to his relative priority, other allocatees’ preferences, and resource availability. We model such systems as multiclass, multiserver queuing systems that are potentially unstable or in transient regime. We propose a novel robust optimization solution methodology that builds on the assignment problem. For first-come, first-served systems, our approach yields a mixed-integer programming formulation. For the important case where there is a hierarchy in the resource types, we strengthen our formulation through a drastic variable reduction and also propose a highly scalable heuristic, involving only the solution of a convex optimization problem (usually a second-order cone problem). We back the heuristic with an approximation guarantee that becomes tighter for larger problem sizes. We illustrate the generalizability of our approach by studying systems that operate under different priority rules, such as class priority. Numerical studies demonstrate that our approach outperforms simulation. We showcase how our methodology can be applied to assist patients in the U.S. deceased-donor kidney waitlist. We calibrate our model using historical data to estimate patients’ wait times based on their kidney quality preferences, blood type, location, and rank in the waitlist. This paper was accepted by Yinyu Ye, optimization.

The Public Perception of People's Housing Program (PPR) for Slum Settlement Handling in Malaysia

The purpose of this study was to describe public perceptions of people’s housing programs for handling slums in Malaysia. Malaysia has begun organizing and fostering communities that have lived in slums since 1998 in the 'slum-free Malaysia vision 2005' program, and today Malaysia can be said to have successfully resolved slums, through public housing programs. The type of research used is this research is descriptive qualitative, using accidental sampling as sampling technique. Data collection methods used are interview and documentation methods, with research instruments in the form of interview guidelines. The results showed that the community strongly agreed with the existence of The People’s Housing Program (PPR), especially for the lower middle class and poor people in Malaysia. This program is able to realize the dream of the poor to be able to have a place to live that is suitable for living with family. Furthermore, the program itself is acknowledged by the community as being able to deal with slum settlements in Malaysia, and the poor who are biased in occupying slum areas voluntarily move to the houses provided by this PPR. So, people's perception of the Public Housing Program is very supportive especially to deal with slums in Malaysia.

Owners and Tenants: The Commonwealth Housing Commission and Post‐War Housing, 1943–1949

This article takes as its point of departure early research by the economic historian David Merrett on owner‐occupiers and tenants. In the light of his subsequent explanation of the growth of sources of finance for house purchasers after 1945, it investigates the post‐war housing program of the Commonwealth government with its emphasis on planning, co‐ordination and public provision. Within the larger context of post‐war reconstruction, it argues that the failure of the public housing program provided the stimulus for the spread of owner‐occupation. The failure is explained as the outcome of economic constraints and the shrinking political capacity of post‐war reconstruction.

Porous infrastructures and the politics of upward mobility in Brazil's public housing

In Brazil's post‐neoliberal government of upward mobility and public policies, infrastructures are the symbiosis of experimental forms of government, political action, and practices of consumption. This article draws from a four‐year‐long multiscalar ethnography of Minha Casa Minha Vida, the country's largest public housing program. It uncovers the temporalities of infrastructural hope unleashed as people wait for—and engage with—their first homeownership. Specifically, I focus on struggles over the design and implementation of surveillance and security technologies by residents of one such condominium, charting how aspirations for “the good life” crystallize in emerging—yet ephemeral—collectives of consumer‐citizens. My contention is that desires for infrastructure elucidate the ubiquity and ever‐elusiveness of middle‐class affects in Latin American social mobility. The tangled worlds of desire and materials illuminate the workings of a middle‐class sensorial: the topography of images and affects through which class mobility is experienced and located in time and space. Trailing the movement, saturation and porosity of housing materialities and their embroilment with emergent forms of sociality decode the ambiguous economic and political subjectivities flourishing in the aftermath of fraught urban interventions.

Oil Development and Intimate Partner Violence: Implementation of Section 8 Housing Policies in the Bakken Region of North Dakota and Montana.

One of the challenges survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) often face is securing safe and affordable housing. Many survivors qualify for public housing programs such as the Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) program and tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP). These programs can be vital for survivors fleeing abuse and trying to rebuild their lives. But how might regional conditions such as rapid population growth resulting from an oil boom affect the implementation of such programs for survivors? In addition, what role might such policies play in preventing future violence in resource boom communities? Analyzing existing policies and qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews with survivors, community members, and service providers in the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana, we evaluate the implementation of Section 8 housing programs in oil-affected communities for survivors of IPV. We find that survivors of IPV often had a difficult time accessing affordable housing in the Bakken. Eligibility restrictions prevented some survivors from utilizing Section 8 housing programs, some landlords opted out of Section 8 program participation at the height of the oil boom, and the housing crisis may have simultaneously contributed to low utilization of housing vouchers. These conditions increased vulnerability for IPV survivors. We conclude by exploring the impact of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), state, and local initiatives on housing access and affordability, and the efficacy of Section 8 housing programs during the oil boom. Understanding the relationship between natural resource development, rapid population increases, housing inflation, and Section 8 housing programs should be considered as policy makers prioritize social programs in boomtown communities that may affect the well-being and safety of IPV survivors.