Public Housing Provision Research Articles

The “difference between heaven and earth”: Urban–rural disparities in well-being in China

Although China is a rapidly developing nation, rural–urban disparities in well-being remain large, and perhaps have become larger than in the early years of the Communist period because the urban sector has benefited from China's transition to a market economy much more than has the rural sector; or perhaps have become smaller as earning opportunities in the export-oriented manufacturing sector have increased for those from rural origins. Economic disparities are exacerbated by institutional arrangements that have created a two-class society based on registration (hukou) status with sharp rural–urban distinctions in the public provision of schooling, health care, housing, and retirement benefits. Indeed, it is fair to say that China built an urban welfare state on the backs of the peasants.Using data from two national probability sample surveys, one carried out in 1996 and one in 2008, this paper describes trends in various aspects of inequality for three groups, identified at age 14: those with rural registration and rural residence; those with rural registration and urban residence; and those with urban registration. The specific outcomes considered are education, occupational position, earnings, family income, material well-being, and perceptions regarding whether life has improved. The paper shows that a rising tide lifts all boats. That is, there has been across-the-board improvement in almost all aspects of life in China measured here, but for most measures the size of the rural–urban gap has remained relatively constant over a 60-year period.

Comparison of International and Domestic Methods of Providing Housing After Disasters

This paper raises issues of housing supply programs after disasters and compares how Japan, Turkey, and Mexico have supplied newly constructed housing after disasters directly through public organizations. The study results indicate that the planning schemes of these three countries differ in terms of their restoration effects on the cities. This paper also discusses problems involved in the public provision of housing in Japan.

Simulação em área envoltória de bem tombado com habitação social

Dentre os inúmeros desafios que a gestão e o planejamento dos espaços urbanos no Brasil enfrentam nos dias de hoje, dois têm sido objeto de profunda reflexão e discussão: a reversão do grande déficit habitacional, e a requalificação das áreas centrais das cidades de grande e médio porte através do aproveitamento da infraestrutura aí instalada, da diversificação de usos e da reciclagem de edificações. A questão da reciclagem do ambiente construído traz-se vinculada à requalificação das áreas centrais pelo fenômeno da crescente valorização da memória e da preservação de edifícios existentes pela sociedade. Este trabalho tem como objetivo contribuir para o desenvolvimento de diretrizes e parâmetros para intervenções em áreas centrais urbanas envoltórias de bens tombados visando à produção habitacional social sem prejuízo da reabilitação destes sítios.

Affordable Housing Solutions: Affordable Housing Providers’ Perspective

Accessibility to housing for low to moderate income groups in Australia has experienced a severe decline since 2002. On the supply side, the public sector has been reducing its commitment to the direct provision of public housing. Despite strong demand for affordable housing, limited supply has been generated by nongovernment housing providers. This paper identifies and discusses some current affordable housing solutions which have been developed by non-government housing providers to ameliorate the problem.This study utilises case studies generated from nineteen housing providers during in-depth interviews in South East Queensland in 2007–2008. The case studies are classified into four categories which relate to the nature of their product: affordable rental housing, mixed housing, affordable housing for people with special needs and low cost home ownership. Each category is discussed on the basis of the characteristics typical of that organisation of housing provider, their partnership arrangements and main target market. In addition, the special design and facilities required for people with special needs which include high care accommodation and aged care are highlighted. Finally, this study recommends offering a continuum of solutions to affordable housing for low income people by means of a rent-to-buy scheme.

Residential mobility in an era of economic transformations and population reformations: A case study of Hong Kong

This paper compares the home-moving patterns of Hong Kong citizens in the periods of 1996–2001 and 2001–2006, highlighted by economic downturns, population reformations and subsequent housing policies adjustments during the second period. It is first shown in the findings that the supply of public housing, instead of its tenure, dictates home-moving propensities and patterns. Then, housing needs among elderly and pre-elderly people appears to be overwhelmed by social needs such as attachment and existing social networks, along with direct or indirect financial constraints. Besides, spatial lock-in appears to be more prevalent among Chinese immigrants as compared to non-Chinese immigrants, owed to the former's ties to local Hong Kong residents and subsequent eligibility for government assistance. Yet, despite the availability of jobs and schools, the recent trend of people moving out of new towns gradually turns these areas into marginalized communities clustered with poor people, alienated within and in a sense excluded from the city landscape altogether. A variety of policy implications, from public finance, allocation of social resources, to land use planning of rural areas and potential social conflicts, are discussed in response to the trend of population aging and immigrations from the Mainland.

The Redistributive Effect of Public Housing in Hong Kong

Public housing programmes in Hong Kong affect half of the population directly and the other half indirectly. This paper assesses the redistributive effect of public rental housing on income distribution. It uses a subsidised-to-market rent ratio method and an imputed rent method to convert transfer-in-kind of public rental housing into equivalent monetary value. Empirical results show that the provision of public housing alleviates the income inequality problem. However, the amount of public expenditure required achieving the same improvements in Gini coefficient and other inequality measures is small relative to the actual public expenditure on housing. Policy-makers should thoroughly review the existing public housing programmes.

Does provision of public rental housing crowd out private housing investment? A panel VAR approach

Using province-level panel data on housing investment, this paper examines the effects of public housing provision on private responses. Using panel data and a proper specification allows us to look at dynamic interactions between public and private investment while controlling for province-specific fixed effects and year-specific effects. We first examine whether private rental housing investment has changed in response to the public counterpart. We performed a panel VAR estimation of the crowding-out effect to examine the efficacy of housing support programs for low-income families. Our empirical results reveal that (i) public and private housing investment Granger-cause each other with an asymmetric pattern; and (ii) the crowding-out effect rises with the housing availability ratio; it grows rapidly as the housing availability ratio gets closer to 100%, which offers useful policy implications for public housing policies in fast-growing regions or countries.

Market Disequilibrium and Urban Land Shortages: Analysis of Policy and Patterns in Hong Kong

Government regulations on urban land use can cause urban land shortages, and hence higher prices of urban land and housing. Hong Kong, in particular, is under the innate constraints of limited land resources. But developments appear to look further restrained, due to government land use policy and regulations. However, little has been done regarding the impact of planning policies on residential market operations, when both zoning and control on land supply are employed by the government. This study attempts to fill the literature gap by developing a measure for the effectiveness of urban land use, from an analysis of land demand/supply mechanisms within a structure of stringent land supply constraints. The findings suggest that provision of low-rise public housing, in addition to the rigidity of plot ratio, appears to induce floor space shortages in some older/poorer areas, although those districts happen to have a comparatively high proportion of land for residential use. A more flexible land supply policy, particularly concerning the plot ratio, is recommended in order to minimize the impact caused by floor space shortages by encouraging private participations in redevelopments.

Sustainable Development in Public Administration

Sustainability and sustainable development are concepts that are increasingly used in the field of public administration. In considering long-run planning, intergenerational equity, reduction of risk, and conservation of resources in administrative planning, sustainability may have a significant contributory role. This article traces the link between the principles of sustainable development and the tenets of public administration. In the application of broad-based sustainable development, it finds the reflection of efficiency, effectiveness, and citizen participation. By asking, Are the goals of sustainable development a match with public administration practice?, it finds that sustainable development may be applied to much of the work of the public sector, including to the provision of transportation, public housing, human services, and environmental protection. Finally, it suggests the unique contribution of sustainability to the field of public administration.

The commodification of land and housing: the case of South Korea

The developmentalist state in South East Asia has played an important role in guiding and promoting economic growth. Although an implicit theme of much of the discourse is the role of the state in controlling the factors of production, this is not located within the decommodification/commodification debate. Proceeding from the premise that underlies much of economic theory, namely that land values at a time reflect the residual (or surplus) of economic activity that requires land as a factor input, the purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the Korean state has managed the commodification of urban development and the distributional effects of this process. In spite of private land ownership the state has had a major impact on the processes by which land has become commodified, using extensive land expropriation and land‐use planning powers. The Korean state used different strategies to manage trends to commodification at different times: land readjustment projects were used from the 1950s to the 1970s and Public Management Development projects were the main mechanism of urban development from the 1980s. The urban development system was feasible because of the state's extensive control over access to housing finance (decommodified money). In the mid‐1990s there was a shift towards greater private sector involvement in urban development. The distributional effects of the urban development process have been highly inequitable. Subsidised home ownership for middle‐income families has been favoured over provision of public rental housing for low‐income families, driven in major part by cash flow considerations of the developmentalist state. Further, the basis of selecting beneficiaries has been very arbitrary. The system has promoted significant land concentration and land speculation particularly by private companies, including the large chaebol (corporations).

Public Housing and the Rescaling of Regulation in the USA

The simultaneous upward and downward rescaling of regulation has dramatically altered welfare provisioning systems in very different national contexts during the past thirty years. Frequently lost in the literature on rescaling, though, is the notion that localities have not been ‘given’ power in the same way that international institutions have. Though local institutional variation accounts for more difference in welfare provision than before, there are clear policy boundaries that are policed by market regulators of various sorts. This paper explores the impact of rescaling on public housing provision in the United States to illustrate better this point. I demonstrate that basic demographic, housing stock, and federal funding differences are now less important determinants of uneven public housing production than was the case during the Keynesian era, and that local institutional differences are now playing a greater role in the production and management of public housing. With such institutional differences unleashed, enormous variation in the quantity, quality, and management of public housing is now emerging.

Economic Transformation and Public Housing Reform in Hong Kong

Abstract Hong Kong's economic development has always been closely tied to events outside its borders. and in particular developments in Mainland China. The large scale provision of public rental housing occurred in tandem with its transformation from an entrepot economy to a manufacturing economy. The view has been persuasively presented that indeed its economic development and public housing programme are related. Public housing remained important, although changed some of its essential characteristics, as Hong Kong transformed again from a manufacturing to a higher order services economy. These changes included a greater emphasis on targeting public rental housing and promoting assisted home ownership. Hong Kong is now in the throes of a third economic transformation. to developing innovation and technology based high value added industries. While some of the essential features of Hong Kong's public housing programme remain intact, policy changes presage a shift in its role in Hong Kong's economy and so...

Population Recovery in Inner Tokyo in the Late 1990s

It was not until the late 1990s That inner Tokyo started to regain population. This paper explores the extent of that shift and it is argued that population recovery in Minato Ward in inner Tokyo differs from the nature of 'gentrification' observed in Western countries.The 'bubble era' of the late 1980s resulted in rapid land price inflation, land speculation on inner city plots and involved a considerable area of land while displacing former residents. The idea that Tokyo was becoming a 'global city' supported land speculation for office and commercial demands. Inner Tokyo continued to lose population in the late 1980s as a consequence of competition with business and commercial land use. Tokyo Wards implemented various policies to prevent the further outflow of residents, which included rent subsidies to renters and the substitution of mortgage interests exceeding 2%. The Wards also leased rented housing to household renters, and issued guidelines to locate rental family-sized housing in newly-built office buildings.After the collapse of the 'bubble', however, office and commercial demands suddenly disappeared and land prices fell rapidly. The financial crisis induced firms to sell or utilize their land for housing. By the late 1990s, high rise apartments were built on such speculated land. GIS-based mapping analysis revealed that the construction of public and private housing mainly contributed to population recovery, followed by the opening of new subway stations.A questionnaire survey was conducted to examine who had moved into the newly-provided housing in the inner city. Data were collected on household type, occupation, former residential location and reasons for the move.The survey revealed that single female households and double income couples with no children predominated in the private housing sector. The main reason for the move was proximity to workplace. This reflects the fact that movers into the inner city mainly consist of households placing a higher priority on employment than on nurturing children. Couples with children would move into the inner city if they secured low cost (public) housing. Many constraints still prevent the inflow of households with children, such as high housing cost in both private rented housing and owner occupied housing, and limited nursery school capacity.The provision of public housing, which is a counter policy to the population decline, results in relatively low income households returning to the inner city. Subsequent private housing construction which was caused by the collapse of the 'bubble' attracts different types of households from a wider area. Population recovery in inner Tokyo differs from gentrification in the West in that it is not limited only to more affluent people relocating to the inner city.

Housing Problems of Single Parent Families in Japan

Single parent families are increasing due to divorce in Japan, and they have several problems in metropolitan areas. Most single parent families are women-headed families, and many mothers have multiple responsibilities, for example, finding a job and working, housework, childcare, and nursing. In spite of the high rent, single parent families tend to migrate to urban areas, because it is easier to find jobs and they can be freer from prejudices in urban areas than in rural areas. This paper aims is to clarify the regional differences in the housing conditions of women-headed families in Japan. The paper also tries to consider the housing conditions in welfare facilities for single parent families and their residental lives in metropolitan areas and local cities. Single parent families usually face serious housing problems. When women-headed families cannot find a place to live in the private housing market or they must be sheltered from domestic violence, some families are permitted to live in welfare facilities for single parent families. However, those facilities are provided only for temporary users. According to questionnaire results from sampled facilities in Tokyo and suburbs, the Kanto region, the Osaka metropolitan area, and Ishikawa and Hiroshima Prefectures, it is clear that the reasons why single parent families enter welfare facilities differ by region. Most dwellers entered when they divorce. But in Tokyo, the rate of runaways from home is higher than in other areas. Many dwellers were victims of domestic violence and needed shelter urgently. Half of dwellers in the facilities are in their 30s, and became single parents due to divorce. In the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas there are many unmarried young residents with infants. While many middle-aged dwellers use the facilites in suburbs and local cities. It is hard for single parent families to find jobs because they must take care of their children. Consequently, many dwellers in the facilities receive livelihood assistance. Their jobs are very unstable and low income, because most of them are part-timers. Some dwellers cannot find jobs because they are mentally disturbed as a result of domestic violence. It is difficult for most single parent families to move out of the welfare facilities because it is very costly for women-headed families to live in privately rented houses. It is difficult to get the permission to live in public housing, because the supply of public housing in Tokyo is extremely fewer than demands of single parent families.

Housing Purchase by Single Women in Tokyo

Recently some single women purchase their houses and the number of houses owned by single women are increasing in Tokyo. And their housing demands caused to publish the housing information magazine for women. This magazine contains a lot of housing information and the experience reports, which shows the ownership by working single women.In order to analyze the gendering urban space, the author aims to clarify why single women tend to purchase their houses in Tokyo. The author uses the experience reports of housing ownership by single women in Tokyo metropolitan regions. These reports contain their economic conditions, their working conditions and their life. We can understand the housing demands of single women from these reports, because these sources are collected for marketing research. Furthermore the author tries to clarify its background and housing problems for women in metropolitan region.According to these reports, over the half of informants who bought their house were in their thirties. This means that the magazine editor presents the information for thirties, because they can own thier houses and they eager to move out rent houses. And most of them live in inner and its adjacent areas, because they want to live in a convenient and safe location near stations.Single women continue to work after they own their houses and hope to avoid housing problems in their old age. And they can save housing cost by purchasing house, because housing loan becomes cheaper than rent recently, which was caused by low rate of interest rent policy. On the other hand, rent continues to increase in Tokyo in spite of small houses. Furthermore, some of single women plan to rent out if they marriage in future. That means that they purchased house by a speculative business.Many developers increased housing supply for single women, because they can use land in the commercial zone, which are popular with single women. And many banks tend to accommodate single women with a housing loan, because many single women have much saving.As mentioned above, the phenomenon is caused by the increase of working women in Tokyo metropolitan area. But all women who purchase their house are not so rich. They want to own their house because they are not satisfied with expensive rent in Tokyo and the costly and cumbersome charges of broker's procedure. And many single women want to enrich their life by ownership of house. Furthermore there is no supply of public housing for single women in Japan. Because of lack of housing policy for them, single woman must reduce their housing problem in future by themselves.

The role of public housing provision in reconstruction programs after disaster

The role of public housing provision in reconstruction programs after disaster

Poverty and single elders in Hong Kong

This paper proposes a methodology for measuring poverty among people aged 60 years or more and living alone in Hong Kong. It uses a lifestyle approach and is based on an index of subjective perceptions of deprivation consisting of 79 indicators. These cover the main expenditure categories of single elders in Hong Kong: housing, food, clothing, durable goods, fuel and water, entertainment and social activities, medical care and transport. We tentatively identify a poverty threshold of HK $7,000 per month in regard to these expenditure categories. With incomes below $6,000, respondents reduce spending on miscellaneous items and, at incomes of $5,000, they reduce spending on clothing, entertainment and social activities and transport. At incomes below $4,000, they cut down on food, durable goods, and fuel and water expenditure. As incomes drop below $4,000, respondents are forced to cut to a significant degree the ‘necessities’ of life, in particular food, to make ends meet. Despite this, levels of transfer payments to Hong Kong's eligible single elders are currently below this amount. It is noteworthy that respondents do not reduce housing, medical care, services and ‘other’ expenses when their incomes are below $7,000 per month. We conclude that Hong Kong's status as a ‘tiger welfare regime’, and in particular its relatively comprehensive provision of public housing and health care, helps to explain this finding.

Housing policy in Nigeria: towards enablement of private housing development

One of the continuing challenges posed by unprecedented urbanization in the developing countries is the provision of adequate housing. Over the last three decades, Nigeria, like several developing countries, has emphasised public housing schemes, but with little success. This coincides with global paradigm shift from direct public provision of housing to the enablement of private shelter initiatives and housing production. The paper discusses private housing development features and dynamics and the factors affecting the sector in the country. It argues for the creation of an enabling environment, including support of housing initiatives and investments by householders, small-scale providers, and entrepreneurial private firms. The paper identifies the implications of enabling strategy for housing finance, access to land, residential infrastructure, institutional regulations and building materials and related industry particularly in the light of the need for the private sector to play greater roles in housing. It draws from aspects of empirical study by the authors and some review of housing policy-related issues.

Tenant participation and the management of public housing ‐ The Estate Management Advisory Committee of Hong Kong

Hong Kong has developed one of the world’s largest initiatives of user participation in public service in the public rental housing sector. This paper analyses the development and the impact of such an initiative in tenant participation. Whilst the housing managers and tenant representatives were by and large receptive of such an initiative, tenants were in general more apathetic. Involving tenants in public housing management can also be perceived as a strategy of the landlord in bridging the gap between expensive paternalistic management and the legitimate expectation of the tenants. It can also be viewed as a measure to mitigate the internal conflicts within the Housing Department as a tool to enhance the effectiveness of the management service. Yet, recent development in the public housing sector in Hong Kong may bring fundamental changes in both the provision and management of public housing. This creates uncertainty regarding the further development of tenant participation.

Residential Mobility versus 'In-place' Adjustments in Slovenia: Viewpoint from a Society 'in Transition'

Residential mobility is a widely discussed phenomenon perceived as a mechanism of housing adjustments and as a manifestation of housing choice. This paper focuses on 'in-place' adjustments and suggests its further recognition relative to mobility in both theoretical and empirical terms. By reviewing the main housing choice debates, the paper endeavours to show how the mobility-centred approach is insufficient to capture and explain those housing choice situations where non-market options of housing provision are significant. This is important for an understanding of housing choice not only in societies in transition, but also as far as non-market (public and self-help) provision of housing is recognised. The paper explores two specific types of 'in-place' housing adjustments: change in the housing status and major physical alteration of the residence of non-movers. For this purpose, Slovenian social survey data were used. Focusing on the present housing episode, its median duration was found to be very long and a surprisingly high incidence of such 'in-place dynamism' was found. The findings of the empirical analysis in case of Slovenia indicate how the mobilitycentred approach might be insufficient for comprehending a specific 'housing choice situation', and point out the need for a more context-sensitive discussion of housing options to avoid the dangers of 'Anglo-Saxon hegemony'.