Residential Options Research Articles

NEO‐PENTECOSTAL URBAN INFRASTRUCTURES IN LAGOS, NIGERIA: Ontology, Politics, Poetics

AbstractThis article examines how the urban fabric of Lagos is being transformed by neo‐Pentecostal forms of Christian religiosity—a transformation not only of inner, ‘private’ lives but also of urban infrastructures and their provision. Neo‐Pentecostal churches in Lagos now provide a range of infrastructures such as roads, bridges, electricity, water, healthcare, plus banking and educational facilities as well as a range of residential options. Church emblems are common features of the Lagos streetscape and can be found on buildings, vehicles and advertisement hoardings. In addition to their symbolic, moral and aesthetic register, Pentecostal urban infrastructures can be understood as a response to the crisis of social reproduction in Lagos, within the context of a postcolonial state that has adopted a position of entrenched neoliberalism. Critical questions remain, however, regarding whose interests are served by this arrangement. The article aims to understand (1) the ontological status of neo‐Pentecostal infrastructures, taking seriously the production and delivery of material infrastructures that are understood by some users to also be spiritual; and (2) the novel relations between church, state, market and citizen articulated by these infrastructures. Our arguments are based on qualitative data collected in Lagos between 2018 and 2022.

Women’s Experiences of Perinatal Anxiety: A Critical Feminist Approach

OBJECTIVE:Perinatal anxiety is a prevalent mental health issue with implications for the well-being of women and their children. There is a scarcity of research that considers perinatal anxiety as a standalone mental health issue or explores the lived experiences of women with perinatal anxiety.METHODS:In-depth interviews were carried out with nine mothers who had a lived experience of perinatal anxiety. The women were recruited from South East Queensland, Australia, and were either pregnant and/or parenting a child under the age of five. Data from the interviews were analyzed through a process of thematic analysis to identify key themes in the lived experiences of anxious mothers. Critical feminist theory informed all the aspects of the study.RESULTS:Analysis of the data revealed four key themes: Good Motherhood, Warning Signs, Mental Health Literacy, and Strengths and Support, and seven subthemes: The Birthing Experience, Irritable Infants, Sleep, Breastfeeding, Social Isolation, Barriers to Help Seeking, and Social Roles. Anxiety was found to complicate the experience of motherhood, with the pressure to present as a “good mother” resulting in a reluctance to seek help. Experiences such as birthing, feeding, and sleeping were risk factors for triggering or exacerbating anxiety. Experiences of perinatal anxiety were further complicated by poor mental health literacy and inconsistencies in the care provided by health professionals. Anxious mothers expressed a need for holistic, multidisciplinary mental healthcare, with residential options during times of struggle or crisis.CONCLUSION:Findings reveal the complex context of motherhood and mental illness and identify barriers and opportunities for the multidisciplinary mental healthcare of anxious mothers. A holistic, multidisciplinary response to perinatal anxiety is recommended.

Searching for the “right feeling”: Sense of place and the social architecture of middle-class homebuying choices

The literature on residential and homebuying choices is still dominated by economic models of decision-making. Despite growing critique of these models, attempts to provide socially grounded accounts of homebuying have yet to investigate the social foundations of evaluative and choice-making practices at the intra-personal level. This study addressed the gaps in the literature theoretically and empirically by studying the processes and practices by which middle-class homebuyers search for and choose a place to live. It applied a modified Bourdieusian framework, underscoring the roles of the habitus and reflexivity in choice-making, to the study of middle-class homebuyers in two Israeli cities. The findings demonstrate that middle-class homebuyers’ “sense of place”—that is, the reactions of their habitus to the socio-physical environment—is at the heart of their residential choice-making. Interviewees centralized their experiences and sensations in their choice-making, actively using their sense of place to guide their mapping of urban space, evaluation of residential options, and their final decision. These evaluative and choice-making practices operated as a “social-sorting” mechanism, directing homebuyers to locations more aligned with their class habitus. The findings and analysis provide a sociological alternative to economic and behavioral models of residential choice-making, with lessons for those with wider scholarly interests in consumers’ choices in everyday life and their relationship with social patterns.

Psychophysiological effects of residential options on older people living in long-term nursing house

Background: Nursing home is critical for the elderly.
 Methods: To investigate the effects of decision-making process in terms of choosing room type and roommates on cognitive and psychosocial conditions of the elderly, 174 eligible participants were randomly assigned into three groups. In the first two groups, participants were randomly assigned to single-person rooms (Group SPR, n = 58) and multi-person rooms (2–4 persons per room, Group MPR, n = 58), and the third group of participants were allowed to voluntarily choose to live in single-person room or with preferred roommates (Group VPR, n = 58).
 Results: Participants who voluntarily choose room type and roommates (Group VPR) showed the least deterioration of cognitive function, psychosocial, and physical health, with Group MPR showing less deterioration than Group SPR. Allowing elderly people to voluntarily choose room type and roommate is better for preserving their cognitive, psychological, and physical health.
 Conclusions: Voluntary choice of room type and roommates is beneficial to the cognitive, psychological, and physical health of elderly people.

Expert versus Youth Raters on Measuring Social and Therapeutic Climate in Secure Juvenile Placement.

Growing concern about the use of incarceration is driving significant reform in juvenile legal system decision-making and is likely to have a substantial impact on the role residential options play in the future continuum of care. It appears inevitable that surviving institutions or alternative residential models will be increasingly scrutinized for their impact on youth development. While rehabilitative models focused on youth development are a promising and growing part of residential institutions, few tools are available to measure quality. For institutions to sustain a focus on quality assessment, programs should use an organized and specified treatment model`` against which staff behavior can be assessed. This study examined the concurrent validity and item functioning of corresponding youth and expert ratings of social and therapeutic climate across multiple sites in a state-wide juvenile residential setting (n = 225 paired observations). Results suggest that the reliability of expert ratings of therapeutic climate exceeds the reliability of youth ratings, whereas reliability for other indicators of social climate are roughly equal between rater types. In addition, youth and expert ratings had weak concurrent validity. Implications for the use of youth versus expertly trained raters for measuring social and therapeutic environment are discussed.

Neighbourhood selection by natives and immigrants: Homophily or limited spatial search?

Substantial recent influxes of immigrants have transformed metropolitan housing markets across Europe, North America, and Australia. Where and under what physical and sociodemographic conditions these new residents and their children live influence their life chances and societal inequalities and cohesion. Using population register data, we estimate conditional logit models of neighbourhood selections jointly stratified by immigrant and income status for nine types of Oslo region families making ‘child-salient,’ inter- neighbourhood moves. Although homophily is an important driver of residential selection for both native and non-Western immigrant families, its significance pales in comparison to neighbourhood proximity and sectoral constraints in the spatial patterning of housing search. Study findings enhance our understanding of segregation processes and offer new perspectives on social mix housing policies. Social mix should attempt to enhance diversity at the larger spatial scales primarily by improving information about and enhancing access to potentially desirable residential options and countering anti-immigrant perceptions or discriminatory actions by real estate agents or mortgage brokers.

Racial Discrimination in Housing: How Landlords Use Algorithms and Home Visits to Screen Tenants

An extensive literature documents racial discrimination in housing, focusing on its prevalence and effect on non-White populations. This article studies how such discrimination operates, and the intermediaries who engage in it: landlords. A fundamental assumption of racial discrimination research is that gatekeepers such as landlords are confronted with a racially heterogeneous applicant pool. The reality of urban housing markets, however, is that historical patterns of residential segregation intersect with other structural barriers to drive selection into the applicant pool, such that landlords are more often selecting between same-race applicants. Using interviews and observations with 157 landlords in four cities, we ask: how do landlords construct their tenants’ race within racially segmented housing markets, and how does this factor into their screening processes? We find that landlords distinguish between tenants based on the degree to which their behavior conforms to insidious cultural narratives at the intersection of race, gender, and class. Landlords with large portfolios rely on screening algorithms, whereas mom-and-pop landlords make decisions based on informal mechanisms such as “gut feelings,” home visits, and the presentation of children. Landlords may put aside certain racial prejudices when they have the right financial incentives, but only when the tenant also defies stereotypes. In this way, landlords’ intersectional construction of race—even within a predominantly Black or Latino tenant pool—limits residential options for low-income, subsidized tenants of color, burdening their search process. These findings have implications for how we understand racial discrimination within racially homogenous social spheres. Examining landlords’ screening practices offers insight into the role housing plays in how racism continues to shape life outcomes—both explicitly through overt racial bias, and increasingly more covertly, through algorithmic automation and digital technologies.

Geographic Disparities in Access to Specialized Dementia Care

With novel, previously undescribed data on the availability of dementia-specific assisted living communities (ALs), we analyzed variation among counties in the availability of this important service for persons with dementia. In twenty-one states, we identified 6,961 ALs (16%) with a dementia-specific license/certification. Counties with at least one AL providing dementia-specific care had substantially higher college attainment versus counties that had at least one AL, but no dementia-specific beds: 25% versus 18% (p<0.01). Counties with dementia care also had significantly greater median incomes ($54,000 vs. $46,400), and home values ($159,000 vs. $113,000), lower poverty rates (13.7 percent vs. 16.3 percent), and lower proportions of Black residents (7.8 percent vs. 8.7 percent). Our findings are suggestive of a mismatch in need and availability of residential care options for older adults with ADRD that are also low-income or racial/ethnic minorities. Part of a symposium sponsored by Assisted Living Interest Group.

Compact Development and BMI for Young Adults

Problem, research strategy, and findings: The literature widely reports a statistical association between the built environment and obesity. What is less clear is the reason for the association. Is it environmental determinism—the effect of the built environment on individual behavior—with compact places inducing more physical activity and hence lower weight? Or is it self-selection, the tendency of healthy-weight individuals to select to live in compact places where they can be more physically active and possibly the tendency of overweight or obese individuals to opt for sprawling places? Both theories have been promoted in the literature. In this study we seek to address this issue using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We study body mass indices (BMIs) of survey participants, all young adults, at two points in time and follow them longitudinally for 9 years as they move from place to place. We estimate models for the entire cohort and also for young adult movers and stayers separately. We find more evidence of self-selection than of environmental determinism. First, we find that compactness is not significantly associated with BMI in young adults for those staying in the same place for the entire period. Second, we find no significant association between changes in sprawl and the changes in BMI for the cohort of young adult movers. Third, our longitudinal analysis shows that young adults who are not overweight tend to move in the direction of greater neighborhood compactness, whereas overweight young adults tend to move in the direction of greater sprawl. Because young adults are at a unique stage in the life cycle, these findings cannot be generalized to other cohorts.Takeaway for practice: These findings do not suggest that place characteristics are unimportant; planners need to meet the growing demand for walkable, compact, and connected places, which are currently undersupplied. Still, they do not provide evidence that place characteristics influence the behaviors of young adults and hence their weight. Rather, they suggest that compact places appeal to more than half of the young adult population and that this latent demand should be met by providing dense, diverse, and well-designed residential options, even in the suburbs, through regional transportation plans and local planning and zoning. Education for primary and secondary school students, who are about to enter young adulthood, could also play a role.

Forever Homes and Temporary Stops: Housing Search Logics and Residential Selection

Abstract Residential selection is central in determining children’s housing, neighborhood, and school contexts, and an extensive literature considers the social processes that shape residential searches and attainment. While this literature typically frames the residential search as a uniform process oriented around finding residential options with desired characteristics, we examine whether individuals may differentially conceive of these searches in ways that sustain inequality in residential attainment. Drawing on repeated, in-depth interviews with a stratified random sample of 156 households with young children in two metropolitan counties, we find that parents exhibit distinct residential search logics, informed by the constraints they face. Higher-income families usually engage in purposive searches oriented around their residential preferences. They search for “forever homes” that will meet their families’ needs for years to come. In contrast, low-income parents typically draw on a logic of deferral. While they hope to eventually search for a home with the unit, neighborhood, and school characteristics they desire, aspirations for homeownership lead them to conceive of their moves (which are often between rental units) as “temporary stops,” which justifies accepting homes that are inconsistent with their long-term preferences. In addition, because they are often “pushed” to move by negative circumstances, they focus on their immediate housing needs and, in the most extreme cases, adopt an “anywhere but here” approach. These logics constitute an unexamined mechanism through which economic resources shape residential searches and ultimate attainment.

Towards transforming a system: re-thinking incarceration for youth (and beyond)

Rethinking crime and punishment, especially with regard to youth, is a priority for South Africa; a country with high crime rates, recidivism and an overburdened criminal justice system. The present punitive and retributive system often only exacerbates many underlying causes of crime and violence, especially in young people. The failure of the present system suggests that the time is right for a paradigm shift in society's response to crime and punishment. A challenge to implementing any alternative justice model is to ensure that it does not continue to prop up the under-resourced, overburdened and dysfunctional criminal justice system it seeks to reform. The current systemic crisis demands radical reform, not merely adopting a few well-meaning tweaks to a broken system. This article argues that the system and its various forms (including residential options but with an emphasis on community-owned interventions) need to be both trauma-informed and infused with an ethos of restorative justice. We articulate our explanations with youth as the focus and make proposals in light of this and suggest a path towards implementation.

Why Poor Families Move (And Where They Go): Reactive Mobility and Residential Decisions

Despite frequent moves, low–income black families are more likely than any other group to churn among disadvantaged neighborhoods, and the least likely to escape them. Traditional explanations for neighborhood inequality invoke racial preferences and barriers to living in high–income neighborhoods, but recent work suggests that it is also involuntary mobility—such as eviction—which predicts the neighborhood destinations of poor African American families in urban areas. However, we know little about how individuals actually make residential decisions under such unplanned and constrained conditions. Using longitudinal interviews with low–income African–American families residing in Mobile, AL, and Baltimore, MD, we describe the array of factors that lead poor black families to move, and describe how families secure housing in the wake of unplanned mobility. We observe that moving among the poor is more reactive than it is voluntary: Approximately 70 percent of most recent moves are catalyzed by landlords, housing quality failures, and violence. We show how this reactive mobility both accelerates and hampers residential selection in ways that may reproduce neighborhood context and inequality. Where mobility is characterized by a greater degree of agency, we show that the strategies families use to make decisions often prohibit them from investigating a wider range of residential options.

Vernacular Participatory Designs: The Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Housing Scene in South Korea

This article analyzes cases of do-it-yourself (DIY) homes in South Korea in terms of the role of architects in today’s information society. Some South Koreans have started to seek residential options that reflect their personal tastes and particularized lifestyles. With the development of digital technologies and widening access to computer programming tools, technology-savvy South Koreans have started to design and construct their own homes. This article explores the emerging DIY housing movement to see whether its participatory nature enhances individual agency and how the movement may influence the professional field of architecture. Contrary to the commonly held notion, this article concludes that the role of architects is unlikely to diminish in the context of a rising number of DIY homes. Although the possibility of neoliberal co-optation exists, the rise of DIY homes presents an opportunity for architects to play an enhanced role in promoting community empowerment.

The Benefits of Living on Campus: Do Residence Halls Provide Distinctive Environments of Engagement?

The changing landscape of on- and off-campus undergraduate residential options underline the need to reexamine the impact of on-campus living. Using multi-institutional survey data from first-year students, this study investigates the relationship of residential status with engagement and perceived gains in learning and development. Results indicate, after controlling for student and institution characteristics, that on-campus residence has small positive effects on some outcomes but not on others where effects might be expected.

Irish persons with intellectual disability moving from family care to residential accommodation in a period of austerity.

Ireland has a growing population of adult persons living with family carers, thereby increasing the demand for residential places. Simultaneously, government policy aimed to reprovision residents living in congregated settings but at a time when funding was curtailed due to the economic crisis. This study examines the movements of people into and among three types of residential options between 2009 and 2014. A cohort of 20,163 persons recorded on the National Intellectual Disability Database in 2009 was identified and tracked to the 2014 database. An estimated 200 persons per annum (@1.6% of those living with families) moved from family care although the number of places available nationally fell by 9%. Moreover, transfers of existing residents into vacated places tended to exceed those from families. More people will have to continue living with their families and for longer if funding for new places remains curtailed.

Planning Innovation in Currie: A Vision for Healthy and Walkable Places ( breakout presentation )

Background How do we make healthy places—communities that allow people to grow up, live, work, play and remain healthy in a safe and stimulating environment? The vision of healthy places is inspiring and the journey from specific professional paradigms to long-term, holistic solutions is critical for successful implementation. The presentation explores the nexus of health and built form in Currie—a community in Calgary developed by Canada Lands Company that has championed innovative planning and design strategies for healthy places. The 150-acre site is redeveloped with 5100 homes and over 1,000,000 square feet of retail and office space. The redevelopment of the former military base advances a new vision for a healthy, walkable and sustainable community. The design integrates important heritage resources — buildings, landscapes and interpretive resources — into a new urban mosaic of neighborhoods designed to foster a sense of place. A primary goal of the plan is to create planning and design frameworks that promote healthy living, walkability and integration of the natural environment. Another goal advancing a more sustainable urban future is the calibration of the density and land use mix to generate transit ridership, vibrant retail and amenity services in neighbourhood nodes, as well as a balanced mix of employment uses that compliments a variety of residential options. Outcomes The urban form promotes higher density (35 upa), connectivity on multiple fronts, small urban blocks, a network of pedestrian mews, underground parking and a street network fostering pedestrian and bike mobility as a primary option for residents and visitors. A primary employment core of 750,000 square feet of office, research, and employment uses boosts the economic vibrancy of the historic Parade Square repurposed as a place for recreation, educational, retail and residential uses accessible via transit and pedestrian/bike pathway networks. Another important aspect of the design is the integration of 11 provincially designated heritage resources that serve as a catalyst for community interaction and unique inspirations for neighbourhood design and place-making. Currie’s planning toolbox includes innovative planning strategies promoting healthy places, comprehensive policy-making, heritage preservation, block from-based design regulations and community engagement for change.

Weighing Up the Evidence and Local Experience of Residential Care

Therapeutic residential care is currently seen as an answer to managing the increasing disruption experienced by many young people in care. Yet the history of residential care in Australia is problematic and the international evidence for the efficacy of therapeutic approaches is very poor. The author's own agency's experience of providing residential care also indicates that caution is needed before increasing the numbers of residential ‘beds’. Problems include young people's dislike of residential options and the stressfulness of an environment that involves shift workers and multiple transient relationships. Further, residential care can be a financial drain on child welfare budgets (being tendered to non-government agencies at over seven times the cost of community care), and has the potential danger – when beds are empty – of being used for young people who do not need this level of care. Residential care may appear to be the only option for a handful of adolescents no longer suited to foster care; but before developing therapeutic residential care further, government must be able to guarantee, at a minimum: a safe environment, a nurturing and healing environment, continuity of care, and the capacity to meet young people's developmental and permanency needs. These standards must be met, not just now, but over the long term.

Physical Abuse of Elderly Adults: Victim Characteristics and Determinants of Revictimization.

To describe victim characteristics and determinants of recurrent physical abuse of elderly. Multicenter retrospective analysis of multiple data systems to study victims of elder mistreatment in the greater Chicago metropolitan area. Five teaching hospitals with Level 1 trauma centers. Individuals aged 60 and older treated for physical and sexual abuse between 2000 and 2011. History of revictimization was based on hospital admission histories, Adult Protective Services records, and self-report. Death records were also linked to participant files. Fifty-eight individuals (52.3%) out of 111 cases suffering physical abuse had documented histories of revictimization. Based on multivariable models, individuals who were female, widowed, diagnosed with dementia, and returning to the home where the perpetrator lived or visited were substantially more likely to be revictimized. Revictimized individuals were more likely to be assaulted through unarmed force by a proximal relative, in particular a husband, boyfriend, child, or child-in-law. Based on hospital records, only 57% of community-dwelling cases had their abuse reported to Adult Protective Services or the police, and only 26.6% had Adult Protective Services investigations on record. Better screening that connects victims of abuse with community services, police action, and alternative residential options is important in reducing the risk of revictimization and connecting individuals with resources that can improve their safety at home, regardless of whether it is in the community or a residential facility.

Ageing‐related experiences of adults with learning disability resident in rural areas: one Australian perspective

Accessible summary This paper is about older people with learning disabilities who live in the country in Australia. We talked to both individuals and their carers to find out what things helped them they got older, and what things made it harder. These people said that they were well supported by the local community and particularly their doctors. However, many people in this project also reported problems about living in the country such as limited choices and being forced to make decisions they did not like. AbstractBackground: Access to support services in rural areas is known to be problematic both in Australia, and in other countries around the world, but the majority of research on the population of people ageing with learning disability has so far focussed on metropolitan residents. The authors report about select aspects of the lived experience of older adults with learning disability resident in rural locations in two states of Australia.Materials and Methods: This pilot project examined data drawn from 34 semi‐structured interviews conducted with 17 older adults and 17 carers. Responses were analysed for thematic areas.Results: It was observed that the capacity of certain rural areas to support meaningful choice‐making was limited due to constraints of access to key services, including community‐based aged care, generic and specialist health services, and both supported disability and aged‐care residential options. Responses indicated that those living in both small‐ and medium‐sized congregate care settings (such as group homes and residential aged‐care facilities) had more limited choices and only partial (if any) control over their living situation.Conclusion: An understanding of the needs of older adults with learning disability resident in rural areas is important to ensure that both aged‐care and disability support structures are built on individuals' needs.

Growth of rural migrant enclaves in Guangzhou, China: Agency, everyday practice and social mobility

Previous studies have attributed the proliferation of rural migrant enclaves in China’s large cities primarily to the constraints limiting migrants’ residential options. Through an ethnographic exploration of Xiaohubei, a migrant enclave with a high concentration of Hubei rural migrants and small-scale garment producers in Guangzhou, this paper sheds new light on the dynamics and implications of the migrant enclaves. It argues that rural migrants are actually active agents who develop a vibrant garment manufacturing cluster by establishing a flexible garment production system, embedding their business within the enclave and maintaining a nationwide translocal network. It also contends that the enclave provides a feasible path through which migrants can achieve social mobility and adapt themselves to the urban environment. This paper concludes with a plea to take into account the agency and everyday practice of rural migrants when understanding the migrant enclaves and a reflection on the existing large-scale and indiscriminate demolition of the enclaves.