Today's Housing Research Articles

Space for Hygiene in Housing Architecture

In this paper, the author focuses on spaces used for personal hygiene—the bathroom. The paper begins with a description of the hygienic movement in the late 19th century. At that time, urinating took place in semi-public spaces outside the dwelling. Today, the WC has moved well into the dwelling, and in many dwellings, the bathroom has developed as the most private space. Thus, the bathroom can be regarded as the last domain of privacy in today's housing, and in a number of new dwellings this quality is exploited in new ways. The development of space for hygiene in the 20th century will be studied by analyzing the spatial organization of dwellings.

In situ U-value measurements for today's Cypriot houses

The present work aims to establish the thermal characteristics and actual thermal behaviour of typical residential houses in Cyprus under real weather conditions. For this purpose, a wireless web-based monitoring system has been deployed covering 44 different houses, geographically spread all over Cyprus. Construction materials varied amongst each house, resulting in a theoretical U-value range of 0.467–1.389 W/m2 K. Calibrated temperature sensors were installed and measurements were conducted at 30-min intervals for each individual house. The indoor air temperature of each house, the outside (ambient) air temperature, and the internal and external wall surface temperatures have continuously been monitored for a period of 15 months. Processing the above-mentioned data has led to the establishment of the mean indoor air temperature of the typical Cypriot residence and calculation of the U-value for each individual wall, facing north, south, east and west, including the roof, comprising the building envelope. Variations of the calculated U-value of up to 25% for each wall orientation were observed, even though construction materials of each wall remain the same. Furthermore, deviations of up to 30% from the theoretical U-value calculation were also observed.

An Era of Disruptive Innovation and Opportunity

Thank you for your contribution of leadership to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) as committed participants in our policy development and democratic governance processes. Over the past year we have seen substantive and important issues take shape in the form of proposed policy. The work has come from standing committees, Councils, the Board and individual members. We have debated them via Webinars and here in person at this meeting. You have engaged in thoughtful policy formation and this work will advance academic pharmacy in countless ways. I promised the members of the Bylaws and Policy Development Committee that I would take just a few minutes this morning to reflect on the nature of this work. With the final report and recommendations of the Committee before you, you might say to yourself, Well, they certainly have muted the controversy for today's House session. And if you have not been actively engaged in the process of considering policy over the last several months and here at the meeting, you might leave Kissimmee thinking Is that all there is? Why bother?! Brian Crabtree served as an AACP delegate to the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) House in New Orleans in March. As he left the final, debate-filled and somewhat exhausting final session of their House, he said to me, Well, that certainly was interesting, and SO different from the AACP House. Different in this case is not necessarily better; it's just different. As the Committee worked in Executive Session yesterday after the best-attended Open Hearing in perhaps 20 years, they worked hard to distinguish statements of educational policy from recommendations for action. They also studied hard and considered the input that suggested that some statements were not ready for action and needed more thoughtful clarification. That is their charge and their work will facilitate the final conduct of House business this morning. Just 2 final thoughts about the work of the House, past and present, before I continue with my other remarks; this meeting of the House marks the 20th anniversary of the historic and hard-to-achieve decision by the AACP House that the entry-level preparation for pharmacists should be the doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree. That meeting took place in Washington, DC, where it must have felt over 100 degrees, like it is there today! This also makes me wonder whether any issue other than degrees, dues, and dollars can incite the interest and engagement of our members! Perhaps some of the work stimulated by President Bootman's charges to the 2012-2013 committees will test this proposition! It is a privilege to have this 11th opportunity to take a few minutes to report to you from the perspective of the chief staff officer of your Association and to reflect on AACP in these times of disruptive innovation and opportunity. That is the theme I am using to frame these remarks. President Crabtree and I had the enormous good fortune to begin calendar year 2012 in what might have been a Harvard School of Business intensive weekend graduate seminar on the topic of disruptive innovation. While we were actually on the island of St. John with leaders and staff colleagues from 10 other national pharmacy and pharmaceutical industry associations, our professor was none other than Clayton Christensen. Many of you may have heard this Harvard Business School professor's keynote presentation on disruptive innovation in healthcare at the APhA meeting in Seattle in March 2011. Among other titles, Professor Christensen has written the Innovator's Prescription: Disruptive Innovation in Health Care and Disrupting Class, which applies the theory of disruptive innovation to education. We provided a copy of Disrupting Class to the deans attending last February's Deans Retreat in San Diego. If you are keeping score, the good professor suggests clearly and passionately that both healthcare and education at all levels are poised for significant disruption. …

History lessons for today's housing policy: the politics of low-income housing

History offers valuable lessons to housing policymakers. For those who would devise new low-income housing programs during today's trying economic circumstances, it is helpful to study the strategies that succeeded in achieving low-income housing programs in past difficult times. This article, History Lessons for Today's Housing Policy, examines the political processes that led to the adoption of new low-income housing policies during four political crises. The four crises were the Great Depression of the 1930s, the post-World War II housing shortage, the urban crisis of the 1960s, and the policy crisis of the 1970s. Among other history lessons, the article reveals that well-organized political support, especially from large institutions, is crucial to achieving distinctly different new programs; that decentralized programs are more politically resilient than centralized programs; that programs that appeal to the nation's broad middle-class are most popular; and that policy research is valuable but that politics trumps research.

Neighborhood preferences of house buyers: the case of Klang Valley, Malaysia

PurposeThe paper attempts to examine the impacts of neighborhood types, as defined by a gated‐guarded neighborhood with landscape compound and a freehold tenure neighborhood on residential property values in Klang Valley, Malaysia.Design/methodology/approachA weighted least squares method together with a heteroscedasticity consistent covariance matrix estimator is used to estimate the coefficients of structural, locational and neighborhood attributes of dwellings on house prices.FindingsResults show that the gated‐guarded neighborhood with landscape compound could increase residential property values by 18.1 per cent. Additionally, the positive perception of a freehold property in the neighborhood could induce a price premium of 23.7 per cent.Research limitations/implicationsIt is reasonable to believe that neighborhood types play a role in determining residential property values.Practical implicationsIn order to meet the increasingly affluent and discerning house buyers, developers, instead of just offering dream homes in prime locations, should provide intangible benefits in the neighborhood that are just as sought after by today's house buyers – such as a sense of security in the landscape compound, a feeling of harmony with one's surroundings and an infrastructure which supports the lifestyle of house buyers.Originality/valueHouse buyers in Malaysia are increasingly aware of the value of gated‐guarded and freehold neighborhoods. However, there is little evidence to assess the value provided by such neighborhoods in Klang Valley, Malaysia. The paper aims to determine the responsiveness of the willingness to pay to changes in neighborhood types.

The President's Playbook: White House Strategies for Lobbying Congress

In today's White House, implementing elaborate lobbying campaigns in support of the president's legislative initiatives is a familiar exercise. However, even as tales of presidential arm-twisting and deal making abound, still unclear are the general strategies by which presidents can build winning coalitions on Capitol Hill. Here I propose that presidents have available two basic options for influencing Congress: they can shift the distribution of preferences for roll-call votes, and they can censor the policy alternatives that make it that far. The first constitutes a vote-centered strategy, the second an agenda-centered strategy. After developing each within a framework that explains presidents’ choices of lobbying targets and tactics, hypotheses are tested against corresponding data on the interactions between administration officials and U.S. Senators for three important issues in the 107th Congress.

Normal behaviour as a basis for animal welfare assessment

AbstractIt is generally agreed that farm animal welfare is at a high level when the animals can behave naturally. Most of today's housing systems, however, differ considerably from the natural environment in which the behavioural organisation of the ancestors of our farm animal species evolved. Consequently, normal behaviour may be impaired in several ways. Frequency, duration or sequence of behavioural elements may be affected. Some normal behaviour patterns may not occur at all. The animals may also possibly behave in unnatural ways – in patterns that would never occur in nature. Furthermore, it is usual for farm animals to exhibit behaviour which is normal in form, but which is elicited by artificial structures within their housing system.In view of these possible changes in normal behaviour, it is necessary to assess, for each farm animal species and each housing system, whether animal welfare is at risk in any way if the behaviour observed differs from the behaviour that would occur in a natural environment. In some cases the question can be answered by taking a theoretical evolutionary approach. In most cases, however, detailed knowledge about the behavioural organisation of the animals is necessary. Such knowledge is built up from animal motivation studies and investigations into the effect of environmental structures on animal behaviour.A specific problem of on-farm animal welfare assessment is that there is often not enough time to collect sufficient data to make a judgement about the occurrence of normal behaviour. Resource-based assessment methods are appropriate as an alternative, provided that the resource standards used are based on evidence stemming from research into animal behaviour and motivation.

Low Wage Workers and High Housing Costs

Housing policy becomes a labor issue when housing costs consume large portions of hard-won wage increases. The extent and the depth of today's housing crisis make this issue more pressing than at any time since the 1930s when labor's participation was critical to the passage of the U.S. Housing Act. Without the benefit of housing-subsidy programs, low-income people often pay more than half their incomes on housing. In this article, we focus on the effect of the housing crisis on members in Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 434B who represent over 100,000 homecare workers in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. Living in overcrowded and substandard housing, workers face abusive landlords, suffer feelings of powerless- ness, and endure compromised self-worth and dignity. Homecare workers use coping strategies in order to live with the problems created by the high costs of housing and poor conditions. Local unions can intervene in ways that tie housing to traditional campaigns and break new ground in the housing arena. Without labor's involvement, the ad hoc housing policy in the United States will continue to burden workers in low-wage occupations.

EUROPEAN HOUSING POLICIES: BRINGING THE STATE BACK IN? 1

Housing occupies a unique place in public policy, neither fully part of the welfare state, nor fully part of the free market…Nevertheless, housing has been subject to sustained, pervasive and fundamental forms of intervention by the state for well over a hundred years. Today's housing markets and housing outcomes have been decisively shaped by public policy. (Kleinman 1996: 1)

Gaps in Understanding Sustainable Housing: Case study in Adelaide and Hanoi

This paper argues that the unsustainability of today's housing practices is rooted from different perceptions about sustainable housing by the “actors” involved- the designers, producers, and users. This is demonstrated in the case studies of some housing in Adelaide, South Australia, and Hanoi, Vietnam. The paper suggests that understanding and bridging these gaps will help ensure sustainability in housing. It further suggests that in order to achieve sustainable housing, the multiple dimensions of sustainability, namely the environmental, social, and economic dimensions, must be taken into account, both in the changing local and global context.

Are Housing Organisations becoming Learning Organisations? Some Lessons from the Management of Tenant Participation

This paper deals with the links between organisational development in social housing organisations and tenant participation, and asks whether social housing organisations through such practices can be said to be adopting some of the features of 'learning organisations'. It discusses the ways in which tenant participation arrangements, in addition to providing opportunities for tenants to influence organisational decision making, potentially serve as de facto conduits for organisational learning, prompting organisational adaptation and change. The idea of the 'learning organisation' has its roots in organisational theory and practice. It has also been used normatively in management consultancy, and it is a discernible part of the managerial culture associated with the present government's Modernisation programme. The paper has three interrelated aims. First, it looks at the scope of the 'learning organisation' notion. This is broadly concerned with organisational commitment to on-going development, and focuses on responsiveness, flexibility and capacity to adapt internally to external demands and pressures. Second, it considers the role that these 'learning organisation' principles play in the process of organisational change as this is experienced by today's social housing organisations. Third, it applies learning organisation concepts and draws on recent research to examine an aspect of social housing practice which acts as a key interface between social housing organisations and their service users, the management of tenant participation in an operational context, and discusses the extent to which such mechanisms might act as a conduit for the development of organisational learning. The paper concludes by reflecting first, on the potential of such conduits to encourage social housing organisations to become more like 'learning organisations'; and second, on the value of the learning organisation notion as a tool for understanding organisational development and change in social housing.

The Welfare of Farmed Mink (Mustela Vison) in Relation to Behavioural Selection: A Review

AbstractAnimal welfare is a major issue in Europe, and the production of mink,Mustela vison, has also been under debate. One common method of solving animal welfare problems is to adapt the environment to fit the behavioural needs of the animals. In comparison with other forms of husbandry, the mink production environment has remained relatively unchanged over the years and provides for some of the most obvious needs of mink. Whether today's typical housing conditions adequately meet the welfare requirements of mink is currently a topic of discussion. An alternative approach to improving welfare is to modify the animals so that they are better adapted to farming conditions. In large-scale animal production, handling of the individual can be a sporadic event, making an animal's inherent characteristics for temperament and adaptability important factors to consider with respect to its resultant welfare.In this review we present and discuss experiments on behavioural selection for temperament, and against undesirable behaviours, such as fur chewing, in mink. Fur chewing behaviour can be reduced by selection, apparently without any negative effects, whereas only a little is known about the nature and consequences of selecting against stereotypic behaviours. Long-term selection experiments have shown that it is possible to reduce fearfulness in farmed mink. Using a relatively simple test, it is possible for farmers to add behavioural measurements to their normal selection criteria and thereby improve the welfare of farmed mink.

Is private rental an option for urban housing provision in Hungary

By 1998, 91 percent of all housing units in Hungary were occupied by owners –an extremely high percentage by international standards. Today's Hungarian housing politicians, whose anti-rental convictions stem from the experience of the previous regime, tend to disregard arguments about the consequences of this bias: the negative impact on mobility, the creation of a rigid housing market (lack of adaptability to the housing market), hardships in addressing social problems, conflicts between generations (obligations borne by elder generations) as well as the `compulsory' purchase of housing by younger generations and the drain of subsidies. There is extensive evidence that current Hungarian regulations are hostile to rental housing. With subsidies channeled to the ownership sector (housing construction benefits, interest subsidies, local subsidies, employer subsidies) as well as tax relief (purchase of privately owned housing, savings-linked subsidies, imputed rents), it is more expensive for households to rent than to buy or build housing. This leads to a distorted economic structure and a distorted use of society's resources. A housing policy based on modern economic theory pursues neutral subsidy and tax policies concerning ownership. Thus, from an economic point of view, there is no reason to prefer owner-occupied housing to rental housing. This paper explains why the private and public rental sectors are so small. But at a deeper level, the question is why private rented housing exists at all. The paper also explores related questions: who tend to rent out their units, why, for how long and how much; and who tend to rent these units, why do they rent them, and at what prices? The key policy issue is to define the basic impediments to the sector's expansion. On this basis, a new housing policy program can be formulated.

Continuity and Change in Philanthropic Housing Organisations: the Octavia Hill Housing Trust and the Guinness Trust

In the last twenty five years housing associations have come to play a greater part in accommodating Londoners than in other parts of the country. In the nineteenth century, too, various forms of philanthropic and semi-philanthropic housing organisations were concentrated in London. This paper is concerned with the nature of the putative links between these Victorian housing organisations and modern housing associations. Much has been written about housing reform in London in the nineteenth century, and the origins of housing associations are generally seen to lie in the Victorian period, but the existing literature tends to take for granted the links between them rather than making them explicit. In fact very few of today's active housing associations can trace their origins directly back to before the First World War. Two such organisations are the Guinness Trust and the Octavia Hill Housing Trust, each of which represents a distinct tradition in voluntary housing. The paper draws on detailed archive research on these two trusts to illustrate how voluntary housing organisations survived, developed and changed in the period up to the watershed legislation represented by the Housing Act, 1974.

Reviews: Cheap Wage Labour: Race and Gender in the Fisheries of British Columbia: Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, International Political Economy: Understanding Global Disorder, Changing Eastern Europe 2. Plans, Pragmatism and People: The Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today's Cities, Households and Housing: Choice and Outcomes in the Housing Market, Women of the European Union: The Politics of

Reviews: Cheap Wage Labour: Race and Gender in the Fisheries of British Columbia: Mapping the Subject: Geographies of Cultural Transformation, International Political Economy: Understanding Global Disorder, Changing Eastern Europe 2. Plans, Pragmatism and People: The Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today's Cities, Households and Housing: Choice and Outcomes in the Housing Market, Women of the European Union: The Politics of

Some difficulties in the historiography of Italian opera

The historiography of Italian opera is particularly well suited to illustrate some problems in the general field of music history and musicology. On the one hand, there is little doubt that Italian opera belongs to the canon, not to say the museum, of learned western music; indeed, today's opera houses surpass concert halls in projecting the ‘museum character’ in which musical tradition seems ‘frozen’. On the other hand, it is also true that only in recent years has international musicology accepted Italian opera as unquestionably deserving of attention. The reasons for this delay are clear enough. Some were easily overcome, connected to the very history of our discipline: since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the musical language of Italian operatic composers diverged from the mainstream Austro-German tradition; the dramaturgy of Italian opera was difficult to understand in a cultural context moulded by Wagnerian theory and practice (in part also by Shakespeare, Schiller, etc.). Other factors, however, are more deeply embedded, and continue to have an effect even in intellectual conditions very different from those of traditional musicology. These include: the manner in which extra-artistic factors determine the operatic work; the various creative competencies that take part in operatic production; the considerable importance accorded to performers, particularly singers; the possibility that parts of an opera may be moved from one work to another, or from one author to another; the fact that in die history of Italian operatic conventions, shared codes and repetition of formulas often prevailed over the search for novelty.

The Wartime Home as a Paradigm for Today's Affordable Housing Design

The current quest for affordable housing in North America has focused on reducing the size of the housing lot and on downsizing the house itself. Proponents of the small home maintain that given the diminished size of today's family compared with the traditional and larger family household of the postwar era, the smaller home does not in fact represent a diminution in space standards. When we consider available living space on a per person basis, the smaller family inhabiting a smaller house belies the notion that affordable housing directly signifies any real reduction in living standards. This article uses the wartime home as a research model to explore how people meet their spatial needs within a restricted housing space. Using the wartime home as a paradigm of the small house (no larger than 1,000 square feet) we investigated this housing type as a prototype of affordable housing. Our research included interviews with the owners of twenty-five wartime houses that had retained their original footprint,...

The Wartime Home as a Paradigm for Today's Affordable Housing Design

The Wartime Home as a Paradigm for Today's Affordable Housing Design

The Problem of Faculty Relocation

resources. And however sophisticated and experienced one is about moving, during such a typically rushed trip it is always possible to make a serious mistake in buying or renting. Third, there is the difficulty of disposing of one's old house. This problem may dog a newly moved faculty member for months or years, especially in today's uncertain housing market. It is a matter that confronts the faculty member just as she is trying to establish herself in a new environment and to live on an academic salary, usually barely enough for one mortgage, let alone two mortgages or a mortgage and a rental. If the faculty member chooses to rent out her old dwelling until it sells, she will then be involved in the distraction of

The Debt and the Cash Flow of Residents: I. The Grim Present

To the Editor.— The recent JAMA article about the effect of student loan indebtedness on resident cash flow 1 and the Resident Forum 2 that was published in the same issue address important issues facing today's house staff. Student loan indebtedness is a growing area of concern as the number of students who borrow and the amount of indebtedness at the end of medical school continue to increase. Careful examination of the model of Hernried et al 1 reveals other stressful points. At many or most levels of indebtedness examined in the model, even eliminating loan payments as a yearly expense through deferment would not make up the cash-flow deficit for that year. This implies that annual stipends are not only inadequate to begin paying back loans, but also inadequate to meet annual basic living expenses. One alternative offered is to defer loan payments during residency. As the Resident