The changing demography of multifamily rental housing

Abstract

The residents of multifamily rental housing are different from both homeowners and single‐family home renters, and these differences have implications for the housing market and for public policy. This article describes apartment residents today, discusses recent changes in their number and characteristics, projects their future growth and composition, and highlights business and policy implications of future changes.

For purposes of business and public policy, a segmentation of apartment residents into three submarkets is useful: the “affordable” market serving low‐ and moderate‐income households, some of which receive government housing assistance; the “lifestyle apartment market” serving higher‐income adult households; and the substantial “middle market.” The number of apartment renters is likely to grow moderately over time. The combination of multifamily structure type and rental tenure form offers unique opportunities not only for provision of affordable housing but also for revitalization of downtown areas and balanced “smart” growth in suburban areas.     

Building Civic Capacity Through an Elastic Local State: The Case of St. Louis

Since World War II the civic leadership of St. Louis has overcome the extreme fragmentation of public authority by building civic capacity through a variety of strategies and means. Three successive strategies for building civic capacity have unfolded in St. Louis to facilitate the revitalization of the downtown and other large‐scale initiatives. Between 1950 and 1965 a regime strategy was employed in which city hall and the city's corporate elites shared a common vision for urban renewal and the significant national resources that were provided to meet that end. By the mid‐1960s, however, a second strategy for downtown revitalization emerged that featured a corporate‐centered politics during which time the successful assembly of civic capacity hinged largely on the ability of the mayor to present and provide projects in which corporate elites and their companies would be willing investors. Since the early 1990s, building the civic capacity to undertake large initiatives has been made possible through the creation of a constellation of quasi‐public corporations and special districts. This third strategy of “shadow governments” are the most recent means of achieving civic capacity in St. Louis and we argue in this article that these new institutions are transforming the local state because they are capable of forging political coalitions, mobilizing resources, and making decisions that transcend general‐purpose governmental jurisdictions. For cities and for urban regions, the importance of this development is far‐reaching.     

社会力量助推乡村振兴的内源性发展路径研究--基于“振兴村”试点的分析

乡村振兴背景下,如何实现城乡资源要素的合理流动,培养农民参与乡村振兴的主体性意识,实现农村的内源性发展是当前亟需解决的问题。文章以一个乡村振兴试点村为例,探讨了以退休干部牵头的社会组织,通过社会力量助推乡村内源性发展的策略和路径。研究表明:社会组织可以通过“融入-培育-助推”的行动逻辑来助推以农民为主体的乡村振兴,具体表现为:社会组织通过融入国家政策体系、地方行政体系和乡村社会体系,引入外源式资源培育农民公共事务参与意识和集体行动能力,助推村社实现产业和治理的组织化,推动农村内源性发展。这种发展路径与社会力量不同阶段的助推策略相呼应,且各阶段相互交错,是一个双向非线性的过程。在此过程中,社会力量促进了外来资源引入与内生动力培育的融合,实现了村庄的内源性发展。     

Assets and neighborhoods: The role of individual assets in neighborhood revitalization

Abstract

Asset‐building strategies—including individual development accounts, homeownership programs, and microenterprise development—became increasingly popular in the 1990s. Although research has demonstrated how assets produce individual benefits, less is known about the extent to which these benefits induce positive place‐based effects. We develop a model of the relationship between individual asset‐building strategies and neighborhood revitalization in order to inform future empirical work and help ensure that asset accumulation and neighborhood revitalization are mutually reinforcing. Our model emphasizes the conditions and programmatic factors that may encourage and discourage the transfer of benefits from individuals to neighborhoods.

Examples from case studies of four community‐based organizations suggest that the likelihood of neighborhood spillovers may be increased if policies and practices aim to “manage” the returns from the individual asset, retain asset holders, provide reinvestment conduits, track local purchasing power, and create additional opportunities for collective action.     

State Revenue Forecasts and Political Acceptance: The Value of Consensus Forecasting in the Budget Process

Concerns about political biases in state revenue forecasts, as well as insufficient evidence that complex forecasts outperform naive algorithms, have resulted in a nearly universal call for depoliticization of forecasting. This article discusses revenue forecasting in the broader context of the political budget process and highlights the importance of a forecast that is politically accepted—forecast accuracy is irrelevant if the budget process does not respect the forecast as a resource constraint. The authors provide a case illustration in Indiana by showing how the politicized process contributed to forecast acceptance in the state budget over several decades. They also present a counterfactual history of forecast errors that would have been produced by naive algorithms. In addition to showing that the Indiana process would have outperformed the naive approaches, the authors demonstrate that the path of naive forecast errors during recessions would be easily ignored by political actors.     

The 2012 United States election and the implications for East Asia

Abstract

The 2012 election resulted in a major victory for President Obama and while his Democratic Party improved its Congressional strength, the House of Representatives remains under Republican control. The election revealed the depth of America's political and voter divisions with each party showing dramatically different areas of strength and weakness. Yet the election did not hinge on foreign policy leaving the Obama administration likely to continue most of its earlier policies toward East Asia as marked by the multilayered ‘pivot’ toward Asia. Relations with China and North Korea are likely to remain difficult to manage while US–ROK links should be far smoother. Of particular concern is the economic sluggishness and rising nationalism in Japan which could well cause bilateral problems with the US and regional problems with Japan's neighbors, including US ally, South Korea. And at home the bipolar divisions over how best to deal with America's economic revitalization could well impede US abilities to exert a convincing multi-dimensional role in the region.     

双重互构逻辑下中国城乡关系的演进规律与时代抉择--基于马克思恩格斯城乡融合思想的分析

新中国成立70余年来,城乡关系从分离、差别到二元结构的固化,再至城乡关系的融合发展,这个历史进程部分地践行了马克思恩格斯的城乡融合思想,二者在理论与实践层面实现了首次互构。新时代的城乡关系已然出现了新的变化,而新马克思主义学派也继承更新了马克思主义的理论和方法,重构了空间理论,进一步延展了马克思恩格斯的城乡融合思想,城乡关系的新变化与马克思恩格斯城乡融合思想的动态演进之间实现了二次互构。基于二者双重互构的逻辑,城乡关系的融合与创新发展应汲取马克思恩格斯城乡融合思想的时代精髓:尊重城乡发展的基本规律,规范资本与“人本”的界域;彻底翻转城乡不对等的理念,积极促成城乡资源要素的自由流动;变革城乡融合发展的相关体制与机制,致力于城乡公共服务的均等化及向乡村领域的延伸;实现乡村振兴战略、巩固脱贫攻坚成果及城乡融合发展的三元共振,推进城乡融合发展迈入新阶段。     

INVESTING IN PEOPLE

Education and training may be the single most important elements of a national revitalization strategy. In spite of their importance, public policies which address the major issues in education and training do not exist for the most part. Where policies do exist, they are founded on incorrect premises or are made inappropriate by incompatible policies in other domains. This paper attempts to identify the problems and offers solutions to the issue of education and training.     

Parenthood and social policy preferences: A gender and time sensitive examination

Attitudes towards social spending and the welfare state have been characterised by one of the longest standing and widest gender gaps. Past research suggests that parenthood deepens this divide further. Yet, the exact relationship between parenthood and support for social policies – and the gendered nature of this process – has been difficult to establish because it can vary across welfare policy areas and the age of the children, which past studies, relying on cross-sectional data, has found difficult to unravel. Using panel data from the Swiss Household Panel, we examine individual level changes in fathers’ and mothers’ views towards specific welfare state policies. We find that individuals’ support for social spending fluctuates at different stages of parenthood, and that mothers’ demands differ from fathers’ in relation to care related but not in terms of educational spending. This implies that parents are not a homogeneous group that parties could target with uniform electoral pledges. As a result, building widespread electoral support for expanding a broad range of social investment policies is likely to be challenging in a context where, first and foremost, self-interest appears to drive (or depress) individuals’ support for specific welfare state policies.     

A policy-selection/ goal-formulation model for public systems

This paper attempts to present an analytical framework of analysis of problems relating to public systems. Current optimization models, which originated in the private sector, are not adequate to handle the complexity of the decision making processes in public policy analysis. The proposed model aims at lessening ideological debates over statements of goals, and it emphasizes policy selection through goal redefinitions where both goals and policies are formulated simultaneously. The model is based on an iterative process where consensus over policies is arrived at between the policy maker and the constituents of the public system. The principal feature of the model is that it incorporates political debates and bargains, and provides for the development of insight.     

Examining the Logic Behind the Self‐Help,Self‐Taxing Movement: Business Improvement District Formation

An institution that has shown great promise in addressing the revitalization of declining central cities is Business Improvement Districts (BIDs). These private governments provide supplemental municipal services such as sanitation, security, and marketing to independent businesses in underserved commercial areas. By 1999, 44 U.S. states had legislation that enables and dictates the formation process and structure of BIDs. The surprising element of this legislation is the wide variation in approval needed to form a BID over a proposed geographical area. Some states require as little as 20 percent approval of proposed members and others as much as 75 percent approval to allow formation of a BID. This variation in state statutes likely influences the use of BIDs. Results highlight that relatively easier state enabled collective action positively impacts the creation of BIDs, the limited effects of tax expenditure limitations on the formation of BIDs and the positive impacts that new development has on the number of BIDs per state.     

Obama’s Human Rights Policy: Déjà vu with a Twist

In US history, much human rights policy developed in four waves during the twentieth century. These waves were triggered by similar circumstances, but all proved short-lived as structural constraints such as limited US power over other countries’ domestic actions, competing US policy priorities, a US hesitance to join multilateral institutions, and the continued domestic political weakness of human rights advocates led to setbacks. As Barack Obama took office, his campaign comments and the past patterns led to widespread expectations that he would introduce new human rights initiatives. His policies, though, would continue to face the structural constraints and would be affected by the Bush administration’s legacy. It was predictable that many of Obama’s initiatives would be only partially implemented and only partially successful. As expected, Obama’s first years have seen mixed results, but the Obama administration has advanced US human rights policies sufficiently in half-dozen key areas to say that a fifth wave of human rights policy development is underway.     

THE STATES' ROLE IN POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: TRANSPORTATION POLICY

Over the past 25 years, the federal government has exerted a profound impact over transportation policy, with over one thousand policies and programs administered in 1979. States have been heavily involved in administering most of these programs. In the past, state and local governments have responded by raising the revenues necessary to match federal grants. Despite budget problems, the states' role is expected to continue.     

Fighting Poverty with Mobility: A Normative Policy Analysis1

Concentrated urban poverty is America's deepest social problem. Eliminating it stands as our nation's greatest challenge. In this article I analyze from a normative perspective antipoverty policies that attempt to address this problem via “mobility,” that is, policies that attempt to disperse the urban poor to suburban locations. I find these policies to be normatively problematic on two grounds: the level coercion experienced by (and the corresponding lack of free choice given) a vulnerable population and the undesirable effects (in the current context of American urban development) caused by failing to regard established neighborhoods as stable communities. The results of this analysis indicate strongly the need to generate increased levels of economic activity in America's inner cities, and I suggest that more research on this issue be conducted with an eye toward formulating and implementing a comprehensive strategy to bring about inner-city revitalization.     

Gender equality in Germany: Comparing policy change across domains

Focusing on the past 25 years in three central arenas of political, social, and civil rights, this article engages in the current debate over policy change and the direction of German politics by analysing the issue of gender equality. Combining T.H. Marshall's concept of citizenship and Hall's analysis of policy change, I obtain a two-level framework that differentiates between policy changes and categorises reform in Germany in three different domains. The case studies are: quotas in political representation (political citizenship), women and reconciliation policy (social citizenship), and anti-discrimination policies (civil citizenship). Comparing policy change across domains demonstrates that change in these three arenas has occurred to different degrees and for different reasons; electoral competition has fostered policy change in representation, while the male-breadwinner model has slowed down reform for reconciliation of family and employment. A conservative affirmative action regime stands in opposition to individual anti-discrimination and limits potential change. This comparison across domains defines the dependent variable ‘policy change’ in a more nuanced way, helping to pinpoint and differentiate specific areas of reform.     

Markets and politics in France's declining regions

France has adopted an explicit policy of countering the decline of its old industrial areas, by encouraging a process of reindustrialization in those regions. The French experience illustrates the challenge that such an approach encounters, including dificulties arising out of policies of the European Community, the efforts of the government to achieve national growth targets, the locational preferences of potential “replacement” industries, and political and financial constraints on regional governments when they assume an entrepreneurial role. In the end, the effect of government intervention proves complex. Although the principal effort is directed at cushioning the pressures of market forces, the net result of public policy is often to transmit such forces more directly than in the past.     

Why social partnership matters: Irish policies for work – life balance

Since 1987 the Republic of Ireland has experimented with new forms of policy consultation and formulation that have been credited with turning the country into the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy of the 1990s. One of the most important of these new forms is a series of social partnership agreements that have become increasingly broad in scope over the past decade and a half. This article illustrates how the process of social partnership pact-making is able to assist in steering a new policy direction, and investigates what makes these social partnership agreements able to be reproduced over time, by focusing on the development of policies for reconciling family and working life in Ireland. This is an important and pressing issue for many post-industrial economies, and, without claiming too much for the partnership process since problems of reconciling family and working life are far from ‘solved’ in Ireland, social partnership has helped turn this from being a marginal to a key issue in Irish politics.     

Exploring Online Engagement in Public Policy Consultation: The Crowd or the Few?

Governments are increasingly adopting online platforms to engage the public and allow a broad and diverse group of citizens to participate in the planning of government policies. To understand the role of crowds in the online public policy process, we analyse participant contributions over time in two crowd‐based policy processes, the Future Melbourne wiki and the Open Government Dialogue. Although past evaluations have shown the significance of public consultations by expanding the engaged population within a short period of time, our empirical case studies suggest that a small number of participants contribute a disproportionate share of ideas and opinions. We discuss the implications of our initial examination for the future design of engagement platforms.     

International Organizations in Transfer of Infectious Diseases: Iterative Loops of Adoption, Adaptation, and Marketing

Over the past few years increasing attention has been given to the role of international organizations in the diffusion of policy ideas and promotion of particular macro-level policies. Much of the attention has been on the ideological driving forces behind such policies, and on the extent to which the policies are externally imposed. There has been limited discussion on the bread-and-butter, technical policies of international organizations, and how they devise, adopt, adapt, and then promote what come to be seen as policies of global "best practice." This paper seeks to redress this gap by looking at the process of transfer of two infectious disease policies between international and national levels. It demonstrates that international organizations play different roles in policy transfer at particular stages in the process. The paper suggests that health policy transfer is a long adaptive process, made up of several iterative loops, as research and clinical practices developed in one or more countries are adopted, adapted, and taken up by international organizations which then mobilize support for particular policies, market, and promote them. Assumptions that new ideas about policies flow "rationally" into existing decision making are challenged by the processes analyzed here. Policy transfer, given the experience of these infectious diseases policies, goes through separate, "bottom-up," research-oriented, and "top-down" marketing-oriented loops. Individuals and different configurations of networks play key roles linking these loops. In the process, complex, context-specific policies are repackaged into simplified guidelines for global best practice, leading to considerable contestation within the policy networks.     

后脱贫时代推动金融扶贫高质量发展研究

金融扶贫高质量发展是解决相对贫困及返贫的制度安排与政策工具,能有效解决我国后脱贫时代金融扶贫资金失衡和贫困人口自我发展能力不足等难题。作为金融扶贫的延续与创新,高质量可持续的金融扶贫契合精准扶贫长远目标,提高了扶贫资金的“益贫性”,促进了贫困地区和贫困人口高质量脱贫与可持续发展,是实现乡村振兴的重要工具。后脱贫时代高质量可持续金融精准扶贫的实施,需要政府和金融部门通力合作加大政策支持力度,发挥政策长期效应;需要完善贫困识别体系,提高精准识贫质量;需要压实金融监管责任,夯实金融扶贫成果。