Social capital and the revitalization of New York City's distressed inner‐city housing

Abstract

This article presents evidence that social capital can be an effective component of locally sponsored low‐income housing programs. It provides a model for measuring social capital at the building level, where it may be most effective in improving housing quality and security. The study compares five programs in New York City that house the city's poorest, mostly minority residents. The surveys from 487 buildings in Brooklyn, NY, were analyzed to compare the success of programs in maintaining and revitalizing landlord‐abandoned buildings taken by the city in lieu of taxes.

Results of the analysis demonstrate that the positive effects of tenant ownership were largely mediated by the higher levels of social capital found in these buildings. These levels have implications for the survival and economic advancement of poor households and civic participation in poor communities. The study suggests the value of alternative homeownership programs.     

Social capital and crime in New York City's low‐income housing

Abstract

This article presents evidence that components of social capital can play a prospective role in preventing crime in low‐income housing. It develops a conceptual approach to crime prevention involving social capital, alternative forms of ownership, and environmental design considerations. The study compares five programs that house New York City's poorest, mostly minority residents. The effectiveness of social capital in preventing crime is assessed using data from surveys of 487 buildings in Brooklyn, NY, and crime data from the New York City Police Department.

Results of the analysis indicate that three components of social capital—basic participation in tenant associations, tenant prosocial norms, and a building's formal organization—were all related to reducing various types of crime in the buildings under study 6 to 12 months after social capital was measured. The effectiveness of social capital was related to alternative ownership structures, building characteristics, and housing policy.     

The role of limited‐equity cooperatives in providing affordable housing

Abstract

This article develops an economic analysis of the role of limited‐equity cooperatives (LECs) in providing affordable housing. Using a model of the user costs of housing that focuses on housing externalities, it examines methods for overcoming externalities in multiunit rental dwellings.

Investment in management can reduce these externalities and thereby improve the quality of the housing environment, but the added cost excludes low‐income households from housing with a high level of management. LECs can reduce housing externalities without imposing the dollar costs of management on residents. They do this principally by attempting to attract a favorable resident population and by substituting self‐management for traditional hierarchical management. Given these findings, the article makes recommendations regarding the structure of a federally sponsored LEC program and draws implications for affordable housing policies in general. Finally, it calls for further empirical research into the desirable (and undesirable) features of self‐managed affordable housing.     

Moving out of poverty: Expanding mobility and choice through tenant‐based housing assistance

Abstract

Historically, federal housing policy has contributed to the concentration of poverty in urban America. Moving out of poverty is not the right answer for every low‐income family, but tenant‐based housing assistance (Section 8 certificates and vouchers) has tremendous potential to help families move to healthier neighborhoods. This article explores the role of tenant‐based housing assistance in addressing the problem of concentrated inner‐city poverty.

The Section 8 program by itself does not ensure access to low‐poverty neighborhoods, particularly for minority families. Supplementing certificates and vouchers with housing counseling and search assistance can improve their performance; a growing number of assisted housing mobility initiatives are now in place across the country. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should continue to fund these initiatives and increase their number over time. HUD should also strengthen incentives for all housing authorities to improve locational outcomes in their Section 8 programs.     

Comment on James E. Rosenbaum,Linda K. Stroh,and Cathy A. Flynn's “Lake Parc Place: A study of mixed‐income housing”

Abstract

Rosenbaum, Stroh, and Flynn confirm existing community leader perceptions that this model mixed‐income development in the predominantly low‐income South Side of Chicago has produced a positive residential environment. Increased tenant voice, not role modeling, seems to be a factor in producing increased resident satisfaction with the building and a strong sense of commitment to the mixed‐income alternative to exclusively low‐income housing projects. The extra resources invested in physical improvements and the extraordinary media attention paid to this model project may have created a “Hawthorne effect,” which also produced higher levels of satisfaction. The existence of this successful model is not sufficient to provide more housing alternatives; community‐based advocacy for more mixed‐income developments is needed.     

The redevelopment of distressed public housing: Early results from HOPE VI projects in Atlanta,Chicago, and San Antonio

Abstract

The redevelopment of distressed public housing under the Urban Revitalization Demonstration Program, or HOPE VI, has laudable social, physical, community, and economic goals. Three public housing projects in Atlanta, Chicago, and San Antonio demonstrate the complexity and trade‐offs of trying to lessen the concentration of low‐income households, leverage private resources, limit project costs, help residents achieve economic self‐sufficiency, design projects that blend into the community, and ensure meaningful resident participation in project planning.

Although worthwhile and ambitious, HOPE VI cannot achieve all these goals. More of them can be achieved by developing strategies related to the strength of the local real estate market. To that end, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and public housing authorities must use the market‐based tools in the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998. Standards for improved physical design and resident participation and further research on critical supportive services for residents are also needed.     

Family self‐sufficiency and housing

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, an increasing number of initiatives have been introduced to link housing programs and policies with efforts designed to promote family economic self‐sufficiency. This article reviews a set of programs that have worked to manipulate various components of the housing bundle to improve the economic well‐being of acutely poor families. They include programs that modify the characteristics and services available in the local community, alter families’ residential location, provide incentives and opportunities for homeownership, and link the provision of housing subsidies to increasing local capacity for service delivery.

This article suggests that the centrality of housing in fostering or impeding economic mobility makes it a key element in dealing with acute poverty and part of a creative strategy for intervening in the dynamics of poverty. Several important areas need to be taken into account when evaluating current policy; and multiyear evaluations will be necessary to determine the success of these programs.     

The convergence of nonequity housing models in Canada: Changes to housing policy since 1990

Abstract

This study examines the impact of housing policy convergence on the nonequity housing system in Ontario, Canada. Ontario has four distinct nonequity housing models— public, nonprofit cooperative, municipal nonprofit, and private nonprofit. This article argues that since 1990, housing policy in Canada, and particularly in Ontario, has become increasingly influenced by the neoconservative agenda of downsizing and decentralization of government functions found in the United States.

The findings reveal that changes to housing policy have caused the convergence of nonequity housing models in the areas of management and administration. Drawing on the present findings and on an experimental project in tenant management, this article argues that the trend toward convergence will continue and will likely result in one nonequity housing model in Canada. This pattern is interpreted in light of the neoconservative agenda of both countries that emphasizes private sector solutions to housing low‐income families.     

Comment on Roberto G. Quercia and George C. Galster's “The challenges facing public housing authorities in a brave new world”

Abstract

We find Quercia and Galster's article on reforming public housing an intriguing academic exercise that contains some key insights useful to practitioners. However, the article fails to consider several key elements in the provision of assisted housing that make their “constrained quadrilemma” much less problematic than they assume.

The article ignores the tenant‐based certificate/voucher approach to meeting the housing needs of low‐income and very low income persons and households. This is a significant oversight, in that many public housing authorities (PHAs) manage a larger portfolio of certificates than of PHA‐owned housing. If the litmus test of the success of public housing's “reinvention” is the extent to which it is able to maximize both the number of low‐income households served and their social and geographic integration, then public housing's extensive use of certificate/voucher programs demonstrates a road out of the quadrilemma.     

Housing Subsidies and Early Childhood Development: A Comprehensive Review of Policies and Demonstration Projects

ABSTRACT

In this article, we ask how housing subsidies might influence young children. We examine two national housing policies – public housing assistance and the Section 8 vouchers program – and two demonstration projects that aimed to improve the administration of providing housing subsidies – HOPE (Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere) VI and Moving to Opportunity. This article is a critical examination of these policies and demonstration projects in relation to the following housing dimensions that promote the healthy development of young children: income supplements residential stability, physical environment, access to services and amenities, housing choice, neighborhood safety, and social capital. We compared advantages and limitations of each of these national housing policies and demonstration projects and examined ways in which they might influence children in these housing dimensions. The article concludes with implications and future research directions for U.S. housing policy by discussing its most recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) initiative, Rental Assistance Demonstration, in addressing limitations of housing policies and demonstration projects we examined.     

Interpreting the dynamics of public housing: Cultural and rational choice explanations

Abstract

This article uses culture of poverty and rational choice theories of poverty to explain how quickly nonelderly household heads leave public housing. Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics serve as the basis for the analysis.

Although a significant proportion of all household heads have public housing spells lasting five or more years, the majority have spells lasting less than five years. The availability of other housing options has a strong impact on how quickly individuals move out of public housing. Family structure and human capital play a more modest role. To the extent that one's childhood experiences affect the likelihood of exiting public housing, they appear to do so mostly through their effect on the acquisition of human capital. Finally, the evidence presented is inconsistent with the notion that public housing is a trap from which it is more difficult to escape the longer one lives in it.     

Beyond the problem projects paradigm: Defining and revitalizing “severely distressed” public housing

Abstract

This article challenges the utility of the concept of “severely distressed” public housing, arguing instead that the program has systemic problems and that the 6 percent of developments recently identified as severely distressed by the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing are merely those furthest along a continuum. Applying the commission's own criteria to nationwide program data that reveal dramatically increased resident impoverishment during the past decade, the article reveals the need for a more inclusive definition of severe distress.

While acknowledging the moral and political imperative to ameliorate conditions in the worst‐off places first, the article cautions against overreliance on a problem projects paradigm that could obstruct calls for systemwide reforms. The article advocates an action‐oriented research agenda, emphasizing data collection on a variety of ill‐understood socioeconomic aspects of public housing conditions and enabling policy analysts to set clearer goals about what sustainable revitalization of public housing should entail.     

Public housing and the American dream: Residents’ views on buying into “the projects”

Abstract

This article examines residents’ attitudes toward homeownership in five large inner‐city public housing projects composed of multifamily apartment buildings. Based on 267 interviews with public housing residents in Boston, it contrasts their broad support for homeownership as a concept with their wholly mixed reaction to the idea of owning a public housing apartment. Interest in homeownership in public housing is shown to be independent of residents’ current employment status and closely tied to residents’ social investment in specific housing developments and to their perceptions about the quality of that development's management, maintenance, and security.

The findings cast renewed doubt on policies that would make public housing sales a centerpiece of national policy, but they provide qualified support for more modest efforts to increase homeownership in public housing developments and in low‐income neighborhoods around them.     

Changing occupant characteristics in rural public housing in the Great Plains: 1977 to 1996

Abstract

Housing quality and affordability are growing concerns in rural areas, particularly in regions affected by economic restructuring and population decline. This article uses data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to assess changes in the characteristics of nonmetropolitan public housing residents in the Great Plains between 1977 and 1996.

Results indicate that public housing occupants were younger and more racially diverse in 1996 than in 1977. Also, a larger proportion received welfare benefits in addition to housing supplements. (In 1977, few households received both types of assistance.) Regression models reveal a significant positive relationship between changes in county population, unemployment rates, and economic designation and minority representation in public housing. Implications include the need for flexible measures that meet the changing needs of subsidized households. The characteristics of these households in the Great Plains region indicate the need for both region‐specific and coordinated housing and welfare policies.     

Social rehousing policy in britain: Needs,rights, and choices

Abstract

When selecting among competing applicants for rehousing in social rented property, the perceived wisdom in Britain since the 1940s has been to award priority to households in the greatest housing need. “Need” is often defined in highly complex ways. However, a shift has occurred in local authority and housing association rehousing policies away from allocations made solely on the basis of need. This shift comes in response to the changing context in which social rented housing has operated in the past 15 years and to perceived weaknesses in needs‐based systems. Present policies are designed to address wider objectives, including developing stable communities and minimizing housing management problems.

This article examines these policy changes and the extent to which local housing allocations are used to address not only individual household needs, but also the concerns of local communities and wider housing management issues.     

The HOPE VI Program: What about the residents?

Abstract

During the 1990s, the federal government dramatically changed its policy on housing the poor. Under the HOPE VI (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) Program, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development intended to address the concentration of troubled low‐income households in public housing by moving away from its reliance on project‐based assistance and promoting instead the construction of mixed‐income housing and the use of housing subsidies.

This article presents important evidence from two systematic, multicity studies on how the original residents of HOPE VI developments have been affected by this radical new approach to public housing. While many residents have clearly benefited, the findings raise critical questions about whether the transformation of public housing will achieve its potential as a powerful force for improving the lives of low‐income families.     

Clinton and volunteerism: The poverty of American social policy at the end of the century

Abstract

Volunteerism has resurfaced in late 20th century America as an alternative to comprehensive state social policies. The impression given is that voluntary involvement—“human contact”—is the answer to the vast social problems facing the millions of America's poor today and to the growing class inequalities and social polarization. The present article argues that the shift to volunteerism is prompted by fiscal constraints, the radical shift in the balance of power between capital and labor, and the conversion of the state into an instrument of overseas expansion for the interests of financial capital and the multinationals. Its authors advance the claim that the philosophy of volunteerism is a great deception—an ideology of the rich and powerful that aims to deny that social problems are structural and related to the capitalist system and thereby to disguise the exploitation of the poor and the inequality of classes.     

Restoring community through traditional neighborhood design: A case study of Diggs town public housing

Abstract

This article examines how traditional neighborhood design (TND) can restore a sense of community to distressed neighborhoods. Traditional neighborhoods, such as those found in many cities and inner suburbs, provide their residents numerous opportunities and venues for social interaction. We apply the principles of TND to the redesign of a public housing project. We call our approach an “architecture of engagement.”

Using a case study of Diggs Town, a public housing project in Norfolk, VA, we explore how the application of TND principles transformed a socially alienated and distressed neighborhood into a socially integrated and functional one. We find that TND techniques improve the quality of life by facilitating the social exchanges that create social capital.     

Comment on Elvin K. Wyly and Daniel J. Hammel's “Islands of Decay in Seas of Renewal: Housing Policy and the Resurgence of Gentrification”

Abstract

Gentrification ought to be examined, for policy purposes, as part of a general restructuring of the space of cities resulting from broader changes in the nature, location, control, and effects of economic processes. However, even if it is narrowly seen as simply residential change, as in the article by Wyly and Hammel, the displacement of poor households by an upper‐income gentry ought not be confused with the effort to mix moderate with low incomes in public housing through the best of HOPE VI.

Despite this confusion, Wyly and Hammel provide some interesting data showing the extent to which investment in inner‐city areas has accelerated in recent years, paralleling changes in financial arrangements and contradicting any notion that degentrification is a continuous, long‐term process. Their data, although short on demographic detail, also implicitly highlight the role of government in pushing the market to respond rationally to economic demand and the continuing danger that gentrification will displace African‐American families.     

Brown kids in white suburbs: Housing mobility and the many faces of social capital

Abstract

Social capital has many faces in the geography of urban opportunity, and as such, particular housing policies might have positive effects on some forms of social capital and negative effects on others. The author defines social support and social leverage as two key dimensions of social capital that can be accessed by individuals. A sample of 132 low‐income African‐American and Latino adolescents is used to examine the early impacts of a Yonkers, NY, housing mobility program on social capital.¹

Overall, program participants (^‘’movers^‘’) appear to be no more cut off from social support than a control group of “stayer” youth. On the other hand, movers are also no more likely to report access to good sources of job information or school advice— to leverage that might enhance opportunity. Adding just one steadily employed adult to an adolescent's circle of significant ties has dramatic effects on perceived access to such leverage.