Changing Agendas in Australian Indigenous Policy: Federalism,Competing Principles and Generational Dynamics

This paper identifies two periods of punctuated change in the content and style of Australian Indigenous policy in the last fifty years. It also identifies a third period in which attention to Indigenous policy was heightened through the nationalisation of land issues already well‐established on the agendas of sub‐national jurisdictions. The paper relates all three periods to the changing federal institutions of Australian Indigenous policy, with the Commonwealth slowly exploring its post‐1967 role as a national government in Indigenous affairs. In later sections, the paper identifies some more conceptual bases of changing policy agendas, through ideas of the competing principles of equality, choice and guardianship and the generational moral dynamics of Indigenous affairs.     

Comment on Jean L. Cummings and Denise DiPasquale's “The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit: An Analysis of the First Ten Years”

Abstract

The Low‐Income Housing Tax Credit (housing credit) that Cummings and Di‐Pasquale portray is effective, efficient, and healthy. However, rapid changes in the industry have turned some of their data stale, and the absence of suitable context and information invalidate some key analyses and findings. Moreover, the researchers sometimes seem to see the glass as 10 percent empty instead of 90 percent full. A practitioners’ perspective is more positive.

The housing credit generates an array of public benefits while harnessing private investors’ business discipline. Genuinely low‐income tenants occupy the housing. The housing revitalizes low‐income communities. Properties are in good financial and physical condition. The housing credit is also cost effective. The economic fundamentals of producing low‐income rental housing, not the housing credit, necessitate substantial subsidies. A remarkably high proportion of the federal tax‐credit subsidy goes into the housing, and investor returns are modest. Nonprofit‐sponsored production appears to cost more because nonprofits are prominent in high‐cost locations and for other similar reasons, not because nonprofit developers are inefficient.     

Comment on Charles C. Bohl's “New urbanism and the city: potential applications and implications for distressed inner‐city neighborhoods"—the politics of design: The new urbanists vs. the grass roots

Abstract

This article briefly reviews the origins of New Urbanism and its manifesto as emerging from the social change movements of the 1960s, which evolved out of ideas of a previous generation of American and European designers living through the rise of modern industrialization. Arising from the same turmoil of the 1960s, and parallel to the New Urbanists, evolved a more loosely affiliated network of progressive academic and practicing planners and architects who have aligned themselves with disenfranchised underclasses not benefiting from the wealth of the postwar era and who take direction not from a manifesto but from a body of thinking linked to a broader intellectual and political agenda. This group works primarily with grassroots organizations in lower‐income communities and intentionally stays out of the limelight to better serve its constituents. The article concludes with ideas for possible collaboration between these professional groups serving different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum.     

A new look at creative finance

Abstract

In his seminal work, Stegman contended that creative finance is an inefficient means of financing low‐income housing production. As evidence, he cited the high transaction costs associated with the complex financing structures that make a low‐income housing development feasible. In this article, we extend Stegman's work by examining the impacts of creative finance over time. We rely on data gathered as part of an evaluation of 36 housing developments sponsored by nonprofits.

The data indicate that most of the developments in our study remained financially viable in part because of their reliance on creative finance. We find evidence supporting three positive impacts of creative finance: the establishment of long‐term partnerships, the increased community acceptance of low‐income housing developments, and the improved technical skills of organization staff. We also find that none of the long‐term negative impacts are inherent in creative finance and offer four suggestions on minimizing them.     

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.     

Assessing Economic Change in HOPE VI Neighborhoods

Abstract

Neighborhoods surrounding large public housing developments have historically been economically distressed. The revitalization of many developments through the federal HOPE VI program, in conjunction with increased inner‐city lending and a strong economy for much of the 1990s, should theoretically lead to improvements in these neighborhoods. This study analyzes changes in selected HOPE VI neighborhoods since 1990 and compares them with changes in other high‐poverty communities, as well as with overall trends in their respective cities.

At the beginning of the decade, conditions in HOPE VI communities were almost universally worse than in other high‐poverty areas. By the end of the decade, the relationship was reversed. The changes resulted from a number of interrelated factors, including the redevelopments themselves, other private market activity, specific commitments of resources by city governments, and increased attention to the communities by lenders. These neighborhoods still qualify as economically distressed, but economic development now seems a realistic possibility.     

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.     

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.     

DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING PRACTICES AND VALUES IN NORTH–SOUTH CITY PARTNERSHIPS: TOWARDS A BROADER UNDERSTANDING OF MUTUALITY

This article addresses twinning between local governments in North and South, contributing to the past decade's discourse on institutional twinning in this journal. Local governments have increasingly become recognised as relevant actors in international development cooperation through city‐to‐city cooperation structures, which have been praised as an effective mechanism for local government capacity building. This article discusses the learning practices and the extent to which new knowledge is valued and adopted by twinning participants in both North and South and moreover whether learning benefits are mutual. In a study of three partnerships between Dutch municipalities and partner cities in Peru, South Africa and Nicaragua, 36 participants were interviewed. The findings reveal that learning in city‐to‐city partnerships is not mutual between North and South and that the benefits of ‘shared learning’—a rhetoric commonly used in the twinning discourse—are limited. Instead, other opportunities for mutuality arise for Northern municipalities from political and strategic benefits, such as staff loyalty and motivation. Mutuality in twinning hence deserves a broader interpretation than learning alone so that twinning benefits can be identified and maximised for both North and South, keeping cities interested and motivated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ideas,identity, and institution‐building: From the ‘ASEAN way’ to the ‘Asia‐Pacific way'?

Abstract

This article examines the extent to which the development of multilateral institutions in the Asia‐Pacific region may be viewed as an exercise in identity‐building. It argues that institution‐building in this region is more of a ‘process‐orientated’ phenomenon, rather than simply being an outcome of structural changes in the international system (such as the decline of American hegemony). The process combines universal principles of multilateralism with some of the relatively distinct modes of socialization prevailing in the region. Crucial to the process have been the adaptation of four ideas: ‘cooperative security’, ‘open regionalism’, ‘soft regionalism’, and ‘flexible consensus’. The construction of a regional identity, which may be termed the ‘Asia‐Pacific Way’ has also been facilitated by the avoidance of institutional grand designs and the adoption of a consensual and cautious approach extrapolated from the ‘ASEAN Way’. The final section of the article examines the limitations and dangers of the Asia‐Pacific Way. It concludes with the assertion that while the Asia‐Pacific Way is an over‐generalised, instrumental, and pragmatic approach to regional cooperation, and there remain significant barriers to the development of a collective regional identity that is constitutive of the interests of the actors, it has helped introduce the concept and practice of multilateralism into a previously sceptical region and might have ‘bought’ enough time and space for regional actors to adapt to the demands of multilateralism.