This paper investigates the impact on legal advice of the major shift to telephone-only services in social welfare legal aid, which took place in April 2013. An empirical study comparing telephone and face-to-face advice reveals that face-to-face contact has considerable advantages in the advice interview. Based on interviews and observations with housing law clients, their lawyers and advisers, the findings of this qualitative study demonstrate that clients and lawyers often find it easier to express themselves and understand each other face-to-face. The face-to-face interview benefits from features including the stronger emotional connection between lawyer and client, non-verbal communication, more expansive conversation and the greater ability to consult and confer over documents. Telephone-only advice may be suitable for some more capable clients and uncomplicated matters, but this qualitative research shows that vulnerable clients are more likely to be adversely affected by the potential disadvantages of telephone-only contact. Clients with more complex social needs or with more serious or urgent cases are better served by face-to-face advice. The findings of this research should inform the LASPO review and future priorities for legal aid funding. 相似文献
ABSTRACTThe arrival of migrants on Italian coasts following the so-called Arab Spring in 2011 has led to a multiplication of housing struggles. These struggles are widespread across the country and focus on the occupation of abandoned buildings and their transformation into collective housing spaces to provide an alternative to the formal reception system. This article will focus on the housing struggles in Rome, as the place with the highest number of occupations and the longest tradition of campaigns for the right to housing of migrants in the country. These struggles are the outcome of the encounter of recently arrived migrants with local solidarity movements and build on existing occupation movements and housing struggles. The article explores how the mobilizations over the right to housing intersect with issues such as the social appropriation of urban commons, the regeneration from below of unused areas, freedom of movement, and the contestation of Italian government policies on the relocation of migrants and refugees. The paper argues that housing struggles not only appropriate and regenerate urban commons, but also challenge the reception governance of migration and the policies of border control. 相似文献
Using data from the American Housing Survey (years 2001–2009), we find that purchase prices for homes selected primarily to access self-identified “good schools” rose (relative to homes selected for other reasons) during the key U.S. housing bubble period, compared with the periods before and after the bubble. We observe a similar pattern in homebuyers' mortgage-to-income ratios. Various regression specifications and propensity score matching techniques show that these trends persist conditional on a range of household, demographic, and economic controls. Our results suggest that the strong, bubble-era pursuit of good schools may have played a role in the housing bubble's expansion. 相似文献
This article assesses the extent and predictors of homelessness among veterans (both veterans in families with children and single adults veterans) exiting the Supportive Services for Veteran Families (SSVF) program, which is a nationwide homelessness prevention and rapid re-housing program geared primarily toward those experiencing crisis homelessness. Among rapid re-housing participants, 16% and 26% of single adult veterans experienced an episode of homelessness at 1 and 2 years post-SSVF exit; the comparable figures at those follow-up times for veterans in families were 9.4% and 15.5%, respectively. Relatively fewer single adult veterans and veterans in families receiving homelessness prevention services experienced an episode of homelessness at 1 and 2 years post-SSVF exit. veteran-level characteristics, including age, gender, prior history of homelessness, and recent engagement with U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care, were generally more salient predictors of homelessness following SSVF exit than variables measuring SSVF program factors or community-level housing market conditions. 相似文献
This article synthesizes housing subsidy voucher research to explain why, when in theory vouchers enable users to move out of poor neighborhoods, in practice they often do not. This qualitative meta-analysis presents an examination of the assumptions of the program and their relationship to empirical findings.
Two themes emerged from this synthesis: market barriers and product problems. Data from a variety of studies and contexts portray recipients struggling to use vouchers in the private rental market due to market barriers, including lack of public transportation and the presence of discrimination. Product problems constrained freedom of choice about where to move and when to make a housing transition. These constraints manifest as compromised housing quality and low voucher utilization. This synthetic view cannot account for all outcomes or exceptional cases, but results suggest where participant experiences are generalizable and attributable to features of the housing market and structure of the program itself. 相似文献
This study uses spatial regressions and spatial statistics to examine the changes in the distribution of Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) households within an expanded San Francisco Bay Area region. From 2000 to 2010, the density of HCV households grew disproportionately across the region, and areas of significant increase emerged in both the region’s urban cores and its rural periphery. Furthermore, the destination communities shared a set of common characteristics. In 2010 HCV households were more likely to locate in areas with lower housing prices, lower percentages of educated people, higher rates of poverty, and higher percentages of African American households when compared with the region as a whole. These findings suggest that voucher holders locate where housing is affordable. We conclude that in regions with tight housing markets, supply matters. This study also introduces housing researchers and policy makers to a methodological approach that addresses what is known in geostatistics as a change of support problem. 相似文献
Since 1969, California’s Housing Element Law has required that municipalities address housing equity and housing production. In California, housing equity means that a municipality has planned for the future production of low-income housing that is priced from 0 to 120% of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s median family income, and market-rate housing that is priced higher than 121%. For a purposive sample of municipalities (Sacramento and Los Angeles regions, 1990 to 2007, n = 53), this research found that as compliance with the law increased, the sample experienced deficient low-income housing production but surplus market-rate housing production. Mixed-effects models indicated that compliant municipalities were associated not only with increased low-income housing production but also with decreased annual housing production in comparison to noncompliant municipalities. While these associations contrast with Lewis, they suggest that municipal compliance may support California’s goal of providing housing equity but may also constrain California’s overall housing production. 相似文献