私力救济的性质

私力救济作为一种重要的纠纷解决机制日益受到学界关注.私力救济的研究首先有必要厘清其性质.私力救济,既可定位于一种私人自行处理冲突的纠纷解决机制,当事人通过私人力量维权的权利救济机制,也是一种私人以威慑和制约为核心、高度分散、私人执法的社会控制机制.     

Empowering local government or just passing the austerity buck? The changing balance of central and local government in welfare provision in England 2008–2015

This paper asks two questions: first, how did the balance of decision-making between central and local government in welfare policy in England change between 2010 and 2015? Second, to what extent has that led to divergence in the extent and manner of such provision? It finds significant areas of policy where local flexibility has been increased (such as council tax benefit, crisis loans, and funding for specialist housing), either through a change in the tier of government responsible, or ‘unringfencing’ of grants allowing local authorities greater discretion in whether to deliver particular services, although in other important areas decisions on welfare remain firmly centralized. It also concludes that in areas where responsibility has been localized, divergence has been immediate and substantial. Localization may well reduce entitlements where local authorities enjoy a financial reward for so doing and political costs are low.     

A home of one’s own: women and home ownership in the borderlands of post-apartheid South Africa and Lesotho

This study explores women’s practice of acquiring, “growing” and multiplying a “home of one’s own” in the borderlands of the Free State province of South Africa and Lesotho. It shows how a home of one’s own confirms that one is a person proper (motho, p. batho), thus distinguishable from any other entity (ntho, p. dintho). A woman establishes a home of one’s own as a domain of autonomy (ha ka) where she can reproduce persons for whom she provides a home (heso). After her death, such a home remains an incubator of personhood. As a process of apprehending self, this gendered practice does not necessarily require men’s involvement, which is important in a social landscape of many female-headed households. Their gendered conception of residential property, alongside the possibility to let or sell homes, enables women to support theirs and others’ aspirations as the crisis of unemployment in the borderlands deepens.     

Squatting for Survival: Precarious Housing in a Declining U.S. City

Despite severely depressed property markets, housing in declining U.S. cities can be surprisingly unaffordable for poor residents. Yet the characteristics of decline, such as abundant vacant property and constrained economic/political conditions, also provide opportunity for squatting. This article explores survival squatting—illegal occupation of property as a means for procuring suitable housing by marginalized residents. Drawing on a 4.5-year ethnography in Detroit, I examine the mechanisms by which people strategically choose squatting as a method of sheltering in the context of local conditions, and the experiences and conditions of this practice. I situate these empirical findings within a broader discussion comparing squatting and other forms of housing that have received considerable attention by researchers (e.g., shelter use, sleeping rough, doubling up). Squatting is particularly risky and unstable, and often very hidden. Substandard housing conditions prevail, and substance abuse is common. Squatting may have negative implications for child welfare, but may also provide measures of independence, self-determination, and comfort for illegal occupiers. There is a critical need for further research in this area, both to inform comprehensive housing policies and to anticipate how squatters’ well-being is impacted by other urban initiatives, such as blight demolition.     

Broken Promises or Selective Memory Planning? A National Picture of HOPE VI Plans and Realities

Government efforts to redevelop public housing often face a contentious gap between plans and realities. This paper compares 2014 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administrative data on housing unit counts and unit mixes for all 260 developments receiving Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) revitalization grants with data provided in the original HOPE VI grant award announcements. We find that HUD records undercount approximately 11,500 once-proposed units. The biggest changes were a 29% decline in the number of market-rate units and a 40% decline in homeownership units. The chief shortfall during implementation, therefore, was not with public housing units (although the HOPE VI program as a whole did trigger an overall decline of such units). To help elucidate the dynamics at play when the unit allocation shifts between initial grant award and implemented project, we include a series of five brief case studies that illustrate several types of unit change. Interviews with HUD staff confirm the baseline for record-keeping shifted during implementation once project economic feasibility became clearer; adherence to original unit mix proposals remained secondary. HUD prioritized its accountability to Congress and developers over its public law accountability to build the projects initially proposed to local community residents. Although these changes have sometimes been interpreted as broken promises, it is even clearer that HUD’s monitoring system exemplifies what we call Selective Memory Planning: when planners and policy makers, willfully or not, selectively ignore elements of previous plans in favor of new plans that are easier to achieve.     

Do State Affordable Housing Appeals Systems Backfire? A Natural Experiment

Several U.S. states have supplemented traditional judicial review of local land-use regulation with a state affordable housing appeals system (SAHAS). Empirical evidence indicates that a SAHAS can increase the proportion of housing that is affordable to low- and moderate-income households. But some scholars have suggested that an effective SAHAS will ultimately backfire, by producing incentives to prohibit market-rate development, thereby rendering a state’s housing stock less affordable overall. We test this “backfire” hypothesis with a longitudinal comparison of single-family housing development from 1980 through 2007 in municipalities located in adjacent areas of Connecticut (which adopted a SAHAS in 1989) and New York State (which did not have a SAHAS during the study period). Contrary to the predictions of the backfire hypothesis, our fixed effects regression indicates that Connecticut's SAHAS was associated with increased single-family development relative to the New York State jurisdictions in our sample. This result suggests that a SAHAS can increase below-market rate and mixed-income development without impeding market-rate development.     

Navigating Limited and Uncertain Access to Subsidized Housing After Prison

An emerging literature has documented the challenges that formerly incarcerated individuals face in securing stable housing. Given the increasingly unaffordable rental market, rental subsidies represent an important and understudied source of stable housing for this population. The existing literature has described substantial discretion and a varied policy landscape that determine former prisoners’ access to housing subsidies, or subsidized housing spaces that are leased to members of their social and family networks. Less is known about how former prisoners themselves interpret and navigate this limited and uncertain access to subsidized housing. Drawing on data from repeated qualitative interviews with 44 former prisoners, we describe the creative and often labor-intensive strategies that participants employed to navigate discretion and better position themselves for subsidized housing that was in high demand, but also largely out of reach. Our findings also illustrate the potential costs associated with these strategies for both participants and members of their social and family networks.     

我国高房价的成因与控制对策

目前,我国高房价已对经济的发展和社会的稳定造成影响,同时,高房价也造成了房价与收入比偏高、房地产空置率过高和房价租金比增大等问题。文章认为,高房价的原因是多方面的,应当从多角度着手来采取措施。当务之急解决高房价的问题应从两个方面着手：一是宏观调控房地产市场,防止房地产出现过多泡沫;二是加大经济适用房与廉租房建设,解决中低收入家庭的居住问题。为此,政府应出台相应的政策约束房地产商的行为,宏观调控、科学决策、正确引导．确保房地产稳定发展。     

Housing prices and wealth inequality in Western Europe

Abstract

Comparative political economy (CPE) has robustly examined the political and institutional determinants of income inequality. However, the study of wealth, which is more unequally distributed than income, has been largely understudied within CPE. Using new data from the World Income Database (WID), this article examines how economic, political and institutional dynamics shape wealth-to-income ratios within Western European and OECD countries. It is found that the political and institutional determinants that affect income inequality have no short- or long-run effects on the wealth-to-income ratio. Rather, the rise in wealth-to-income ratios is driven by rising housing prices, as well as price changes in other financial assets, not home ownership or national saving rates. The article concludes by examining how the changing dynamics of housing prices and wealth inequality will increasingly shape intergenerational – and associated class-based – political conflict in Western Europe.     

“以债生财”还是“因债致贫”？——家庭住房债务对贫困脆弱性的影响

脱贫的长效机制应考虑到未来贫困风险问题，即应关注贫困脆弱性。随着住房债务在家庭债务中的主体地位日益显现，住房债务或将影响家庭的贫困脆弱性。基于2016年中国家庭追踪调查（CFPS）数据对两者关系展开研究，结果显示，平均而言，负有住房债务的家庭贫困脆弱性程度显著低于无住房债务的家庭，且以住房债务资产比度量的住房债务压力能够缓解贫困脆弱性。但这种缓解作用并非是持续的，而是表现出“U型”非线性特征。当住房债务资产比低于137.5%时，住房债务主要表现出净“财富效应”，存在“以债生财”的可能；在此之后，“房奴效应”将占主导地位，刺激“因债致贫”现象的发生。当然，家庭特征不同也会使这种影响产生差异。为减缓相对贫困，可进一步提高住房信贷效率、发挥住房信贷效能。