Area regeneration of deprived neighborhoods is being used to reduce health inequality, socioeconomic deprivation and ethnic segregation. This quasi-experimental study examines if long-term graded ...exposure to urban regeneration is associated with primary healthcare-seeking behavior among residents. We compared general practitioner (GP) contacts from 2015-2020 in two adjacent, deprived social housing areas, one exposed to area regeneration. Populations were into Western and non-Western males and females aged 15 years and older (N = 3,960). Mean annual GP contact frequency for each group were estimated and a difference-in-difference (DiD) analysis was conducted with adjustments for propensity scores based on baseline characteristics. GP contact frequency increased for all groups across time with a systematically higher level and faster increase in the control groups. In particular, the mean difference between the exposed and control area for Western women increased from −4.67 to −5.76 annual contacts across the period. The mean differences in contact frequency increased for all groups but results of the DiD analyses were insignificant. In conclusion, an increasing gap in GP contact frequency, with the highest levels in the control area, was observed for all comparisons across time. More long-term research is needed to understand how the increasing gaps evolve.
Resumen En este texto se estudia la movilidad social y residencial de los propietarios de viviendas en algunos barrios populares consolidados en Bogotá. La trayectoria laboral y residencial del ...propietario antes de su llegada a la vivienda actual permite acercarse a la movilidad social ocupacional intrageneracional. Mediante el enfoque biográfico se analizaron 341 encuestas a propietarios en cinco barrios populares consolidados. Los datos permiten concluir que tienen trayectorias estáticas, tanto a nivel ocupacional como residencial. Las razones explicativas de la inmovilidad ocupacional y residencial se encuentran en aspectos estructurales: bajo nivel educativo, reducidos cambios de trabajo y bajos ingresos. Construir una vivienda grande en un largo periodo de tiempo y albergar varios hogares con vínculo familiar inmoviliza a los propietarios ocupacional y residencialmente, excepto que logren movilizar la vivienda como activo mediante el alquiler de espacios. Se discute sobre el papel de la propiedad de la vivienda en la confluencia de estas inmovilidades y se reflexiona sobre la reproducción de las desigualdades en el marco de la política habitacional.
Resumo O objetivo do texto é analisar a mobilidade social e residencial de proprietários localizados em bairros populares consolidados de Bogotá. A mobilidade ocupacional social intrageneracional foi analisada através da leitura da trajetória de trabalho, e a trajetória residencial do proprietário também foi reconstruída antes de sua chegada à atual residência. Utilizando a abordagem biográfica, 341 inquéritos aos proprietários foram analisados em cinco bairros populares consolidados. Os dados permitem concluir que eles têm trajetórias estáticas, tanto no nível ocupacional quanto no nível residencial. As razões explicativas da imobilidade ocupacional e residencial são encontradas em aspectos estruturais: baixa escolaridade, redução de trocas de emprego e baixa renda. Construir uma casa grande por um longo período e abrigar várias casas ligadas à família imobiliza os proprietários ocupacional e residencialmente, exceto que eles conseguem mobilizar a casa como um ativo alugando espaço. O papel da propriedade da casa na confluência dessas imobilizações é discutido e é feita uma reflexão sobre a reprodução das desigualdades no âmbito da política habitacional.
Abstract The main goal of this paper is to analyze the social and residential mobility of homeowners in consolidated neighborhoods in Bogotá. The occupational social mobility was analyzed at an intragenerational level by reading their job trajectory, and the owner's residential trajectory was reconstructed before arriving at the current house. With the biographical approach, 341 surveys of owners were conducted in five consolidated neighborhoods in Bogotá. The data lead to the conclusion that the owner´s trajectories are very static, both from the occupational point of view and residential. The reasons for the occupational and residential immobility were found in structural aspects: the low educational level and the small number of job changes added to a low income. Building a large house over a long period and share the house with several households with familiar link ties immobilizes the owners both at occupational and residential levels, except when the owner mobilizes their house as an asset by renting spaces. Finally, we discuss the role of homeownership in the confluency of the social and residential immobility and the reproduction of inequality.
The long-run U-shaped patterns of economic inequality are standardly explained by basic economic trends (Piketty’s r > g), taxation policies or ‘great levellers’ such as catastrophes. This article ...argues that housing policy, and particularly rent control, is a neglected explanatory factor in understanding macro inequality. We hypothesize that rent control could decrease overall housing wealth, lower incomes of generally richer landlords and increase disposable incomes of generally poorer tenants. Using original long-run data for up to 16 countries (1900–2016), we show that rent controls lowered wealth-to-income ratios, top income shares, Gini coefficients, rents and rental expenditure. Overall, rent controls need to be strict in order to have tangible effects, and only the stricter historical rent controls did significantly reduce inequalities. The study argues that housing policies should generally receive more attention in understanding economic inequalities.
The issue of whether to demolish or refurbish older housing has been debated for over a century. It has been an active policy area since the late 1880s, when the Government first authorised the ...statutory demolition of insanitary slums. In the 1960s, revulsion at the scale of ‘demolition blight’ and new building caused a rethink, leading to a major reinvestment in inner city neighbourhoods of older housing. In the past 5 years, debate on demolition and new building has been intensified by the Government's Sustainable Communities Plan of 2003, with its proposals for large-scale clearance and building. Environmental arguments about renovating the existing stock have gained increasing prominence as people have sought to defend their communities from demolition.
The evidence on whether demolition would reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere is unclear and disputed. This paper summarises the evidence and arguments, and attempts to clarify the most realistic, achievable route to major reductions in energy use in homes. The arguments that apply to housing also apply to most other buildings and therefore to the overall built environment, which accounts for half of all carbon emissions.
Three main sources of evidence have helped in the development of this paper, but there are many other studies we draw on in the discussion.
Firstly, the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University has argued that around three million demolitions are necessary by 2050 if we are to reach the stringent energy reduction targets that will be required in our housing stock Boardman et al., 2005. 40% House. Environmental Change Institute, Oxford. Its demolition figure is based on complex modelling that with small modifications can produce very different numbers. Its assessment does not take account of the embodied carbon costs such as volume of new materials, energy use in producing concrete, steel and other structural and infrastructural elements, and other factors affecting the environment such as land use, infrastructure and area blighting. We discuss these issues in order to clarify the scale of the challenge and the relative value of demolition or renovation.
Secondly, the Sustainable Development Commission SDC, 2006. ‘Stock Take’: Delivering improvements in existing housing. Sustainable Development Commission, London argues the urgent need to upgrade the existing stock on the grounds that 70% of all homes that will exist in 2050, even with the ambitious new building programme now announced, are already built. The maximum feasible demolition of two million existing homes by 2050, based on experience to date, suggests that under 10% of the current stock will have been demolished by then. We argue that upgrading this stock to high environmental standards can actually be achieved more cheaply than demolishing it, and with as significant a carbon reduction.
Thirdly, the German Federal Housing, Urban and Transport Ministry has announced an ambitious energy reduction programme that will upgrade all pre-1984 homes in Germany by 2020, an estimated 30 million units.
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http://www.bmvbs.de/en/Building/Climate-change-and-energy-effi,-2826/Programme-to-reduce-CO2-emissi.htm.
This is based on evidence from several CO
2 reduction programmes since 1996, showing the feasibility of upgrading. An 80% cut in energy use has been achieved, making the performance of the renovated homes at least as good as Germany's current exacting new build standards. The evidence from Germany is more grounded than any that has so far been produced in the UK, as it is based on several thousand examples.
The paper also discusses the social and political problems of demolition. There is widespread opposition to large-scale demolition of older stock, mainly pre-1919 terraced homes, which is currently the most ‘leaky’. This older property is a prime target for demolition in the Environmental Change Institute's proposals and the Government's plans.
The environmental benefits of refurbishment are shown, based on work by the Empty Homes Agency, evidence from English Heritage, the Building Research Establishment and the Prince's Foundation. Work on refurbishment shows that existing homes, often in brick-built terraces, are relatively easy to upgrade and, with careful reinvestment in the existing buildings, can achieve as high environmental efficiency standards as current new build.
We consider major social, economic and environmental benefits of refurbishment compared with demolition, including: a reduction in the transport costs, reduced landfill disposal, greater reuse of materials, reuse of infill sites and existing infrastructure, reduced new building on flood plains, local economic development, retention of community infrastructure, neighbourhood renewal and management. We weigh these benefits against the full costs of demolition and rebuilding, involving much higher capital costs, higher material wastage, greater embodied carbon inputs, the polluting impact of particulates, greater use of lorry transport for materials and waste, greater use of aggregates, more noise and disruption. On the social issues of housing need and fuel poverty, we argue that refurbishment and infill building are socially more acceptable, cheaper and create far lower environmental impact, while reducing fuel poverty. The incentive problems associated with renovation and the barriers to delivering it are also discussed.
The evidence we have uncovered counters the suggestion that large-scale and accelerated demolition would either help us meet our energy and climate change targets or respond to our social needs. Many arguments remain unclear, but the overall balance of evidence suggests that refurbishment most often makes sense on the basis of time, cost, community impact, prevention of sprawl, reuse of existing infrastructure and protection of existing communities. It can also lead to reduced energy use in buildings in both the short and long term.
Many factors will influence what happens in practice, but it seems unlikely under any scenario that the rate of demolition will accelerate far above current levels. Upgrading the existing stock is likely to gain in significance for environmental, social and economic reasons. Adopting policies that aid the retention and upgrading of the existing stock will help develop the necessary skills and technologies, save materials and land, and enhance the integration of existing communities in need of regeneration.
•Affordable rental housing supply and demand is modelled in South East Queensland (Australia).•A BAU and OSC supply scenario are compared for their effectiveness to meet demography-linked affordable ...rental housing demand.•Overall, the OSC scenario is found to improve housing supply efficiency by 6.6 %.•OSC is better able to match 1, 2- and 3-bedroom apartment demand by 8.7 %, 8.4 % and 9.2 %, respectively.
Australian housing affordability is influenced by both housing supply and demand factors. These factors include lengthy construction and planning process. The affordability crisis affects the housing rental sector, which accommodates more than 20 % of Australian household. This research developed a system dynamics model to simulate demography-linked affordable rental housing demand and supply in South East Queensland (SEQ). A Prefabricated Offsite Construction (OSC) housing supply strategy is compared with a traditional building approach (BAU) to investigate the effectiveness of OSC techniques to reduce informational asymmetries during development planning stages to deliver better affordable rental housing is linked to housing needs in SEQ. The model focuses on demographic groups housing demand of one, two- and three-bedroom apartment units and examines how reductions in the development process, through OSC methods, influence the efficiency of Government supported affordable rental housing supply schemes. Overall, the study finds that reduced planning and construction timeframes through OSC methods may improve demography-linked rental housing supply by approximately 6.6 % overall compared to BAU in SEQ. For 1,2- and 3-bedroom apartment demand, OSC strategies are expected to improve supply efficiency by 8.7 %, 8.4 % and 9.2 %, respectively. Optimal OSC strategies were assessed and found that flexibility in development sizes have an outsized positive effect. The study has implications for Government supported affordable rental housing strategies, including the build to rent sector.
Administrative court records are increasingly used to study the prevalence of eviction. Yet inaccuracies in court records bias estimates of eviction and distort tenants' true rental histories. This ...is the first study to systematically assess the prevalence of inaccuracies across jurisdictions. Drawing on over 3.6 million administrative eviction court records from 12 states, we find that, on average, 22% of eviction records contain ambiguous information on how the case was resolved or falsely represent a tenant's eviction history. Adjusting for multiple inaccuracies in the data produces significantly different eviction rate estimates. Cases with increased complexity, such as those involving multiple tenants and lawyers, are more likely to contain inaccuracies. However, inaccuracies vary most prominently between states, indicating that state court system characteristics fundamentally shape the official record of the evicted population.
This article examines the relationship between housing market segmentation and eviction in Richmond, Virginia. Housing market segmentation conceptualizes housing consumption through multiple distinct ...submarkets instead of a unitary regional market. To examine the production of housing segmentation we rely on an original large-building database for all multifamily buildings in Richmond with more than 25 units, which we complement with qualitative interviews with more than 25 Richmond tenants who have experienced at least one eviction. Our analysis makes three key contributions. First, by placing two different scholarly traditions in conversation-urban economics and critical urban political economy-we foreground the importance of understanding what institutions and actors create and maintain submarkets. Second, the article takes a novel methodological approach to segmentation by analyzing ownership of rental housing and tenant experience. Finally, these approaches allow us to move beyond framing eviction as simply a feature of some rental submarkets and to pose the question about what role eviction plays in creating and maintaining submarkets and class-monopoly rents. We offer evidence that through eviction and the threat of eviction landlords create targeted housing scarcity for specific groups of tenants. We argue for understanding eviction as a formative institution of housing submarkets.
•Private rental housing market and its spatial determinants in China remain under-studied.•Housing rents in Shanghai are heavily influenced by job opportunities, salary level, and the size of ...floating population.•Housing rents are also sensitive to the distribution of public transport and service amenities.•In areas with better infrastructure, roles of well-paid jobs and private amenities are more significant.•In suburban districts, metro stations, sharing bikes, bus stops, and shopping facilities have an additional rental premium.
The failure of public housing policies and skyrocketing housing prices have made the private rental sector an increasingly important part of the housing system in Chinese metropolises. However, due to the lack of data, the private rental housing market remains poorly understood. By integrating open data, this paper comprehensively examines the spatial patterns and determinants of residential rents in Shanghai at the intra-urban level. We find that high rents are concentrated heavily in the inner-city area, which not only forces low-income families to live in the suburbs, where rents are still relatively affordable, but also makes housing costs a heavy burden to non-native young professionals. The results of spatial regressions suggest that the rental housing market in Shanghai is shaped by regional level factors such as job opportunities, salary levels, and the size of the “floating” population, and neighborhood level indicators like public transport facilities and service amenities. Such factors are differentiated across space. In the areas with better infrastructure, the roles of high salaries and attractive amenities are highly significant. In suburban districts, the presence of a larger “floating” population, better access to metro stations, sharing bikes, bus stops, and shopping facilities tend to raise rents. These patterns indicate that the geographical inequality of infrastructures, spatially imbalanced job accessibility, and institutions that make housing unaffordable have reinforced the rental and commuting burdens on economically disadvantaged groups, which also undermines their social mobility. Thus, our study suggests that the Chinese government should devote more effort to decentralize high-paying jobs, improve employment accessibility in urban peripheries and villages, as well as reform public housing policies and provide more public housing to make rental housing more affordable.
The existing mismatches between dwellings and their tenants lower the use and management efficiency of social housing stock. To address this problem, rational and well-coordinated tenant relocation ...within this stock needs to be stimulated, which can be significantly improved by introduction of new geoinformation technologies to support decisions in this area. This paper presents a proposal of a dedicated geoinformation system supporting tenant relocation in municipal (social) housing stock management in Poland. The concept is combined with the organizational structure of a typical urban municipality and associated with the integrated spatial database. The proposals are described in terms of business modeling and the categories of Unified Modeling Language. Implementation and empirical verification of the system was conducted employing ArcGIS platform environment. The functionalities of the dedicated system allow assessing the actual mismatches, creating reports and scenarios for tenant relocation as well as their analysis and visualization. On this basis it is possible to identify the objects with highest need for tenant relocation and make appropriate recommendations for housing policy. The proposed solutions may be of interest to other countries where the problem of mismatches in social housing has arisen and managers are obliged to solve it.
•System functionalities allow assessing actual mismatches and scenarios for tenant relocation.•Proposals are described in terms of business modeling and the UML.•Significant mismatches between the surface sizes and maintenance costs of many municipal dwellings are covered.
When correcting policies to tackle rising housing inequality, certain principles of housing justice are necessary. Recently, the capability approach to justice has attracted the attention of housing ...scholars, as promising guidance to compensate for problems in conventional policy approaches. However, the practicality of its policy application remains uncertain. This article suggests how to manage the issues creating gaps between the philosophy of the capability approach and housing policy practices, along the chain of essential questions of justice theories (which ideal institutions, metrics of justice, and distributive pattern rules?). Building on this reasoning, the article proposes that housing policy be guided by the changes in unjust housing situations in terms of people's capability for housing, instead of by absolute principles of distribution, or characteristics of welfare state/housing regimes. For evaluating housing capability, this article proposes to assess housing opportunities, housing securities and housing abilities. The article concludes with implications for the roles of comparative housing research in implementing the proposed approach.
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