Housing Valuation,Wealth Perception,and Homeowners’ Portfolio Composition

This study explores the link between wealth perception from an appreciation of the residential property price and homeowners’ preference toward asset categories pooled by risk. Household survey data for Portugal were used to build shares of low, medium, and high risk assets representing fractions of household’s total wealth. Data showed incomplete household portfolios along with housing capturing the largest share of households’ wealth, in line with the literature on composition puzzles. The findings indicate robust empirical evidence that the rate of housing valuation is an indicator of households’ wealth perception. When the housing price appreciates with respect to its initial cost, households suffer an endowment effect and tend to increase diversity in their portfolio, expanding the holdings of safe deposits as they raise the share of high risk assets.     

Universal Access to Affordable Housing? Interrogating an Elusive Development Goal

Abstract

Universal access to safe and secure housing has long been a central concern of the international development community. Since 2001, this aspiration has taken the form of global benchmarking embodied in the UN Millennium Development Goal 7–11 and its successor the Sustainable Development Goal 11. Despite these targets, hundreds of millions of households continue to be excluded from this basic human right. How might we understand the politics driving the disjuncture between rhetoric and reality? By historically examining the core policy documents, it is suggested that the self-actualising discourse of neoliberalism—in which the housing goals are framed—work to normalise a reality in which the commodification of basic survival needs and individualised self-help are seen as the only viable alternatives in realising decent shelter for all. Moreover, the construction and reconstruction of neoliberalism over the past 15 years has resulted in the increasingly explicit and central role of corporations in delivering housing justice.     

Good Country Living? Exploring Four Housing Outcomes Among Poor Appalachians

In the wake of welfare reform, many poor people have exhausted their benefits and must now live with less government support. While all of these former welfare recipients are struggling, some are experiencing housing problems that are quite severe. This article uses survey data on former welfare recipients who have used up the maximum time limits for receiving welfare to better understand three core explanations for rural housing problems among the poor: community, individual, and family factors. We estimate models to weigh the relative effects of these factors on the likelihood of experiencing several housing outcomes, finding that rural location is the most consistent predictor of housing outcomes, predicting home ownership, and whether families reside in low‐quality housing. We also find that individual and family factors affect the type of housing one has. We conclude that housing policies must be tailored to improve specific housing outcomes.     

The Roles of Instability and Housing in Low-Income Families’ Residential Mobility

Given the repercussions of residential mobility, increased understanding of correlates of mobility is important for efforts to support family well-being. Using survey data on low-income families from the Three City Study (N = 2393), multilevel mixed longitudinal analyses examined factors associated with family residential mobility across the domains of family instability, housing and neighborhood contexts, and family characteristics. Results revealed contributions of family instability and housing and neighborhood contexts to residential mobility, with a higher rate of residential moves associated with experiences of intimate partner violence, relationship transitions, and job transitions, as well as with living in private-market rentals, substandard housing, and disordered neighborhoods. However, owning a home and living in disadvantaged neighborhoods predicted a lower rate of residential moves.     

Senior Housing in Sweden—A Question of Class Differences and Collective Aging

Abstract

Private senior housing in Sweden has become an alternative to accommodation for elderly in the public welfare system. In the study presented here, the aim was to elucidate this senior housing from the perspective of the residents. The questions that were asked were: (1) Why have the residents chosen senior housing? (2) What are the differences between residents in rental apartments and tenant-owned housing cooperatives? (3) What advantages and disadvantages do the residents think that senior housing has? The interviews showed that: (1) The seniors have chosen the housing for reasons other than its being senior housing; (2) the residents in rental apartments come from the working class and socialize in collective forms, while the residents in cooperatives come from the middle class and socialize through individual initiatives; and (3) the advantages they experience in senior housing are that it involves activities and community. The disadvantages derive from the architectural planning. When the building has a communal yard or entrance, integrity can be threatened and the sense of collective aging can be a Strain.     

Why do households rent while owning houses? Housing sub-tenure choice in South Korea

This study aims to analyze the effects of household characteristics on housing sub-tenure choice and understand the behavior of families who opt to rent while owning other homes in South Korea. Tenure status is subdivided according to the difference between consumption and investment demands for housing. It is found that that when families are faced with the choice of renting while owning another house, the probability that they will decide on this option increases up to the sixth income decile and then declines. Similarly, this probability increases until the tenant reaches age 50 and then decreases. Furthermore, the probability of a household choosing to rent while owning another home is greater if a member of the household is married with school-age children.     

“Being Grounded”: Benefits of Gardening for Older Adults in Low-Income Housing

This study reports the findings of a qualitative evaluation of gardening programs for low-income minority older adults living in senior housing. A total of 20 individuals from three senior housing buildings participated in focus groups to discuss the benefits of and motivations for community gardening. The nine main themes of why seniors choose to participate in gardening were mental health benefits, the end product (fruits and vegetables), continuation of a past life, something to do/responsibility, beauty and connection to growth, connecting with others, physical health, learning something new, and helping each other out. These findings are placed in the context of theoretical perspectives and past studies. Implications for policy and relevance to senior housing are offered.     

Friend or Foe? The Media Coverage of Chicago’s Public Housing Transformation

Social movement theory highlights media coverage as a powerful resource for non-institutional actors, but it remains unclear how successful they are in gaining media standing relative to their institutionalized opponents. This study applies Gamson’s concept of media standing to Chicago’s Plan for Transformation, an effort to reform the city’s public housing system. Theory expects institutionalized elites to capture a greater share of coverage, allowing them to frame the rhetoric. I perform a content analysis of 2,151 quotes drawn from 554 articles published in the Chicago Tribune from 1997–2009. Results indicate that bureaucratic actors achieve greater media standing then grassroots counterparts, but neighborhood opposition was not ignored. Negative binomial regression models indicate that coverage of the case was driven by conflict, dialogue, and a need for journalists to balance their stories. Institutionalized actors have an easier time achieving media standing, but the opinions they are allowed to express are limited.     

Who Pays for Seniors Housing and Care Communities? Evidence from the Residents Financial Survey

To examine the financial characteristics of residents in assisted living and independent living communities and to see how they currently pay for their care arrangements, we surveyed 2,617 residents in assisted living and independent living communities. We asked them how they pay for their current costs and verified their answers by examining self-reported information on their cost and income. Residents stated that they are largely paying for their community costs independently. Approximately one third of respondents reported using their assets and income to cover their current costs. The data supported the notion that individuals living in assisted living and independent living communities are largely mid- to high-income elderly. However, the cross-sectional analysis showed that length of time in the community was positively associated with paying for their expenses independently out of income, after controlling for many confounders including age, education, and lifetime earnings to try to rule out differential longevity and differential selection over time. Further longitudinal analysis is needed to understand the cause and the implications of the positive correlation between ability to pay one's bills out of income and the length of time in the community before conclusions about spend-down can be made.     

Older Adults’ Use of Adaptable Design Features in Housing Units: An Exploratory Study

In 1997, the city of North Vancouver, British Columbia developed Adaptable Design Guidelines for housing to support aging-in-place for older tenants. This article reports the first qualitative evaluation of those adaptable design features since those guidelines were implemented. The study used a qualitative methodology to explore the elderly tenants’ use and satisfaction of the adaptable design features in the housing units and environmental changes made by those tenants. Key qualitative categories that emerged from the interviews were design preferences and environmental modifications. Findings from this study can inform future revisions of the guidelines and demonstrate what needs to be done in environmental design of seniors’ housing that can foster functional independence.     

Tenure Preference,Discourse and Housing Debt: Language’s Role in Tenure Stigmatisation

The British housing market has been characterised by a preference for owner-occupation which derives, in part, from the fact that there are many structural (primarily economic) forces that have resulted in tenants being increasingly marginalised. This is particularly true of tenants of local authority housing, which still makes up over 20% of the housing stock of Great Britain. While it may be possible to address these structural forces, and to propose programmes which may reduce the marginalisation, this paper seeks to address whether the stigmatisation of local authority tenants and of their landlords has now also become a problem of discourse itself. The paper seeks to examine this through the language used in relation to arrears of rent and mortgage payments, Drawing on interviews with both tenants and owner-occupiers, the paper suggests that the way in which individuals experience and talk about arrears is in fact relatively tenure neutral. Both owner-occupiers and tenants talked about their arrears in similar ways. This is then contrasted with how housing arrears have been portrayed in the print media. Here the portrayal of the causes and consequences of arrears is not tenure neutral. While owner-occupiers are portrayed as being the victims of forces beyond their control, and the institutional lenders are generally portrayed as seeking to minimise the impact of these forces on the individual borrower, the position for tenants is different. Here the individual is more often portrayed as feckless and a deliberate non-payer. Local authority landlords are similarly portrayed as inefficient at best and corrupt at worst. The paper concludes by suggesting that further marginalisation of those who are not owner-occupiers cannot be fully addressed without understanding that tenure neutrality is not only a question of economics but also one of language.     

Recovering from Homelessness: Determining the “Quality of Sobriety” in a Transitional Housing Program

Recent years have seen fundamental shifts in the objectives and delivery of assistance to the homeless. An early emphasis on emergency shelter and monetary housing assistance has been replaced by a focus on programs designed to blend shelter with an array of social services. In most instances, however, programs combining shelter and social services are designed as transitional; that is, they are intended to help homeless individuals and families move from a position of dependence to one where they can live independently. The emphasis in transitional housing programs is on making homeless people housing ready. This paper concerns the process of assessing housing readiness as observed during eighteen months of fieldwork in a federally supported transitional housing program for formerly homeless single adults. The detailed case study that follows supports three important findings. First, there was virtual unanimity among staff and residents that substance abuse was the cause of their homelessness and the key to its solution. Second, success within the program was defined and operationalized along very specific but well understood normative dimensions that have little to do with the material circumstances in which residents find themselves and everything to do with recovery. Third, recovery—the key to housing readiness in this environment—was measured not by objective measures, i.e., number of months sober, but rather by what was widely referred to as one's quality of sobriety, a subjective and consequently often hotly debated measure of attitude and outlook only loosely related to demonstrable abstinence from alcohol. This last finding, that ultimately housing readiness is a subjective judgment, both increases the discretion of shelter staff and generates a systematic disattention to the individual economic issues that are fundamental to an exit from homelessness.     

Formal Volunteering among Vulnerable Older Adults from an Environmental Perspective: Does Senior Housing Matter?

Based on the premise that environmental support is an important facilitator for engagement in formal volunteering among vulnerable subgroups of older adults, we focus on older low-income individuals who live alone. Drawing on the environmental docility hypothesis, we examine the role living in senior housing has on the likelihood of volunteering. Data came from the 2012 wave of the Health Retirement Study (N = 1415). Kernel weights derived from propensity scores were used to account for observed sociodemographic and health characteristics associated with both senior housing living and the outcome. Logistic regression models showed that living in senior housing positively affected engagement in formal volunteering after adjusting for personal and environmental factors. As a modifiable target of intervention for successful and healthy aging, our findings provide important background knowledge for the development and implementation of housing-specific volunteer programs for vulnerable elders.     

A Room With a View or a Room of One's Own? Housing and Social Stratification

This study attempts to understand the role that housing plays in the system of social stratification. First, it generates a model of how housing outcomes are stratified along dimensions of socioeconomic status and race. Second, it asks what role housing conditions play in the system of educational stratification of offspring. Using two-generational data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this paper demonstrates that home ownership is predicted by family income and race and that this indicator has a significant effect in predicting the educational attainment of offspring. Household crowding is also related to income and race and also affects the educational attainment of offspring. Meanwhile, housing quality—as measured by the physical condition of the unit—is not related to income or race and has no effect on educational attainment. Of particular note is that when socioeconomic status and housing conditions are held constant, African-Americans demonstrate more than a half-grade advantage over their non-black counterparts in years of completed schooling. In conclusion, the paper argues that housing matters not only for the immediate well-being of families, but also for the life-chances of the subsequent generation, and should be a standard variable in the conception of class background.     

项目教学法在《新模式英语》中的应用——以Unit 4 Housing为例

“项目教学法”是一种典型的以学生为中心的教学方法。笔者认为该法比较适用于《新模式英语》。《新模式英语》系列教材以学生为中心，每一单元和每一课的开头提供清晰的自主学习任务，教材内容围绕生活、学习和工作中最常使用的技能展开，学习日志为学生所学内容进行自我测评，通过团队活动让学生有机会协同完成综合能力训练。学生通过独立完成任务和团队合作完成任务，能够获得更多的自信，养成独立思考的习惯，增强学习的主动性和积极性，从而提高教学效果。     

Social Justice Manifest: A University–Community Partnership to Promote the Individual Right to Housing

This article examines an ongoing university–community relationship that fuses innovative technology delivery, university-outreach research, and social work practice/research education into a unique, collaborative intervention to reduce homelessness. In doing so, we apply a social justice framework to homelessness, arguing that housing is a right rather than a privilege. In the case study, a university, in partnership with a local homeless coalition, maintains a management information system to collect and analyze real-time data on homelessness in the community. The overarching social justice intention of this partnership is to improve client outcomes for homeless individuals by producing community-based research to inform policy decisions for governmental and organizational partners.     

Housing experiences of former foster youth: How do they fare in comparison to other youth?

Research indicates that foster youth tend to fare poorly in a number of domains in the transition to adulthood, and the shift to independent living may be particularly challenging. However, it is unclear whether negative housing outcomes are attributable to foster care history or if they are due to other risk factors. This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to compare housing outcomes for foster youth to a matched sample of youth who share similar risk factors and to an unmatched sample. Results indicate that foster youth struggle more in the transition to independent living in comparison to both groups, showing higher rates of homelessness, less housing stability, poorer neighborhood quality, and more reliance on public housing assistance. The paper explores how factors related to foster care and confounding risk factors that tend to have higher prevalence among foster youth may contribute to these outcomes.     

Should They Stay or Should They Go: Greek Housing on Campus as Substance Use Prevention?

Greek life on college campuses offers many student benefits, including leadership skills and career networking, but is also associated with risk factors such as excessive alcohol use. This cross-sectional study compares hazardous alcohol and drug use, and use of protective behavioral strategies among non-Greek and Greek-affiliated students at 2 universities and differences among students at a university that offers on-campus Greek housing and a college with off-campus Greek housing. Findings reveal that Greek-affiliated students report more alcohol use, and no difference in drug use or in protective behavioral strategies, than non-Greek students. Among Greek students, those living in on-campus Greek housing report significantly lower alcohol use than students residing in off-campus Greek housing. Regardless of Greek status, students at the college with off-campus Greek housing are significantly more likely to use alcohol and marijuana in a fraternity or sorority house than students at the university with on-campus Greek housing.     

Transgender Individuals’ Access to College Housing and Bathrooms: Findings from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey

Within higher education settings, transgender people are at risk for discrimination and harassment within housing and bathrooms. Yet, few have examined this topic using quantitative data or compared the experiences of subgroups of transgender individuals to predict denial of access to these spaces. The current study utilizes the National Transgender Discrimination Survey to research this issue. Findings indicate that being transgender and having another marginalized identity matters for students’ access to housing and bathrooms. Trans women are at greater risk than gender-nonconforming people for being denied access to school housing and bathrooms. Implications for practice and research are detailed.