Neighborhood Stigma and Sleep: Findings from a Pilot Study of Low-Income Housing Residents in New York City

Previous research has highlighted the salience of spatial stigma on the lives of low-income residents, but has been theoretical in nature and/or has predominantly utilised qualitative methods with limited generalisability and ability to draw associations between spatial stigma and measured cardiovascular health outcomes. The primary objective of this study was to evaluate relationships between perceived spatial stigma, body mass index (BMI), and blood pressure among a sample of low-income housing residents in New York City (NYC). Data come from the community-based NYC Low-income Housing, Neighborhoods and Health Study. We completed a crosssectional analysis with survey data, which included the four items on spatial stigma, as well objectively measured BMI and blood pressure data (analytic n=116; 96.7% of the total sample). Global positioning systems (GPS) tracking of the sample was conducted for a week. In multivariable models (controlling for individual-level age, gender, race/ethnicity, education level, employment status, total household income, neighborhood percent non-Hispanic Black and neighborhood median household income) we found that participants who reported living in an area with a bad neighborhood reputation had higher BMI (B=4.2, 95%CI: -0.01, 8.3, P=0.051), as well as higher systolic blood pressure (B=13.2, 95%CI: 3.2, 23.1, P=0.01) and diastolic blood pressure (B=8.5, 95%CI: 2.8, 14.3, P=0.004). In addition, participants who reported living in an area with a bad neighborhood reputation had increased risk of obesity/overweight [relative risk (RR)=1.32, 95%CI: 1.1, 1.4, P=0.02) and hypertension/pre-hypertension (RR=1.66, 95%CI: 1.2, 2.4, P=0.007). However, we found no differences in spatial mobility (based GPS data) among participants who reported living in neighborhoods with and without spatial stigma (P>0.05). Further research is needed to investigate how placebased stigma may be associated with impaired cardiovascular health among individuals in stigmatised neighborhoods to inform effective cardiovascular risk reduction interventions.

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Practical Philanthropy: The Phelps-Stokes Fund and Housing

Prospects ◽

10.1017/s0361233300005949 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 15 ◽

pp. 359-411

Author(s):

Deborah S. Gardner

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

New York City ◽

African Americans ◽

Native Americans ◽

Low Income ◽

White Students ◽

York City ◽

Educational Opportunities ◽

The Other ◽

Low Income Housing

Improving low-income housing in New York City was one of two objectives for the Phelps-Stokes Fund when it was incorporated in 1911. Enhancing educational opportunities for African-Americans, Native Americans, Africans, and needy white students was the other. Both represented lifelong concerns of Caroline Phelps Stokes (1854–1909), whose bequest financed the fund.

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‘Homelessness’, Contagious Destruction of Housing, and Municipal Service Cuts in New York City: 1. Demographics of a Housing Deficit

Environment and Planning A Economy and Space ◽

10.1068/a211585 ◽

1989 ◽

Vol 21 (12) ◽

pp. 1585-1602 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

R Wallace

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

New York City ◽

Low Income ◽

York City ◽

Forced Migration ◽

Emergency Shelter ◽

Time Dynamics ◽

Urban Decay ◽

Economic Forces ◽

Low Income Housing

Approaches from community and population ecology are adapted to study ‘homelessness’ in New York City, where long-standing and continued reductions of critical housing-related municipal services, particularly fire extinguishment, to levels below those needed for maintaining urban population densities have triggered waves of coupled contagious destruction of low-income housing and forced migration of population. Massive destruction of housing, after a delay occasioned by the outmigration of some 1.3 million non-Hispanic whites from the city between 1970 and 1980 has contributed significantly to a serious housing deficit, by direct loss of low-income housing and possibly by creating economic forces which encourage the conversion of remaining low-income units to high-income units. This deficit, which by some analyses approaches a quarter million housing units affecting perhaps a million people, has created a large ‘precariously housed’ population which, after a delay, is becoming overtly homeless as the decline of low-income housing supply collides with increasing numbers of the poor. Elementary mathematical analysis suggests the demographics of those precariously housed, but not yet homeless, strongly determines the dynamics of demand for emergency shelter, implying, for example, that under some circumstances the probability of avoiding homelessness may decline exponentially with time spent precariously housed, and that the number requiring emergency shelter may increase as rapidly as the square of the number precariously housed, depending on exact mechanisms. This paper provides prerequisites to a subsequent fuller exploration of the complex time dynamics of synergistic couplings between contagious urban decay, population migration, precariously housed population, homelessness, and public health deterioration in New York City.

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