Regulatory gentrification: Documents, displacement and the loss of low-income housing

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802096056
Author(s):  
Amelia Thorpe

Within the vast literature on gentrification, law is not often discussed. Where it is mentioned, law tends to be discussed as a contributor to wider processes of displacement and dispossession. This article takes a different approach, examining law itself as a site of gentrification. My focus is the regulatory framework for the development of boarding houses in Sydney, Australia, contained within the State Environmental Planning Policy (Affordable Rental Housing) 2009 (ARH SEPP). In the midst of a growing housing crisis, the ARH SEPP introduced provisions to stem the loss of older boarding houses and to incentivise new construction. While intended for low-income accommodation, these provisions have increasingly been used for other purposes. The ARH SEPP has enabled new forms of housing for a far more affluent population, sometimes directly displacing low-income residents. Like other laws noted in other studies, the ARH SEPP can be understood as a contributor to the gentrification of various parts of Sydney. Yet there is more at play. Like so many physical spaces in which gentrification takes place, the ARH SEPP has itself changed in character, becoming a space for more privileged users.

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 74S-86S
Author(s):  
Adam Drewnowski ◽  
Eva C. Monterrosa ◽  
Saskia de Pee ◽  
Edward A. Frongillo ◽  
Stefanie Vandevijvere

Background: Sustainable healthy diets are those dietary patterns that promote all dimensions of individuals’ health and well-being; have low environmental pressure and impact; are accessible, affordable, safe, and equitable; and are culturally acceptable. The food environment, defined as the interface between the wider food system and consumer’s food acquisition and consumption, is critical for ensuring equitable access to foods that are healthy, safe, affordable, and appealing. Discussion: Current food environments are creating inequities, and sustainable healthy foods are generally more accessible for those of higher socioeconomic status. The physical, economic, and policy components of the food environment can all be acted on to promote sustainable healthy diets. Physical spaces can be modified to improve relative availability (ie, proximity) of food outlets that carry nutritious foods in low-income communities; to address economic access certain actions may improve affordability, such as fortification, preventing food loss through supply chain improvements; and commodity specific vouchers for fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Other policy actions that address accessibility to sustainable healthy foods are comprehensive marketing restrictions and easy-to-understand front-of-pack nutrition labels. While shaping food environments will require concerted action from all stakeholders, governments and private sector bear significant responsibility for ensuring equitable access to sustainable healthy diets.


Urban Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 55 (9) ◽  
pp. 1967-1982 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng Deng

This paper develops a theoretical framework for institutional analysis of the governance of low-income housing in the city. I focus on the provision of local public goods as a central issue for low-income housing. Factors that affect the governance structure from the efficiency perspective and the equity perspective, respectively, are explored. I argue that over-subsidisation is an important problem for income-redistribution institutions and, hence, public housing or social housing becomes an important form of governmental intervention in low-income housing. The framework is then applied to low-income housing in China. In particular, I analyse the governance structures of several major types of low-income housing including public rental housing, private low-income housing, work-unit compound and urban village.


2022 ◽  
pp. 0739456X2110654
Author(s):  
Kristine Stiphany ◽  
Peter M. Ward ◽  
Leticia Palazzi Perez

Rental housing was historically a minimal feature of urban informality. Now it is surging amid municipal attempts to “upgrade” informal settlements in São Paulo, Brazil. Drawing upon a mixed-methodological study of two favelas on São Paulo’s east side, we analyze how cycles of upgrading shape informal rental housing at the urban, community, block, and parcel levels, providing detailed comparative data for 2010–2020. Our findings suggest that rental housing redevelopment can increase precarity in urban living, but is an important source of low-income housing in already built-up and “consolidated” settlements where access is declining. Our study emphasizes the need for scholars, policy makers, and planners to further explore the praxis of informal renting and rental housing, which can be effective conduits for channeling public investments across consolidated informal settlements and into individual dwellings.


2011 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 111-120
Author(s):  
Ahmed Abu Al Haija

The relationship between people, environmental circumstances and the cost of projects in Jordan are focal points of this study, where the problem of low-income housing needs is still increasing, having tripled in the last two decades. The shortage of public housing production and the cost of lands and building materials, mainly controlled by private sector investors, are substantial reasons for the housing crisis in a country of poor economic recourses and high percentage of poverty. The Jordanian government decided to aid the poorest class of the population, offering free of charge shelters organized in small residential quarters, which became a prototype diffused throughout all the Jordanian regions. This paper analyzes one of these typical quarters, collecting data through face-to-face interviews with the households using a structured questionnaire. The study focuses on the physical components of the quarter, looking at open spaces, paths, streets, volumes, materials, colors in relation with the environmental context. It also investigates the households' requirements, relationships and preferences. The study discusses also the housing problems at the macro scale level in order to concretely evaluate the shelters' cost, setting some guidelines with respect to the cultural and environmental local conditions.


Housing Shock ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 107-130
Author(s):  
Rory Hearne

This chapter outlines how Ireland is an interesting case through which to understand housing, because of its particular history. It shows that housing crises are not new, nor are they universal, either within countries or across different countries. It explores different philosophies of housing, from Keynesianism to neoliberalism. It details Ireland’s housing history, from early state intervention in favour of tenant farmers, and responses to the housing crisis of the early years of the Irish free State through building public council housing. It details local authority housing expansion through the 20th Century, producing high-quality homes and neighbourhoods. It also details the neoliberal housing shift internationally, as a dramatic shift took place in the economic order in the late 1970s and the 1980s. It then introduces the concepts of financialisation and marketisation in housing, and explains ho w neoliberalism unfolded in the Irish housing system. It then details the Irish housing boom and bust of the 2000s. It ends with an overview of cost rental housing: unitary and dualist housing systems, to understand the Irish housing system.


Author(s):  
Yue Chim Richard Wong

Failure to appreciate theimportant fact that poverty propagated itself in the absence of a parent or a social program that had time to help young childrenhas allowed child poverty to fester, compromising children’s ability to go to school, their willingness to learn, their attitudes, and their motivation. This is a major cause of worsening intergenerational mobility and poverty. The research findings of Chetty et al. confirm the importance of investing in schooling, of having stable families, and of building communities to provide positive encouragement and support for the disadvantaged. The isolated, remote public housing estates we have in Hong Kong are unlikely to foster such communities.The findings from the US and Hong Kong strongly suggest that public sector housing policy to subsidize low-income families should be changed from providing subsidized rental housing units to homeownership units. This would have three different effects for increasing intergenerational mobility among low-income households.


Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802092783
Author(s):  
Matthew Palm ◽  
Katrina Eve Raynor ◽  
Georgia Warren-Myers

Governments worldwide have responded to housing affordability challenges with supply-side solutions. Proponents of these approaches often draw on the notion of ‘filtering effects’ to argue that new supply naturally trickles down to lower-income households over time, improving affordability. This study examines the characteristics of Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing in Melbourne, Australia, analysing how dwelling age impacts rental cost. We specify a non-linear relationship between building age and rents through hedonic rent modelling, reflecting a premium for historic properties in inner Melbourne. We also conduct a cluster analysis of rental listings and measure affordability by cluster. Our results problematise the notion of filtering, finding that most contemporary affordable housing was initially built in the 1960s and 1970s as social housing or targeted at low-income households. We argue that filtering in this instance is not natural but is instead a reflection of historic government expenditure and past construction choices, or ‘filter up’.


Author(s):  
Lawrence J. Vale

At a time when lower-income Americans face a desperate struggle to find affordable rental housing in many cities, After the Projects investigates the contested spatial politics of public housing development and redevelopment. Public housing practices differ markedly from city to city and, collectively, reveal deeply held American attitudes about poverty and how the poorest should be governed. The book exposes the range of outcomes from the US federal government’s HOPE VI program for public housing transformation, focused on nuanced accounts of four very different ways of implementing this same national initiative—in Boston, New Orleans, Tucson, and San Francisco. It draws upon more than two hundred interviews, analysis of internal documents about each project, and nearly fifteen years of visits to these neighborhoods. The central aim is to understand how and why some cities, when redeveloping public housing, have attempted to minimize the presence of the poorest residents in their new mixed-income communities, while other cities have instead tried to serve the maximum number of extremely low-income households. The book shows that these socially and politically revealing decisions are rooted in distinctly different kinds of governance constellations—each yielding quite different sorts of community pressures. These have been forged over many decades in response to each city’s own struggle with previous efforts at urban renewal. In contrast to other books that have focused on housing in a single city, this volume offers comparative analysis and a national picture, while also discussing four emblematic communities with an unprecedented level of detail.


Author(s):  
Joseph P. Schwieterman ◽  
C. Scott Smith

Peer-to-peer carsharing, in which “hosts” (i.e., vehicle owners) make their vehicles available for a fee, has grown markedly in recent years. Little is known about how activity in this sector is distributed across communities with different socioeconomic or demographic profiles, or about the income it provides to hosts. To offer insights into these issues, this study evaluates anonymized data of trips made on Turo, one of the country's largest peer-to-peer carsharing platforms, in Illinois. It shows that usage is heaviest in higher-density neighborhoods with above-average unemployment and rental housing rates, with a particularly large concentration on Chicago's near north, south, and west sides, as well as zip codes with sizable minority populations. Most transactions are financially remunerative to hosts who would own their vehicle regardless of their decision to share. When maintenance and other expenses are taken into account (while nonmonetary costs such as the host's time are excluded), 94.9% of trips cover their marginal cost to the host. The returns from sharing sports utility vehicles (SUVs) tend to be higher than those for sedans and minivans. A low-income family making $40,000 annually will increase household income by 6% by sharing a vehicle 90 days annually.


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