HOUSEHOLD CHANGE,ACCESSORY APARTMENTS,AND LOW INCOME HOUSING IN SUBURBS*

This paper describes the characteristics of accessory apartments (rented housing units within owner-occupied single family homes) and the circumstances which give rise to them. Survey data from a New York suburb indicate that these apartments provide inexpensive housing for entry level workers, many of whom are related to the home owners. Analyses suggest that “empty nest’ households who anticipate a decline in income and live in a house whose structure facilitates a conversion are likely to create accessory apartments in their homes. Some implications of these findings for residential succession in suburban areas are explored.     

Dispelling a myth? Second homes in rural Wales

Second homes have been a source of considerable controversy in Wales for more than three decades. In this article we argue that they have, in reality, become less important in recent times, with the market contracting during the 1990s and other more fundamental demographic changes and housing pressures coming to the fore. Second homes are a highly localized issue, affecting a minority of communities – though, at times, quite severely. Retirement and other housing pressures, however, bring more significant socio-economic changes and these pressures are all too frequently amplified by a planning system used to restrict housing supply rather than manage growth. This paper has three parts, beginning with a general review of the second home debate followed by an examination of the changing geography of second homes, showing how the distribution of these properties altered during the 1990s and how the market contracted. It ends with a review of secondary data, revealing that second homes are a relatively small component of wider processes affecting rural communities, though extremely significant in some areas.     

Inhabiting the Imaginary: Factory Women at Home on Batam Island, Indonesia

Batam Island, Indonesia, located a short ferry ride away from Singapore, is a place where tourism and industry have been developed simultaneously and a border area where “developed” and “developing” nations meet. Government officials, investing international corporations and the “factory women” who work in the island's industrial estates arrive in Batam ‐ native to none of them ‐ with their own preconceptions and goals. When challenges not foreseen through master planning arise, the authorities cling ever more tightly to their physical and structural development model: the nearby city‐state of Singapore. Conversely, the factory workers who travel intranationally to work in this export processing zone (EPZ) find their objectives contested in the face of the Master Plan, corporate agendas and ethnic fusions characterising this transnational capitalist space. Entering into the homes of three groups of women migrants living and working in Batam, the relationship between the private realm that they inhabit and the social contexts in which they participate publicly is investigated. Some of the choices that women make at and about home are identified, and their ability to “micro‐resist” these external structures is explored. At home, the dynamic relationship between the Batam development project and the women's own hopes and visions of the place ‐ sometimes parallel and sometimes incongruous ‐ are revealed. As they experience life on Batam, their “social imaginaries” of it are shaped into various new realities, and their homes, removed from the confines of the factory floor, thus become spaces of release from these tensions.     

Home matters: The role of home in property enactment on Norwegian smallholdings

The article argues that geographies of home add important perspectives for analysing property enactment on Norwegian smallholdings. Characteristics of smallholdings as homes are described, and it is demonstrated that ‘home matters’ in terms of how property owners’ senses of home affect how properties become enacted. In conformity with recent theories in legal geography, the article demonstrates that these socio-spatial relationships conflict with the dominant ownership model which permeates public policy initiatives. The ownership model assumes a single owner motivated by self-regarding behaviour and maximising economic benefits. The article, however, reveals a deep sense of home and place attachment relating to Norwegian smallholdings, and this influences how smallholdings as properties become enacted, and thus, how legal instruments aiming at affecting people's behaviour are responded to. The article draws upon empirical research conducted among current and former owners of smallholdings in four Norwegian local authority districts.     

Breaking the chain: Understanding the association between foreclosure intensity and neighborhood satisfaction

Extensive research has been conducted on the factors that cause foreclosure and the resulting neighborhood contagion effects. When residents see concentrated foreclosed homes in their neighborhood, their perceptions of their neighborhood are often negatively affected. Despite the potential psychological effects of foreclosures on residents, no research has looked at foreclosure intensity and impacts on other residents' satisfaction in the neighborhood.We used the 2004 Homeowner Satisfaction Survey and foreclosed property data from 2001 to 2004 in Franklin County, Ohio to explore the effect of foreclosure intensity on resident satisfaction. We used a structural equation model to capture the chain reaction of concentrated neighborhood disadvantage on foreclosure intensity and residents' neighborhood satisfaction. We found that the impacts of foreclosures are not limited to lenders and owners of mortgaged homes but extended to other residents living in the neighborhood. In this regard, we recommend housing recession recovery efforts must incorporate programs to alleviate neighbors' psychological distress.     

The contested geographies of master planned estates: the role of the building design codes

Much of the debate in contemporary urban studies has surrounded the provision of affordable housing in capital and regional cities. Master planned estates (MPEs) have emerged as the dominant form of housing in Australia. Master planned estates often include private governance mechanisms to regulate resident behaviour and building designs, improving the sales potential and creating an enhanced living environment for residents. Using case studies of three MPEs this paper explores aspects of the building design codes (BDCs), including their rationale, contribution to initial engagement and resident experiences. It finds that while the BDCs are perceived as integral to improving estate sales and the long-term operation, the developer’s commitment declines over time. The BDCs help to attract new residents by creating predictability. The estate residents are largely supportive of the BDCs and some feel abandoned when the developer’s commitment declines. The results are interpreted through a commodity perspective, which considers how the moments of production, exchange and consumption are inflected through culturally derived notions of home and home-making processes.     

Spatial order through the family: the regulation of urban space in Singapore

This article examines the regulation of urban public space through a study of the role of the family unit in past and present urban development in Singapore. Since the founding of modern Singapore 50 years ago, the nuclear family has remained the preferred social institution for state policies and subsequent regulation of education, housing, employment, health, leisure, social welfare and even neighborhood development. Drawing on primary government documents and field work and interviews with current and displaced small business owners on a commercial street in Chinatown, the article demonstrates how a “softer” version of spatial regulation emerged from an intersection of state commercial development policies that favored small, family-owned businesses and the extension of a family-based moral social order applied to the surrounding public spaces. The result is the regulation of Chinatown’s streets and sidewalks became inextricably bound up with the everyday operations of family-run businesses. More recently, state interest in creating an entertainment-based global Singapore has jeopardized this arrangement, as corporate gentrification threatens to displace family ownership of small businesses.     

The Girls' Home, Bangkok, Thailand: Developing Thoughts on Democracy

This paper describes an exercise with children in the implementation of housing rights. Based on the argued opinion that housing rights cannot be exercised without participation and that participation without knowledge is pretence, a Kids and Architecture programme was initiated with a group of 40 children — displaced from homes in the Klong Toey slum in Bangkok — at a girls' home run by the Human Development Foundation (HDF). The programme, developed in two phases and involving students from the King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), School of Architecture, set about to teach these children some of the elements of architecture so that they could participate in the design of their own housing. From this experiment a number of conclusions are drawn about the implementation of housing rights and about the teaching of architecture, both to children and architecture students.     

The Transnational Assembling of Marina Bay,Singapore

From Shanghai's Pudong to Dubai's Marina, waterfront developments are increasingly popular urban forms worldwide. Drawing on the literature on urban assemblages, I explore how urban waterfronts are produced out of the transnational assembling of models, knowledge and expertise. My case study here is Marina Bay, Singapore, a landscape that like much of the rest of Singapore is a product of talent and ideas from elsewhere. In this paper, two strategies employed by Singapore's urban authorities to court global expertise for Marina Bay's development are examined – their formation of an international panel of experts in the fields of urban planning, policy and design, and their launching of international competitions to attract top design firms. Like transfer agents that enable policies to travel, I argue that these individuals and firms are situated within wider knowledge circuits that straddle the globe, and are thus well placed to filter and channel ideas from elsewhere to Singapore. Drawing on selected developments within Marina Bay, I trace the routes taken by these ideas, the changes they underwent as they travelled, as well as their relationships with the actors that facilitated their journeys. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate the usefulness of understanding the urban as more‐than‐territorial in both theory and practice.     

From rags to riches? Migration and intergenerational change in London's housing market, 1971–91

Summary In 1971 under half of London's young people, then living with their parents, lived in households that owned their homes, while well over half lived in rented housing. By 1991, now no longer living with their parents, less than a quarter of these young people were tenants. This paper identifies the components of that intergenerational tenure mobility, distinguishing between home ownership in more, and less, 'desirable' wards, and quantifies the role of migration in mediating the overall changes in Londoner's housing market status between 1971 and 1991. It analyses the moderating factors contributing to housing status mobility, such as labour market mobility and household type, and assesses the differential impact of these processes on men and women. ONS Longitudinal Study data for the period 1971–91 are analysed. Findings are that the aggregate changes concealed a range of housing careers. In particular, in-migrants fared less well in the London housing market than in its labour market.     

Homeward Bound? Searching for home in Inner Sydney's share houses

Share house living arrangements are increasingly popular for young Australians as a result of a variety of economic and social changes such as the declining affordability of home ownership and delayed and decreasing marriage rates. Despite this rise, share housing is little researched. This paper considers the idea of ‘home’ as it exists in Inner Sydney's share houses, by examining the motivations underlying the decision to live in a share house as well as the relationships between housemates, in a sample of households. Share housing was utilised mainly as a response to social factors, such as the attraction of the lifestyle and something of a rite of passage, but was also shaped by economic considerations. Share housing was viewed by most people as transitional yet still meaningful. The vast majority considered their current dwelling to be ‘home’, mainly as a result of the intimacy of relationships between housemates, and the attainment of a sense of comfort and equality.     

Gypsy Architecture: Houses of the Roma in Eastern Europe

Why is Ortley Beach, New Jersey, known as Superstorm Sandy's ground zero? This article employs qualitative vulnerability analysis to understand why vulnerability of second homes in Ortley Beach resulted in dune failure and slow rebuilding after Sandy. The second-home owners who largely make up the community in Ortley Beach are identified as the key vulnerable group. This group's lack of political representation and financial compensation after Sandy increased house damage and slowed rebuilding. Identifying the level of vulnerability of the majority group in a location is paramount to understanding how the community recovers from a disaster. Such identification can also aid in preparing communities, especially for types of disasters they have not yet encountered.     

An unexpected geography of opportunity in the wake of the foreclosure crisis: low-income renters in investor-purchased foreclosures in Phoenix,Arizona

During the recent United States foreclosure crisis, investors purchased and leased thousands of homes nationwide, opening up formerly owner-occupied neighborhoods to renters. Yet, little is known about how this process affected regional patterns of residential segregation and inequality. In this study, we combine property-level data on real estate transactions and subsidized housing vouchers from 2004 to 2014 to assess whether the conversion of foreclosures to rentals enabled low-income renters to live in more advantaged neighborhoods in Phoenix, Arizona. Renters with vouchers living in investor-purchased foreclosures were in lower-poverty neighborhoods compared with those not living in investor-purchased foreclosures. This suggests that foreclosure sales may have widened the geography of opportunity for low-income renters with subsidized housing.     

Contradictory socio-economic consequences of structural adjustment in Kingston, Jamaica

Since the early 1980s, the introduction of International Monetary Fund-directed structural adjustment packages to stabilize the Jamaican economy has reduced the scope of the government, cut back its capacity to intervene in the housing market, opened the economy to foreign goods (but limited capital), and re-produced the colonial version of a non-dynamic, labour-surplus urban economy in Kingston. This paper traces the impact of structural adjustment on unemployment and class formation in Kingston, and the relationship of these issues to housing problems. Rented, poor-quality housing, underpinned by low socio-economic status and historically high rates of unemployment, has created an overt spatial concentration of poverty, located in West and East Kingston. Nevertheless, overall unemployment is currently lower than at independence in 1962, and virtually all housing indicators have recorded improvements over the same time period. These improvements have been due to a deceleration in the growth of Kingston's population since the mid-1960s; government commitment, despite structural adjustment, to improve the quality of collective consumption; and the determination of Kingston's citizens to build better homes for themselves, often aided by loans from local building societies and remittances from family members resident overseas. However, at least a quarter of Kingston's population remains both unemployed and concentrated into areas of poor quality housing. These circumstances in Kingston are compared with those in adjacent Latin American cites under structural adjustment.     

基于尺度收缩方法的中国县级尺度房屋结构数据推算

以国家统计局公开发布的2005年全国1％人口抽样调查数据为基数,对全国县级尺度农村房屋结构的比例构成进行了推定。针对全国性普查数据存在的问题,开发了基于不同空间精度等级的数据收缩模型,利用中国建筑气候区划、建筑热工区划、人口和社会经济指标等因子,推定了2300多个县级空间单元的农村地区不同建筑结构的房屋比例和数量。同时...     

流动人口流出地住房投资特征及影响因素——基于福建省的调查

基于福建省2015年调查问卷数据,采用描述统计和二项 logistic回归,探讨流动人口在其流动过程中在流出地住房投资特征及影响因素。研究发现：流动人口流出地住房投资较为普遍,以农村建房为主,城镇购房为辅;流动人口流出地住房投资行为具有明显的时期效应和生命历程特征;个体生命历程是影响流动人口流出地住房投资的直接力量,流出地社区环境是外部驱动力,家庭跨地区生计特征则具有“促进”与“阻碍”双重作用。     

Residential mobility trajectories and integration in Douala and Bafoussam,Cameroon

Abstract

This study examines how migrant households relocate their homes in two Cameroonian cities over the course of lifetimes or even generations. The central claim is that homeownership is the ultimate sign of integration into city life. Using qualitative and quantitative research methods (218 interviews, 30 focus groups and a household survey, sample size 686), the study argues that three key factors explain why people move: the quality of housing they can affords, the proximity to a workplace and the potential for homeownership. Three residential model trajectories are identified. The first describes a journey from being a new migrant who is a guest of family or friends in the city centre to being a married family with kids owning a home in the urban periphery. The second model continues that journey by returning back to the city centre in pursuit of more convenient, high-status home location (if finances permit). A third model describes moves to sites all over the city later in life as older individuals seek to maximize family income in the way they use multiple properties. Understanding residential mobility patterns has the potential to lead to a better public policies and more effective private investments in the housing sector.     

Minority perceptions of housing needs and the planning of a housing aid policy: the urbanizing Arab village in Israel

A process of planning a housing aid policy for a distinct minority, the urbanizing Arab villagers of Israel, is delineated. It reveals that the inclusion of primary grassroot values and sources of legitimacy in the process makes the policy acceptable to the minority, and reflects their perceptions of housing needs. Primary data are employed to define levels of housing distress and eligibility criteria for government aid, and to determine the efficiency of various sums from aid funds to motivate families to take action in the improvement of their housing. Other possible impacts of government housing aid funds on the built environment are discussed.     

北京市住房价格和租金的空间分异与相互关系

当前中国住房销售市场、住房租赁市场发展不平衡,研究住房价格、租金的空间分异与相互关系,对建立“租售并举”的住房制度具有重要参考价值。利用2016年北京市各住宅小区的住房价格、租金数据,及2006—2016年北京市逐月住房销售价格指数、住房租赁价格指数,从时空尺度剖析了住房价格、租金的空间分异与相互关系,并剖析了背后的差异机制。结果表明：① 北京市住房价格和租金的空间格局均呈多中心圈层递减结构,且南北差异明显,但租金的空间分异程度弱于住房价格。② 住房价格具有中等程度的空间相关性,受政策等随机性因素影响相对较大,而租金具有强烈的空间相关性,受区位交通等确定性因素影响相对较大。③ 住房价格和租金的价格剖面线并不相同,住房价格易受学区、大型公园等的影响,而租金更易受就业所在地、建筑年龄等的影响。售租比呈混乱斑驳、相对均质的扁平化分布特征,且小区越高档,售租比越高。④ 北京市住房销售市场和住房租赁市场基本相对独立发展,更符合双重市场的特征。产生上述差异的主要原因在于住房销售市场和住房租赁市场的市场特征、服务人群以及市场发育程度不同。     

Chinese migrants in Melbourne and their house choices

Meanings behind the choice of the migrant house are explored through an examination of 12 houses of migrants who emigrated from mainland China to Melbourne during the 1990s and 2000s. A qualitative investigation shows that there are three interconnected meanings behind the choice of houses in Melbourne: a desire to counter past experiences of housing in China, a desire to improve future opportunities through housing, and the wish to blend into Australian society. While much of the literature claims that migrant housing represents the ethnic character of their owners through architectural features, these Chinese houses do not resemble past houses in China in any physical way. The location of the house in a ‘good’ suburb was the most important factor when choosing the house. The house should be located near good educational, transport and shopping services before the built form becomes important. Chinese migrants wish to assimilate into Australian society through their choice of ordinary houses that do not communicate their ethnic identity through their external façades, while also adopting Australian ways of living that are focused on gardens and backyards.