In acknowledging that patterns of neighborhood attachment—a key component in the maintenance of neighborhood vitality—may shift as a result of growing racial and ethnic diversity, this study develops a multiethnic and multilevel framework to examine the link between racial diversity and attachment among Los Angeles residents. The expansion of the Asian and Hispanic populations may affect attachment patterns if group members exhibit different levels of attachment compared with blacks and whites, due to factors such as illegal citizenship and poorer neighborhood resources. Additionally, their presence in neighborhoods may influence other residents' attachment by triggering racial prejudice or concerns about local resources. Using the 2001 Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS), this analysis demonstrates that Asians and Hispanics modestly diverge from blacks and whites in the strength of their attachment, due in part to individual and neighborhood characteristics. Although the neighborhood presence of blacks and Hispanics moderately diminishes some aspects of residents' attachment, regardless of individual race, in many instances neighborhood racial composition fails to exert a significant impact on neighborhood attachment.

We employ data from the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients to examine the character and correlates of hunger among homeless people. Our analysis, couched in an adaptation framework, finds more support for the differentiation hypothesis than for the leveling hypothesis: Complex patterns of food insecurity exist at the individual level, and they vary with the resources available (e.g., higher monthly income, regular shelter use) and obstacles faced (e.g., alcohol, drug, and physical and mental health problems). The chronically homeless, who suffer from multiple deficits, appear particularly food-insecure, a finding that favors the desperation hypothesis over its street-wisdom alternative. We conclude that hunger is not uniformly experienced by members of the homeless population. Rather, some individuals are better situated than others to cope with the stressful nature of homelessness when addressing their sustenance needs.

This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the multifaceted consequences of homeownership for households and their communities, which has seldom focused on neighbourhood satisfaction, an important predictor of neighbourhood quality. Existing studies on the relationship between homeownership and neighbourhood satisfaction have not considered whether homeownership varies in its consequences depending on local context or racial background. Homeownership may render residents more responsive to neighbourhood conditions, to their benefit and to their detriment, depending on local context. Patterns may further vary across racial groups, given vast interracial inequalities in the attainment of desirable neighbourhood outcomes and homeownership. Employing a sample of 1897 respondents from the 2001 Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (LAFANS), as well as data from the 2000 Census, this study uncovers a complex set of interrelationships among homeownership, neighbourhood characteristics and race. Homeownership makes residents more sensitive to the desirability of local characteristics, proving beneficial in advantaged communities and disadvantageous in distressed communities. These conclusions are broadly applicable to blacks, Latinos and whites, though homeownership is more salient among blacks and Latinos in determining their response to neighbourhood conditions. Given differential access to desirable neighbourhoods and asset accumulation across racial groups, findings raise new and important questions regarding the meaning of homeownership for minority households and their communities.

This paper explores "hidden" ways by which cities may inadvertently undermine access to decent, stable, affordable housing-especially for vulnerable renter households-through regulations that sanction landlords for tenant activities on their property. In-depth semistructured interviews and ethnographic observations with 57 small-and medium-sized landlords in Cleveland, followed over 28 months, show that perceptions of risk, flowing specifically from "nuisance" and water regulations that rendered landlords accountable for tenant activities over which they perceived little control, were common. To manage perceived precarity, landlords reported measures that undermined tenants' housing security-including excessive screening, hassling, elevated rent amounts, proclivity to evict, and divestment from the lower end of the housing market whose stock continues to dwindle across many cities. City regulations-meant to bolster housing security, community vitality, and infrastructure-appear to be understudied factors that paradoxically reinforce problems of housing insecurity and community decline many vulnerable tenants, and cities, continue to face.

The question of how urbanisation and poverty are linked in sub-Saharan Africa is an increasingly pressing one. The urban character of the HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa exacerbates concern about the urbanisation - poverty relationship. Recent empirical work has linked urban poverty, and particularly slum residence, to risky sexual behaviour in Kenya's capital city, Nairobi. This paper explores the generalisability of these assertions about the relationship between urban poverty and sexual behaviour using Demographic and Health Survey data from five African cities: Accra (Ghana), Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania), Harare (Zimbabwe), Kampala (Uganda) and Nairobi (Kenya). The study affirms that, although risky behaviour varies across the five cities, slum residents demonstrate riskier sexual behaviour compared with non-slum residents. There is earlier sexual debut, lower condom usage and more multiple sexual partners among women residing in slum households regardless of setting, suggesting a relatively uniform effect of urban poverty on sexual risk behaviour.