Subsidized Housing, Public Housing, and Adolescent Violence and Substance Use

Abstract

This study examines the separate relationships of public housing residence and subsidized housing residence to adolescent health risk behavior. Data include 2,530 adolescents aged 14 to 19 who were children of the National the Longitudinal Study of Youth. The author use stratified propensity methods to compare the behaviors of each group-subsidized housing residents and public housing residents-to a matched control group of teens receiving no housing assistance. The results reveal no significant relationship between public housing residence and violence, heavy alcohol/marijuana use, or other drug use. However, subsidized housing residents have significantly lower rates of violence and hard drug use, and marginally lower rates of heavy marijuana/alcohol use. The results indicate that the consistent, positive effect of vouchers in the current literature is not due to a lower standard among the typical comparison group: public housing. Future studies should focus on conceptualizing and analyzing the protective effect of vouchers beyond comparisons to public housing environments.Keywords: adolescent substance use; adolescent violence; public housing; subsidized housing 2 Subsidized Housing, Public Housing, and Adolescent Violence and Substance UseThere is strong evidence that the clustering of poor families in neighborhoods has negative economic and social effects on individuals (Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, & Aber, 1997;Udayakumar & Nelson, 1999;Vey, 2007). The spatial concentration of poverty has been associated with problems ranging from limited job access (Gobillon, Selod, & Zenou, 2007;Wilson, 1978) to school failure (Brooks-Gunn et al., 1997) and poor individual health (Ross & Mirowsky, 2001). These associations also apply to the issues of teen violence and substance use. Research consistently indicates that neighborhood disadvantage is related to increased adolescent drug abuse, alcohol use, and violent behavior (Elliott et al., 1996;Kubrin & Weitzer, 2003;MacDonald & Gover, 2005;Valdez, Kaplan, & Curtis, 2007).In turn, this evidence has become the basis for assumptions that substance use and violence among adolescents living in public housing warrants public policy attention (Popkin, Buron, Levy, & Cunningham, 2000;Schwartz & Tajbakhsh, 2001). Relying on existing social scientific findings about the effects of concentrated poverty (Massey & Denton, 1993;R. Sampson & Lauritsen, 1994;R. J. Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002), policy makers have argued that if concentration in impoverished neighborhoods contributes to health risk behaviors, then dispersing public housing residents through residential mobility and mixed-housing should lead to more positive behaviors within the public housing population (Crump, 2003;Khadduri, 2001).Yet this line of reasoning is susceptible to the ecological fallacy (Good & Hardin, 2009, p. 170): Information about community-level effects is being used to draw conclusions about individuals' health behaviors. Existing research on adolescent violence and substance use indicates...

Housing Relocation Policy and Violence

“…Differences in socioeconomic variables within and between populations in the studies have an impact on the capacity of those populations to adapt to changes brought about by relocation, and the subsequent violencerelated outcomes would be affected as a result. Finally, the presence of voucher holders or relocated residents of public housing has been linked to violence in destination neighborhoods, though a growing body of literature shows that these populations are not the direct cause of violence (Ellen, Lens, & O'Regan, 2011;Leech, 2012;Popkin et al, 2012). Continued research to discern perpetrator versus victim is needed so policy makers and community service providers can efficiently and effectively work to reduce risk factors for community violence.…”

The spatial pattern of premature mortality in Hong Kong: How does it relate to public housing?

“…Researchers who investigated the relationship between housing and health have primarily focussed on environmental or physical aspects of housing (building conditions, exposure to noise, crowding) (Jacobs 2011;Krieger & Higgins 2002;Dunn & Hayes 2000), the role of housing tenure (Baker et al 2013;Dalstra et al 2006;Hartig & Fransson 2006;Leech 2010) or the relationship between both alongside neighbourhood characteristics Macintyre et al 2003;Ellaway & Macintyre 1998;Windle et al 2006). Except perhaps the investigation by Baker et al (2013), the studies highlight the negative health effects of rented accommodationincluding social housing -vis-a-vis owned properties.…”

Childhood homelessness, resilience, and adolescent mental health: A prospective, person‐centered approach

“…Advanced quasi-experimental techniques, like propensity score matching, offer a means to construct more appropriate comparison groups for students experiencing homelessness (King, 2016;Leech, 2012;Marcal, 2018) and, thus, better isolate the impact of homelessness on developmental outcomes. Indeed, differences in school functioning for homeless students were less consistent when a propensity score approach was used in another study of education records (Cutuli & Herbers, 2018).…”