The Location Choices of Public Housing Residents Displaced by Redevelopment: Market Constraints, Personal Preferences, or Social Information?

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, federal housing policy in the U.S. has become increasingly concerned with the confluence of the neighborhood quality and location of assisted housing residents, and the HOPE VI program is one within this family of programs. Yet a lack of dispersal has characterized HOPE VI and other efforts to relocate public housing residents. Using one HOPE VI site in Seattle, Washington, as a case study, this article fits a conditional multinomial logit model to examine how ethnically diverse relocatees make relocation decisions. The postrelocation neighborhood's minority composition, poverty concentration, and distance from the original public housing site interact with market characteristics, personal preferences, individual characteristics, language proficiency and information based in social networks to influence eventual location outcomes. Results suggest that personal preferences and information available through close social relationships may play an important role in determining location outcomes, and that some social network contacts may enable moves to neighborhoods of lower poverty. Once these factors are taken into account, the housing market conditions do not determine location decisions of relocatees. Implications for HOPE VI and other similar relocation programs are discussed.

Neighbourhood selection of non-Western ethnic minorities: testing the own-group effects hypothesis using a conditional logit model

“…Social networks can also influence neighbourhood choice (Logan et al, 2002) as these networks influence people's knowledge and opinions about neighbourhoods (Hedman, 2013) and coethnics can provide information about housing opportunities (Bolt, 2001). As social networks are often homogenous-in ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and residential neighbourhood-the dwellings people find through them are often in areas with high concentrations of their own ethnic group (Kleit and Galvez, 2011). Because the effects of preferences with regard to neighbours or ethnicspecific services and ethnic networks can often not be separated, we group these together and use the term 'own-group effects'.…”

“…Discrete choice models have been used before to estimate location choices (Kleit and Galvez, 2011), but mostly at a higher geographical level than neighbourhoods. Various authors have estimated the location choices of immigrants into municipalities (Aslund, 2005), metropolitan areas (Liaw and Ishikawa, 2008), provinces (Xu and Liaw, 2006), or states (Bartel, 1989).…”

Simulating the Barriers of Transaction Costs to Public Rental Housing Exits: The Case of Wuhan, China

“…A myriad of structural barriers, such as public transportation access, affordable housing availability, and poor quality housing units, made it difficult for households to make permanent exits from current neighborhoods [20]. In addition, in the private market, the discrimination by landlords also plays a significant role in household mobility [21]. Furthermore, housing choice factors, including rent, dwelling attributes, and travel time to work or school, tend to be highly correlated with the households' decision to move [22].…”

Source of Income Discrimination and Fair Housing Policy

“…The foremost of these include market constraints (Devine et al 2013;Kleit and Galvez 2011;Turner et al 2000), use of information (Kleit and Galvez 2011;Pendall 2000b), and discrimination (Nguyen, Basolo, and Tiwari 2013;Tighe 2012). Yet all of these factors are intermingled: discrimination on the part of landlords will influence market constraints, expected or perceived discrimination will affect personal preferences, and access to information is dependent upon where landlords choose to advertise (or not) as well as how households hear about potential units.…”

“…The latter point is bolstered by analyses of voucher holders' neighborhood preferences, which demonstrate that tenants' stated desires conflict with their eventual choices (Wang 2016). Overall, the research suggests voucher holders would like to move to higher-opportunity neighborhoods but often are unable to do so (Bruin and Cook 1997;Kleit and Galvez 2011;Patterson and Yoo 2012;Pendall 2000a;Ross, Shlay, and Picon 2012;Turner and Ross 2005). One of the most prominent reasons for this is that, in most cities and states, local law does not require landlords to accept vouchers, thus allowing landlords to discriminate against potential tenants on the grounds of their ''source of income '' (SOI;Freeman 2012;Johnson-Spratt 1998).…”