Mixing Housing Tenures: Is it Good for Social Well-being?

Abstract

Mixing tenures is now a widely accepted policy designed to tackle problems of social exclusion in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. However, the evidence base for mixing tenures is fragmented and ambiguous. With few exceptions, studies of mixed-tenure effects have been small, one-off investigations of individual communities, providing only a rudimentary basis for comparative evaluation. In attempting to address these issues, a national-level, ecological analysis of mixed tenure in Great Britain was conducted, using aggregate data from two decennial censuses and geocoded vital registrations. Asking the question whether mixing housing tenures is good for social well-being, the objective of the research is to establish under what, if any, circumstances tenure mixing is positively related to indicators of the social well-being of an area's population. The findings provide little support for positive outcomes and lead the authors to question the efficacy of mixing tenures as a policy for improving social well-being.

The effect of neighbourhood housing tenure mix on labour market outcomes: a longitudinal investigation of neighbourhood effects

“…Several studies have compared outcomes for different geographical scales and found significant differences (See Buck, 2001;Bolster et al, 2007;Graham et al, 2009). We are aware that there is no one-to-one relationship between administrative areas and neighbourhoods as perceived by residents (see Galster, 2001), but it can be argued that smaller areas come closer to what people may perceive as their neighbourhood than larger areas.…”

“…Previous work suggests that lower level geographies better represent neighbourhoods and there is evidence that neighbourhood effects are more pronounced when a lower geographical scale is used (see Buck, 2001;Bolster et al, 2007;Graham et al, 2009). To test the effect of a lower geographical scale, we reran Models 2 and 4 using neighbourhood characteristics on the Output Area level (see Table 4).…”

“…To our knowledge, the majority of existing work is either ecological in nature (Priemus, 1998;Graham et al, 2009;Smith, 1999;Tunstall, 2003) or cross sectional (Lee et al, 1994;Ostendorf et al, 2001;Jupp, 1999;McCulloch, 2001;Martin & Watkinson, 2003). The ecological work looks at the correlation between the percentage of social housing in a neighbourhood and, for example, the level of unemployment.…”

Occupational Mobility and Living in Deprived Neighbourhoods: Housing Tenure Differences in ‘Neighbourhood Effects’

“…Many studies use large scale units to represent a neighbourhood (see for example Bolster, et al 2007), while others use multiple scales acknowledging that no one definition of neighbourhood is likely to be sufficient to capture all the potential interactions that could be included in the neighbourhood effects literature (see for instance, Buck 2001;Graham, et al 2009;van Ham and Manley 2010;Manley and van Ham 2012). An additional problem here is what Kwan (2012) termed the uncertain context problem: as well as uncertainty about where the neighbourhood boundaries should fall, there is also uncertainty relating to whether or not the chosen units reflect the spatial scale of the processes that they are being used to represent (see also Manley et al 2006 for a demonstration of this problem with British Census data).…”

Diversity and social cohesion: the case of Jane-Finch, a highly diverse lower-income Toronto neighbourhood

“…However, while assimilationist tendencies in theory and policy prevail, we have also witnessed the emergence of a wave of counter-theories grounded in the belief that diversity is positive and must be embraced as a trait that can bolster social cohesion (among other things). The contributions of such works are especially notable in the area of social mixing -in terms of both theory and policy practice (see Graham et al 2009;Camina and Wood 2009;Joseph and Chaskin 2010). Social mixing policies identify and encourage greater mixing across income groups and between ethnic communities as a tool for establishing and strengthening social cohesion ).…”