Why voucher and certificate users live in distressed neighborhoods

Pendall, Rolf

doi:10.1080/10511482.2000.9521391

Cited by 165 publications

(159 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Voucher holders are no less likely to live in minority neighborhoods than unassisted low-income renters (Basolo and Nguyen 2005;Devine 2003;Schwartz 2010;Turner 1998). Furthermore, there are differential patterns by race: Black voucher holders live in poorer and more segregated neighborhoods than white voucher holders (Devine 2003;Pendall 2000). The voucher program was meant to provide families with a means to move to better neighborhoods, but instead, poverty concentration and residential segregation are being reproduced.…”

Section: Transformation In Housing Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Rigging the Rules of the Game: How Landlords Geographically Sort Low–Income Renters

2014

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This paper considers an unexamined mechanism in the selection processes that sort the urban poor into different neighborhood environments: the landlord. Scholars of poverty and residential mobility have long been interested in how the choices of low-income families interact with structural barriers to create high-poverty neighborhoods that reproduce social and economic isolation as well as racial segregation. However, they have not examined the ways in which these choices are shaped by the intermediary force of the landlord. This paper draws on ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews with 20 landlords and 82 residents in Baltimore, examining their engagement with the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program. Findings show that landlords' strategic implementations of voucher rules contribute to residential sorting patterns through a three-step process: first, selection, in which targeted recruitment tactics favor voucher tenants; second, a sorting process in which landlords cherry-pick the lower-end voucher tenants, matching them to hard-torent units; and third, landlords' selective retention of tenants who do not have the means to leave. This results in rigging the game, where a process of "reverse selection" operates: Rather than tenants selecting homes and neighborhoods, landlords are selecting tenants. Taken together, these tactics result in a strategic balkanization of the rental housing market that retains voucher holders where they can be most profitable-in the very neighborhoods policymakers would like to provide them with the opportunity to leave. Landlord tactics serve as a powerful mechanism in the concentration of poverty.

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Section: Transformation In Housing Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Rigging the Rules of the Game: How Landlords Geographically Sort Low–Income Renters

2014

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“…Existing research on the neighborhoods of voucher holders generally finds that, on average, voucher holders live in slightly less disadvantaged neighborhoods than other poor households (Pendall, 2000;Wood, Turnham and Mills, 2008;Galvez, 2011). Similarly, voucher holders typically live in neighborhoods that are less disadvantaged than those lived in by the average public housing resident or resident of other HUD-assisted development (Hartung and Henig, 1997;Kingsley et al, 2003;Pendall 2000;Devine et al, 2003).…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Do Housing Choice Voucher holders live near good schools?

Horn

Ellen

Schwartz

2014

Journal of Housing Economics

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“…Jobs-housing fit refers to the extent to which the character and affordability of housing units in a particular area are well matched to the quality of locally available jobs. Although a poor fit at any income level could signal the potential for poor transportation performance, prior work has consistently demonstrated the unique barriers faced by low-income households, especially low-income households of color, as they engage in housing searches (Pendall, 2000b;Sharkey, 2012). In addition to outright discrimination in the housing market (Massey & Denton, 1993;Ross & Turner, 2005), land-use policies that restrict the supply of affordable housing, sometimes referred to as exclusionary zoning, are prevalent in suburban areas across the United States and have been shown to have measurable effects on neighborhood composition (Pendall, 2000a).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Low-wage jobs-housing fit: identifying locations of affordable housing shortages

Benner

Karner

2016

Urban Geography

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Finding the right jobs-housing balance has long been an important concern for urban planners. More recently, attention has turned to jobs-housing fit -the extent to which housing price is well matched to local job quality. Prior analyses have been constrained by a lack of local data on job quality, making it difficult to identify the geography and scale of the problem. We introduce a new methodology for calculating the low-wage jobs-housing fit at both a jurisdiction and neighborhood scale that was designed in collaboration with affordable housing advocates and has been directly applied in urban planning and affordable housing policy efforts. Low-wage fit is particularly important because of ongoing difficulties with affordable housing provision and the disproportionate benefits of reducing transportation costs for low-income earners. We use the calculated metric at both a city and neighborhood scale to identify what can be learned from a low-wage jobshousing fit metric that is not evident in traditional measures of jobs-housing balance. In contrast to jobs-housing balance, the low-wage fit analysis clearly highlights those jurisdictions and neighborhoods where there is a substantial shortage of affordable housing in relation to the number of low-wage jobs. Because of the geographic coverage of the data sources used, the results can be widely applied across the United States by affordable housing advocates, land-use planners, and policy makers. ARTICLE HISTORY

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Why voucher and certificate users live in distressed neighborhoods

Cited by 165 publications

References 15 publications

Rigging the Rules of the Game: How Landlords Geographically Sort Low–Income Renters

Rigging the Rules of the Game: How Landlords Geographically Sort Low–Income Renters

Do Housing Choice Voucher holders live near good schools?

Low-wage jobs-housing fit: identifying locations of affordable housing shortages

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