Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Relocation Counselling and Supportive Services as Tools to Prevent Negative Spillover Effects: A Review

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/02673037.2013.767882

1466-1810

David P. Varady, Reinout Kleinhans,

Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

Abstract This paper aims to review the literature on negative neighbourhood spillovers connected to four voluntary housing mobility programs: Gautreaux 1 and Gautreaux 2 (Chicago), the Moving to Opportunity Fair Housing Demonstration (five cities) and the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program. Although these four programs involve voluntary moves, a great deal may be learned from them because of (1) efforts to forestall community opposition and (2) special counselling and supportive programs provided to ease adjustment into destination neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, the available research often falls short in providing evidence for or against negative spillover effects. Nevertheless, our review indicates that screening out multi-problem families, limiting the number of housing voucher families moving into particular neighbourhoods and providing both pre- and post-relocation counselling to program participants can minimize the risk of negative neighbourhood spillovers. Keywords: Relocationspillover effectsmobility programsGautreauxMoving to Opportunityvouchers Acknowledgements Most of the research for this paper was done while the first author was on sabbatical leave at OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment at Delft University of Technology. The second author's contribution to the review was partly financed by the Nicis Institute in The Hague and Platform Corpovenista in Hilversum (Grant no. KKS1-2009-38). We greatly appreciate the help of Melody Boyd, Stefanie DeLuca, Kathy Edin, Kirk McClure, Barbara Samuels and Phil Tegeler, who provided detailed answers to our queries with regard to details of various mobility programs. We are also indebted to the three anonymous reviewers who provided valuable comments on the earlier draft of this paper. Finally, we specially thank Per Jansen (the first author's research assistant), who performed part of the literature search for this paper. Notes 1 Community opposition often plays out through ‘town hall’ meetings. Flyers and other materials are distributed discrediting the mobility program. Politicians at the federal, state and local levels use these meetings and other venues to express negative opinions about the program. 2 In other words, negative neighbourhood effects may not be due to the clustering of voucher recipients per se, but rather that voucher in-movers shift the neighbourhood beyond a certain poverty threshold. It was beyond the intended scope of this paper to test for the validity of these two alternative explanations. 3 The assumption that female-headed households and those that remain in poverty over several generations is well-supported by previous research. For example, in his influential 1965 report, Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the breakdown of the black family, reflected in the high incidence of female-headed households was the fundamental cause of black poverty and the fundamental cause of inner city problems. Because American public housing has become ‘residualized’ confined to the poorest of the poor, those living there three or more generations would tend to exhibit less motivation towards self-improvement, would be less interested in moving to a ‘better’ neighbourhood and would be less likely to fit into a middle-class neighbourhood if they made such a move. 4 Staff rated the non-profit organizations in the demonstration on the intensity of services that they provided on a 45-point scale that recognized the range of content, the resource commitment, and the degree of staff intervention on behalf of clients in housing, social and follow-up services. These ratings ranged from 9 (Leadership Council, Chicago) to 41 (Beyond Shelter and On Your Feet, Los Angeles). 5 The ‘lease-up’ rate refers to the proportion of eligible households able to find and rent units that meet programmatic criteria in terms of building quality standards and neighbourhood income/racial composition. The locational requirements of the four voluntary mobility programs reduce the lease-up rate because they make it harder for participants to find eligible housing units. 6 Women in the experimental group were less likely to have extreme obesity and diabetes, the women and their female children were less likely to experience psychological distress and major depression (see Sanbonmatsu et al., 2011 Sanbonmatsu, L., Ludwig, J., Katz, L. F., Gennetian, L. A., Duncan, G. J., Kessler, R. C., Adam, E., McDade, T. W. and Lindau, S. 2011. Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program: Final Impacts Evaluation, Washington, DC: HUD. [Google Scholar]). 7 The reasons for this attractiveness are the perceived excellence of its schools, its reputation for extreme diversity and excellent racial climate, its relatively good bus transportation, its Source of Income Law, which prevents discrimination based on housing voucher status, a higher Fair Market Rate which ensures Thompson participants access to middle market rental housing and the relatively good job market in Howard County, especially for entry-level workers (see Levinson, 2003 Levinson, D. 2003. The next America revisited. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 22(4): 329–344. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 8 For a detailed discussion of ways to transform US rental housing policy in order to increase the supply of affordable rental housing in the suburbs, see Katz & Turner (2008 Katz, B. and Turner, M. 2008. “Rethinking US rental housing policy: A new blueprint for federal, state and local action”. In Revisiting Rental Housing: Policies, Programs and Priorities, Edited by: Retsinas, N. P. and Belsky, E. S. 319–358. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. [Google Scholar]) and Landis & McClure (2010 Landis, J. and McClure, K. 2010. Rethinking federal housing policy. Journal of the American Planning Association, 76(3): 319–348. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 9 Consequently, the positive results regarding individual outcomes may not be generalizable to the national voucher population.