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eleven - Segregation, choice-based letting and social housing: how housing policy can affect the segregation process
- Edited by Christopher D. Lloyd, University of Liverpool, Ian G. Shuttleworth, Queen's University Belfast, David W. Wong, George Mason University, Virginia
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- Book:
- Social-Spatial Segregation
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 04 March 2022
- Print publication:
- 28 August 2014, pp 247-268
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Summary
Introduction
In this chapter we investigate the process of minority ethnic segregation in English social housing. Successive governments have expressed a commitment to the contradictory aims of providing greater choice – through the introduction of choice-based letting (CBL) – for households accessing an increasingly marginalised social housing sector, while also expressing a determination to create more mixed communities and neighbourhoods. We consider the concept of choice in the context of a heavily residualised social housing sector, arguing that, for social housing tenants at least, the concept of real choice is a misnomer. We draw on research that has utilised unique administrative data and analysed the moves of all entrants into and movers within the social renting sector over a 10-year period in England. The conclusion is that the introduction of CBL has influenced the residential outcomes of minority ethnic groups and resulted in highly structured neighbourhood sorting that has segregated minority populations into the least desirable neighbourhoods of English cities.
Many of the chapters in this volume report on the ways in which segregation can be measured (see, for example, Chapter Two, this volume), or the degree to which specific populations are segregated in the residential or even school context (see, for example, Chapter Ten). At the heart of these chapters is a discussion about segregation indices, either as a means through which the state of segregation can be measured and reported, or as a problematic indicator that requires careful consideration and deployment. This chapter takes a different approach by investigating neighbourhood sorting (see also Chapters Nine, Ten and Thirteen). The study of segregation is, at one level, the study of variance in neighbourhood characteristics. That is to say, the amount by which the population in one place varies compared to the expected mean level of variation. While it is important to identify where high and low levels of variation occur, of more importance is the understanding of how the variation occurs in the first place. As a consequence, we explicitly explore the dynamic nature of the neighbourhood and the flows of households into neighbourhoods of different types. This chapter combines previous research by the authors of this chapter (van Ham and Manley, 2009; Manley and van Ham, 2011), which investigates the effect of CBL on how prospective social housing tenants sort into dwellings and neighbourhoods, and how household choice influences the composition of a neighbourhood.
eleven - Social mixing as a cure for negative neighbourhoodeffects: evidence-based policy or urban myth?
- Edited by Gary Bridge, Cardiff University, Tim Butler, King's College London, Loretta Lees, University of Leicester
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- Book:
- Mixed Communities
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 01 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 19 October 2011, pp 151-168
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Summary
Introduction
There is a widely held belief by government, policy makers and academics that living in deprived neighbourhoods has a negative effect on residents’ life chances over and above the effect of their individual characteristics. There is a large body of literature on these so-called neighbourhood effects and neighbourhood effects have been claimed in relation to a variety of outcomes: school dropout rates (Overman, 2002); childhood achievement (Galster et al, 2007); transition rates from welfare to work (van der Klaauw and Ours, 2003); deviant behaviour (Friedrichs and Blasius, 2003); social exclusion (Buck, 2001); and social mobility (Buck, 2001). The current interest in the assumed negative effect of living in deprived neighbourhoods was stimulated by Wilson (1987, 1991), and several theoretical explanations of neighbourhood effects have been developed in the last two decades. These explanations include role model effects and peer group influences, social and physical disconnection from job-finding networks, a culture of poverty leading to dysfunctional values, discrimination by employers and other gatekeepers, access to low-quality public services and high exposure to criminal behaviour (for an overview see van Ham and Manley, 2011: in press).
Policy makers embraced the concept of neighbourhood effects because if concentrations of poverty can make individuals poor(er), then reducing concentrations of poverty would solve the problem. Creating neighbourhoods with a balanced socioeconomic mix of residents is an often used strategy to tackle assumed negative neighbourhood effects. Mixed housing tenure policies are frequently espoused as a vehicle to create more socially mixed neighbourhoods. The idea is that mixing homeowners with social renters will create a more diverse socioeconomic mix in neighbourhoods, removing the potential of negative neighbourhood effects (Musterd and Andersson, 2005). Mixed housing strategies – often involving large-scale demolishment of social housing estates – have been explicitly adopted as part of neighbourhood improvement schemes by many governments including those in the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, France, Finland and Sweden (Atkinson and Kintrea, 2002; Kearns, 2002; Musterd, 2002).
Despite the apparent consensus that neighbourhood effects exist, there is a growing body of literature that questions the status quo (see Oreopoulos, 2003; Bolster et al, 2007; van Ham and Manley, 2010; van Ham et al, 2011: in press).