BulxCoty

Public housing renewal can make tenants feel displaced in their home, even before any work begins
Public housing estate redevelopments that displace residents to other suburbs are highly disruptive whereas projects that allow them to remain are suggested to be better.

We tested this assumption through two large, multi-year ethnographic studies with the residents of the Waterloo public housing estate in Sydney between 2010 and 2017.

Read more: Public housing 'renewal' likely to drive shift to private renters, not owners, in Sydney

Although they have not yet been physically moved from their homes, our research shows even the threat of being moved has already done significant damage to residents’ relationship with their homes and community.

One resident said this redevelopment:

[…] is slum clearance — we’re to be cleansed by living next to yuppies.

Waterloo urban renewal
The Waterloo estate is located 3km south of Sydney’s central business district. A redevelopment has been mooted since at least 2011.

In 2018, the estate was home to around 4,000 people in about 2,000 dwellings. A high proportion of residents were either elderly or spoke English as a second language.

The New South Wales government said in December 2015 the estate would be redeveloped to house 10,000 people, although the exact number is still to be determined.

Some housing will be affordable (5%) and social dwellings (30%). But the majority (65%) will be private market housing in keeping with the government’s controversial social mix redevelopment agenda.

The high land value of the area means the government can greatly increase the housing density on the site. This allows government to keep the existing public housing tenants in the suburb throughout and after the redevelopment.

Yet enormous upheaval will be required to transform the site.

The redeveloped site will be unrecognisable to existing residents as it will be dramatically altered to fit the extra buildings, people, businesses and a major transport hub.

One resident said:

[…] the Metro [station] and the redevelopment are not separate; this is just the beginning of a massive demolition.

Public housing tenants will be allocated a new dwelling on the site. But many suggest they will not be adequately compensated for the loss of their homes and community, which they see as distinct from a dwelling.

Another resident said:

[…] this is a unique place, there’s nowhere else like this […] We live together quite harmoniously compared to other places.

Public housing is still a home
The residents’ concerns about displacement are related to the radical transformation of their neighbourhood. Despite not being physically displaced to other areas, the physical, social and business landscape will be completely replaced.

As one resident said:

[…] the moment the first building is knocked down, this community will be nonexistent.

This experience of displacement is related not merely to the loss of a building that was home to them, but what the building stands for.

The symbolism of these public housing buildings is important for residents. The housing was purpose-built in a time of more government support for low-income workers or the more disadvantaged in society.

Many residents feel connected not just to the public housing buildings but to the more equitable society they represent. One resident said:

Matavai and Turanga [towers] are models of their kind; they embody a vision for society. We might lose their legacy [if they are demolished].

Density and social composition
The redevelopment will transform the urban design of the area too. Residents are concerned the neighbourhood will not be able to accommodate the higher density and larger population.

Many of the public open spaces that serve local residents will be reduced. This will radically change the social and recreational spaces that support many community activities and social networks.

These changes will transform the area’s social composition and economic dynamics. One resident said:

[…] there’s already little room enough. They’re going to squeeze thousands more in, there won’t be room for anything.

Commercial rent increases may drive out local businesses that currently serve local residents. Residents have already noted increases in food and drink prices in the new cafes that serve middle-class property owners, morgagees and private renters.

Some in the local Aboriginal community see the redevelopment as another step in the systematic dispossession of their land and violence against their people.

One Aboriginal resident said:

They are subsuming our community […] They’re bringing the ethnic cleansing down here to Waterloo […] Whatever happens in Redfern ripples across the country in other Aboriginal communities; this is so important as a place for all Aboriginal people.

Elderly residents are convinced they will not outlive the redevelopment. They fear they will live their final decades in tumultuous and uncertain circumstances.

From displacement to replacement
Public housing residents want government to renew their poorly maintained housing. But they want renewal without a complete restructuring of the social and economic fabric of their community and neighbourhood.

The influx of new residents will transform the existing community into a minority with little voice or influence in a neighbourhood dominated by private renters and home owners.

Read more: Public land is being sold exactly where thousands on the waiting list need housing

A different tenure mix is needed with a higher proportion of public, social and affordable housing.

By allowing public housing tenants to remain in place, the state government might hope to avoid the class conflicts inherent in state-led gentrification. Yet almost every facet of residents’ social and economic lives will be replaced through the redevelopment.

The upheaval of the low-income community and the subsuming of their space by middle- and upper-class households will be experienced as displacement by local residents, despite residents remaining in place.

Hurricane Katrina gave former prisoners a fresh start in new cities – how to give more people this route out of crime
Hurricane Laura’s landfall on the coasts of Louisiana and Texas came just as New Orleans prepared to mark the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and with the region already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic. For many, the wounds of the COVID-19 disaster and now Hurricane Laura are all too reminiscent of the way the US handled the devastation of Katrina.

Just as we are now, in 2005 we reimagined the future of society. As my 15-year study of post-Katrina New Orleans shows, Katrina offered lessons about how to design a more just and effective criminal justice system. We would be wise to finally heed them.

Because of the focus on investing in police and prisons to address the problem of crime in the US, to the neglect of housing, job training, and mental health and addiction treatment, the country has largely set former prisoners up to fail. Unsurprisingly, for decades, roughly 50% of formerly incarcerated individuals have been sent back to prison within just three years of release and almost 70% are rearrested. Prisons are overflowing not so much with first-time offenders, but with people who return again and again.

At the point of release, because of limited housing options and restrictive parole policies, the formerly incarcerated tend to funnel right back to their old neighbourhoods. Returning home often means returning to the same environment with the same criminal opportunities and criminal peers that proved so detrimental prior to incarceration.

This was the story of numerous people I interviewed as part of my study, including one man from New Orleans named Vernon. He’d go to prison and eventually exit with a sincere intention to change. After the third of his four imprisonments, he found God, devoted himself to religion, attended drug treatment, and made a legitimate commitment to change. But just like the times before, he fell victim to the temptations of his old environment, relapsed into active addiction, and ended up back in prison. He followed a similar pattern after his fourth incarceration.

Hurricane Katrina then struck, and Vernon was forced to leave New Orleans behind. He has avoided crime and drugs ever since.

A fresh start
One prominent strand of thought in criminology is that crime is situational: certain situations and social contexts are more likely to breed it. Change someone’s situation, and the outcome may be different.

To test this idea and to make sense of why Vernon’s life changed, I compared reincarceration rates of every prisoner originally from the New Orleans metropolitan area who was released in the first six months after Hurricane Katrina to every New Orleans prisoner released a few years prior to Katrina. Because the tragedy of Katrina forced many people to move to new cities who otherwise would not have moved, we got a glimpse into the alternate reality of their lives – a natural experiment for social scientists.

Map of severe damage caused by Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans.
Map of severe damage caused by Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans. US Department of Housing and Urban Development
It turns out that those people who were forced to move elsewhere because of the hurricane were much less likely to be subsequently reincarcerated than their pre-Katrina counterparts who went back home. In the first eight years after their release, an estimated 46% of the people who moved to a different parish were reincarcerated at some point, still a high percentage but much less than the staggering 59% reincarcerated among those who returned home.

Distance was key in order to provide a true change in circumstances. Moving a short distance to the next neighbourhood over did not reduce reoffending nearly as effectively as moving to an entirely different city or parish.

In a later study, I sought to replicate the results of my Katrina study, without a hurricane. I ran an experimental pilot housing programme in the Maryland prison system called MOVE (Maryland Opportunities through Vouchers Experiment).

We provided six months of free housing, privately funded through a research grant, to people who had been newly-released from prison, with the housing located in a different county from their former home. They were free to live alone or with family members, and we increased the value of support for people living with dependent children in order to offset the cost of a larger dwelling.

The combination of free and stable housing and a new environment had a substantial effect. Only 25% of our participants were rearrested within one year of their release from prison, compared to 57% in a control group who returned to their former counties without any kind of housing assistance.

How to pay for rehousing
But how could we pay for housing programmes for former prisoners? Even before the current financial crisis, only about a quarter of all families eligible for federal rental assistance, such as housing vouchers or public housing, actually received it.

One answer is a long-discussed criminal justice strategy: justice reinvestment. The idea is simple – redirect a portion of the savings from the reduced use of incarceration to pay for housing for newly released prisoners.

It turns out that it is much cheaper to house someone on the outside than it is on the inside. It costs well over US$100 a day in many states to incarcerate someone. In contrast, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, the fair market rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Baltimore, the site of my MOVE programme, is US$1,105 per month. At around US$37 per day that’s about a third of the cost of prison. The savings could also pay for support services such as drug treatment, cognitive behavioural therapy and job counselling.

As the movement to defund the police progresses and alternative strategies to address public safety are being considered besides the police and prisons, investment in housing should be a key priority. At a time when cost-beneficial public spending is essential for the recovery from the pandemic, over-reliance on costly and, in many cases, unjust criminal justice practices is not sound policy.

Widening access to shared ownership is not enough to solve England’s housing crisis
Housing inequalities have been laid bare by COVID-19, further exposing a housing crisis in England that is already severe. Unless some genuine steps are taken, it will only get worse for millions living in inadequate housing. The numbers are staggering – more than 8 million people are living in unsuitable housing in England.

Recent government housing policy for England has backed shared ownership as one of the solutions. The idea is that people jointly own their home with a housing association. They pay a combination of rent, mortgage and service fees.

On the face of it, shared ownership seems to be a good idea. It becomes easier to get started on the property ladder. As the owner’s income rises, they should be able to increase the proportion of the property they own over time. This takes place through a process called staircasing, where further shares of equity are bought.

However, our research suggests it may not always work well in practice, either as an affordable housing option or as a route to full ownership.

Affordable housing
Successive governments have promoted shared ownership, citing its social progressiveness and capacity to promote social mobility. Local planners in England have routinely agreed to include shared ownership units in the required affordable housing element of new developments.

Earlier this year, the House of Commons put the figure for shared ownership households in England at 157,000. Shared ownership takes up an increasing proportion of the overall supply of affordable housing. It made up 34% of new affordable housing supply in 2018-19, a rise from 23% in 2015-16. The median initial equity stake purchased was £100,000 with a median initial deposit of £12,800.

Construction site of red brick houses.
New homes under construction in England. I and S Walker/Shutterstock
While the demand for shared ownership varies, it is highest in areas where affordability is most stretched, such as London and the south-east of England.

The government has made a series of policy tweaks to bolster shared ownership. These include lowering the initial ownership stake to 10%, down from 25% of the value of the property. A “right to shared ownership” scheme, aimed at nudging housing association tenants to buy a stake in their existing homes, has been unveiled.

The minimum staircasing requirement is to be lowered to 1% of the value of the property, instead of the present 10%. This would enable residents to buy equity shares of the property more easily, rapidly and frequently.

Rising costs
Still, there are problems with shared ownership. It may not offer an affordable route to home ownership, once all the monthly costs are accounted for.

People in shared ownership pay service charges and rents that can rise typically 3% each year, as well as paying a mortgage on the part of the equity they own. This series of outgoings may leave many shared owners with little financial ability to save, let alone staircase.

Shared ownership works if staircasing is smooth. However, when the owner’s income increases slowly and house price growth has been rapid, their ability to buy slices of the equity is reduced. This is especially true for people on low incomes, whose housing dreams shared ownership is supposed to support.

Landscape photograph of low block of flats with grass in front
Marks Gate housing estate in London, built in the late 1950s. David Burrows/Shutterstock
If the goal is to build more housing as a means to make housing more affordable, then we should look at the not so distant past. During the 1950s and 60s, twice the number of homes were built each year as are built now, and many of them were affordable. We simply do not build enough affordable homes any more.

Increasing shared ownership will not be enough to address the colossal level of housing need. It is obvious that the pressing need is to build good quality, liveable and healthy homes. This is especially needed in a post-COVID world, where housing outcomes may be closely associated with life outcomes.

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