Housing subsidy families happier instead of richer

Back in the 1990s the U.S. began a housing subsidy program for poor families. It gave poor families a chance to move out of slums and into nicer neighboorhoods. The hope was that the families would be given all of the economic opportunities easily found in richer areas. The theory didn't work to well, but it did impove one thing for the poor, it made them happier.

From the New York Times, writer Sabrina Tavernise looks into the surprising results of the housing subsidy program.

What researchers did find were substantial improvements in the physical and mental health of the people who moved. Researchers reported last year in The New England Journal of Medicine that the participants who moved to new neighborhoods had lower rates of obesity and diabetes than those not offered the chance to move. Beyond the increase in happiness, the new study found lower levels of depression among those who moved.

“Mental health and subjective well-being are very important,” said William Julius Wilson, a sociology professor at Harvard whose 1987 book “The Truly Disadvantaged” pioneered theory about concentrated poverty. “If you are not feeling well, it’s going to affect everything — your employment, relations with your family.”

The researchers measured quality of life using participants’ reports of their own well-being. Researchers asked: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days? Would you say you are very happy, pretty happy or not too happy?”

A year after they entered the program, the families who had made the move were living in neighborhoods where about a third of the residents lived in poverty. In contrast, those who were not offered the chance to move lived in neighborhoods where half of the residents lived in poverty.

Professor Wilson said it was not surprising that education levels did not change significantly because many of the children who moved remained in the same school districts. And Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard and one of the study authors, said that the preference for educated workers was so strong that changing neighborhoods did not do much to improve job options for the participants, who were mostly African-American women without college educations.

Providing cheap houses for slums might be an expensive idea

One way that social business has been succeeding is by providing inexpensive solutions for those in poverty. Products and services such as cheap heat, cheap stoves, cheap toilets and cheap fertilizer are some examples.

But what about cheap houses? Since so many poor people live in slums that only consist of shacks or tents, selling cheap housing to them would seem like a great social business.

An op-ed piece in the New York Times today warns against such a venture. Writers Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava from the Institute of Urbanology say that providing cheap housing for the poor could wipe out many jobs.

To start with, space is scarce. There is almost no room for new construction or ready-made houses. Most residents are renters, paying $20 to $100 a month for small apartments.

Those who own houses have far more equity in them than $300 — a typical home is worth at least $3,000. Many families have owned their houses for two or three generations, upgrading them as their incomes increase. With additions, these homes become what we call “tool houses,” acting as workshops, manufacturing units, warehouses and shops. They facilitate trade and production, and allow homeowners to improve their living standards over time.

None of this would be possible with a $300 house, which would have to be as standardized as possible to keep costs low. No number of add-ons would be able to match the flexibility of need-based construction.

In addition, construction is an important industry in neighborhoods like Dharavi. Much of the economy consists of hardware shops, carpenters, plumbers, concrete makers, masons, even real-estate agents. Importing pre-fabricated homes would put many people out of business, undercutting the very population the $300 house is intended to help.

Worst of all, companies involved in producing the house may end up supporting the clearance and demolition of well-established neighborhoods to make room for it. The resulting resettlement colonies, which are multiplying at the edges of cities like Delhi and Bangalore, may at first glance look like ideal markets for the new houses, but the dislocation destroys businesses and communities.

An attempt to make India slum-free

India's government wants to try to eliminate the slums around it's major cities. The head of Housing and Urban Development is asking her department to give more rights to the slum dwellers. She also wants to begin building infrastructure in the slums and provide it's dwellers with affordable housing.

From Headlines India, writer Kavita Bajeli-Datt tells us more about the plan.

In an effort to make India slum-free in five years, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Kumari Selja has urged state chief ministers to prepare an "inclusive master plan" that addresses the concerns of the urban poor.

In her letter she asked state governments to develop an urban land policy and a legal framework that accords property rights to urban slum dwellers and gives them a life of dignity.

Noting that master plans have excluded the poor from urban development, thus driving them to illegal settlements, Selja said: "There is need to develop an urban land policy and a legal framework for according security of property right to the slum dwellers and the urban poor."

She said the states could consider amending town planning, urban area development and municipal laws to reserve land to build affordable housing that has basic amenities.

The minister also wrote that the states should prepare and implement "inclusive" master plans by following a participatory process and ensure that the concerns of the urban poor, especially slum-dwellers, are adequately addressed in the process of urban planning and development.

Houses made of cardboard

German scientists believe that they have found a way to solve Africa's housing shortage. Gerd Niemoeller has created a cardboard house. The house has been standing up to wind and rain tests, and the scientists believe they are ready to begin production.

Niemoeller's cardboard houses are intended to be sued as emergency shelters or to replace slum housing.

From Jansamachar, we learn more about the design of the houses.

The breakthrough came with Niemoeller's revolutionary method of honeycomb cardboard soaked in polymer resins. Resembling a honeycomb wafer biscuit, this structural design has been a mainstay in aircraft and yacht design for decades, but not in housing.

"Up until now honeycomb structural construction elements have been produced primarily from aluminium. But that of course entails a local industrial capacity which is costly and very energy-intensive - which is unaffordable in the Third World," says Niemoeller.

That's where his "paper house" comes in.

"People want to stay in their own countries. It's only the dire circumstances of poverty which force them to become refugees," he says. "The changing climate will only exacerbate this trend critically, unless we can come up with alternatives."

Niemoeller uses cellulose, primarily from recycled paper, which is soaked in polymer resins. The cellulose mass is subjected to extreme heat and pressure and is formed into wafer-like honeycomb structural elements.

Each honeycomb is a mini-vacuum which helps to hold the panel together and increase tensile strength.

"If you put a nail in the wall, you damage only one single honeycomb without damaging the vacuum properties of the surrounding honeycombs," says the 58-year-old engineer from Luebeck, Germany.

"A 4-centimetre-thick wall has the tensile strength of a 40-centimetre-thick conventional compressed board wall," he says.

Obama administration proposes to expand the Hope IV program

The Obama administration has a proposal to expand the Hope IV project in it's latest budget. During the Clinton administration, Hope IV brought about the funding to demolish then reconstruct public housing in metro centers. The program is credited with improving public housing. Now, the latest proposal from Obama wants to take the plan a step further by adding schools and transportation to the hosing units.

From the Washington Post, writer By Christina Bellantoni tells us more.

The initiative, if approved by Congress, will operate in the same way by redeveloping public and assisted housing, but it will include community development, and applicants will have to prove the transformation would be catalytic, said Bruce Katz, a senior adviser to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

It also has a "much tighter link" to school reform, he said of HUD's Choice Neighborhoods Initiative.

Sen. Christopher S. "Kit" Bond, Missouri Republican, said he would advocate for the new program because it expands on the successful Hope VI initiative he has championed since its creation in 1992.

He said in an interview that the idea is "to see if we can do something in a coordinated effective effort to end the cycle of poverty and distress … and empower the local residents to have more control over their life."

Mr. Bond cited projects in St. Louis and also on Capitol Hill that are now model communities.

Mr. Katz said Hope VI dramatically lowered crime rates and increased property values in the worst neighborhoods. It merited about $500 million per year in funding during the Clinton administration but was on "life support" during the Bush presidency, Mr. Katz said.

HUD estimates 10 cities would be granted the funding after a competitive process, and to qualify, at least 40 percent of a neighborhood's residents must live below the federal poverty line of about $22,000 for a family of four.

Atlanta, Kansas City, Mo., Philadelphia and San Francisco were cited often during interviews for this story as examples of places with similar programs or where residents could benefit from the "choice" initiative.

Former city school to become housing

from the Times Tribune

A neat reclamation project in Scranton Pennsylvania that will help provide housing for poor families. - Kale

BY JEREMY G. BURTON

A wooden sign above the doors is all but faded. The brickwork is crumbling and pockmarked; windows are broken.

It’s been a century since Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School opened its doors in South Scranton; decades since it last held classes.

But Wednesday, the former school received a new life, as officials broke ground on a $5 million project to turn it into an apartment complex for poor, working families.

The makeover is a project of United Neighborhood Centers of Northeastern Pennsylvania, a nonprofit United Way agency that offers services for those in need. The renovations will overhaul 830 Crown Ave. into 18 apartments for families with incomes in the $20,000 to $30,000 range.

Underscoring the need for decent and affordable housing, new census estimates revealed last week that 20 percent of Scranton residents were living in poverty in 2007 — a 3 percent rise.

“We know it before it comes out in the paper,” UNC Executive Director Michael Hanley said. “We see it every day.”

This is the first big housing project for UNC’s community development corporation, with funding coming from a mix of state, federal and charitable grants.

The apartments will be geared toward families just getting on their feet, then helping them toward homeownership. Renovations should take a year to complete, with residents moving in late next summer, Mr. Hanley said.

Neighbors welcomed progress on the abandoned building but aren’t yet ready to judge.

“I don’t think anybody really cares as long as you don’t run into any trouble,” said Jack Benke, who lives on Beech Street across from the school, where he was once a student.

“If they’re going to get riffraff, they might as well forget it,” said his father, Russel Benke, also an HBS alumnus.

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