Overview of Neighborhood and Housing Problems

Learning Objectives

• Define terms that describe specific neighborhood and housing problems such as racial residential segregation and housing insecurity.
• Explain how the three major sociological perspectives frame neighborhood and housing problems.
• Describe a historical and a contemporary perspective on racial residential segregation.
• Understand the extent and experience of housing insecurity and houselessness.
• Analyze how social location connects to neighborhood and housing problems.
• List several consequences of neighborhood and housing problems.
• Evaluate existing and proposed solutions to neighborhoods and housing problems.

  

As you may recall, social problems go beyond the experience of the individual, resulting in a conflict in values. They arise when groups of people experience inequality, are socially constructed by real consequences, and must be addressed interdependently. Examples of inequalities are that some people find housing easily, live in integrated neighborhoods, and have secure housing, while others experience housing discrimination, residential segregation, and housing insecurity. These experiences vary by social location such as gender, race, class, age, or sexuality, or combinations of these. In this chapter, we discuss a variety of social problems related to neighborhoods and housing including their theoretical framings, patterns, consequences, and solutions. Below we introduce and provide historical background about these issues.

  

Residential Segregation

We will explore racial residential segregation, the separation of neighborhoods by race (and often social class), as a social problem of neighborhoods and housing. To understand this contemporary problem, we must understand the roots of racially segregated housing policies, which requires us to start with enslavement and the racist ideas that justified it.

Scholar Ibram X. Kendi asserts that any policies that result in racial inequity and ideas that justify or excuse racial inequity are racist. Racist ideas about the supposed inferiority of people who are Black include ideas about “degeneracy,” uncleanliness, laziness, sexual habits, drug use, and dishonesty. Even though slavery was illegal in many northern states, people in northern cities were still taught that Black people were different from and inferior to white people.

As early as 1830, free Black people who made their way to northern cities were not welcome in many communities. Poor people who were Black lived in racially segregated housing. Often, they had to move when developers and landowners found more profitable uses for the land. Even affluent and educated Black people with the resources to buy property experienced displacement and discrimination.

In 1850, Seneca Village, a thriving Black community of 1600 people outside of New York City, was displaced by eminent domain to build Central Park (Staples 2019). The community boasted successful businesses, a vibrant church, and a school. Newspapers and magazines, however, relied on racist ideas and racial epithets (like the n-word) to describe the community as a decrepit shantytown. They also claimed the residents were unable to properly care for the valuable real estate they held. Residents who owned the land were compensated, but the land was undervalued. This land grab was conveniently justified by the emergence of the powerful racist idea that property values go down where Black people live. If you’d like to read this article for yourself, please explore this Gotham Gazette Article, Death of Seneca Village.

Between 1910 and 1970, in the Great Migration period, more than six million Black people relocated from the rural south to cities in the north and west in search of better jobs. Many people in the North accepted the same racist ideas that fueled the brutal racism of the south. As in New York, a century before, many white people feared that home ownership by Black people would lower property values.

People created racially segregated neighborhoods through deliberate creation and implementation of racist laws, policies and practices. Although residential segregation is now illegal, neighborhoods remain segregated. Why do you think this is?

“Sign: ‘We Want White Tenants in our White Community” by Arthur Seigel, Office of War Information is in the Public Domain

During the postwar housing boom of the ’40s and ’50s, the GI Bill provided low-interest home loans to returning veterans. New suburban communities sprang up. The American dream of home ownership became a reality across the US, at least for white Americans. According to Heather McGee, "The mortgage benefit in the GI bill pushed the postwar home ownership rate to three out of four white families – but with federally sanctioned housing discrimination, the Black and Latinx rates stayed at around two out of five, despite the attempts of veterans of color to participate" (McGee 2021:22). Government-sanctioned discrimination also impacted Indigenous communities, as described in the Community Profile box below.

Community Profile

Indigenous Land and Home Ownership

In Multnomah County, Oregon, Indigenous people make up 2.5% of the population, but 10% of people who are unhoused (Schmid 2017). Native Americans have a high poverty rate, with 25.9% of Native Americans experiencing poverty in 2021, according to the US Census (KFF 2022).

The government’s control over Indigenous people’s living conditions contributes to this circumstance. When the US government forcibly removed Native Americans to reservation lands, it also retained ownership of that land. The government holds reservation lands “in trust” for the tribal nations. Trusts are financial arrangements that allow a third-party trustee to hold and control assets on behalf of a beneficiary. The underlying justification for most trusts is that the beneficiaries can not be trusted to properly manage their assets. While this might be acceptable for minor children who inherit large sums of money, this paternalistic oversight of Native American people perpetuates systems of displacement and genocide that have been visited upon Indigenous people in the Americas for 600 years.

We hear about tribal rights and casinos, and debate using harmful stereotypical images for sports teams. However, most non-tribal members don’t recognize how the US government limits homeownership for Native Americans (Schaefer Riley 2016). For example, Native Americans who fought alongside white GIs in World War II have been denied the opportunity to create the same generational wealth as other American veterans. Because reservation land is held in trust, the returning Native American veterans were excluded from the GI Bill home loans for homes on reservation land.

Although not all Indigenous people agree that private land ownership is the right goal today, the lack of access to homeownership via the GI Bill is one of several discriminatory policies that racialized homeownership in the mid-20th century.

This structural racism also occurred with standard mortgage loans. Black families were routinely denied loans for the new suburban homes. They were forced to buy houses in older, more urban communities. Once Black families bought homes in urban neighborhoods, real estate agents routinely took advantage of white homeowners’ fears of lower property values to persuade them to sell their property at a low price. The agents then turned a profit, reselling them to Black families at higher prices. Lenders charged them higher interest rates. Realtors and lenders made big profits from this “block-busting” practice.

They also succeeded in lowering the value of homes in rapidly segregated neighborhoods. Since these homes were assessed at low value, the tax base of these neighborhoods was restricted. Tax-funded infrastructure, like public works and schools, was underfunded. In other words, it was not Black people’s presence but white homeowners’ prejudice, grounded in racist ideas, that led to lower property values and created under-resourced communities.

Redlining is the discriminatory practice of refusing loans to creditworthy applicants in neighborhoods that banks deem undesirable. The federal government created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in 1933, and the Federal Housing Association (FHA) in 1934, and the real estate industry worked to segregate whites from other groups to preserve property values in neighborhoods where white people lived. This is institutional discrimination.

Lending institutions and the federal government did this by creating maps in which the places where people of color and/or immigrants lived were colored red (see the figure below). Then, those areas were designated to be “dangerous” or “risky” in terms of loaning practices.

Lending institutions and the federal government created maps in which the places where people of color and/or foreign-born lived were colored red and designated to be “dangerous” or “risky.”

“Home Owners’ Loan Corporation Philadelphia redlining map” from Wikipedia is in the Public Domain

In 1968, the Fair Housing Act, part of the Civil Rights Act, outlawed these practices. The Fair Housing Act is an attempt at providing equitable housing to all. It makes it illegal to discriminate against someone based on skin color, sex, religion, and disability. Also banned is the practice of real estate lowballing, where banks underestimate the value of a home. This practice forces a borrower to come up with a larger down payment to compensate for the lower loan value. Offering higher interest rates, insurance, and terms and conditions to people from historically underrepresented groups is illegal. Denying loans and services based on an applicant’s protected class is also illegal.

Still, much damage was done prior to its passage. For decades, the federal government poured money into home loans that almost exclusively favored white families. Homeownership is the most accessible way to build equity and wealth, particularly for the middle-class. It was denied to many historically marginalized families for decades. Once the Fair Housing Act passed, local governments used other legal methods to justify racist real estate practices, and discriminatory housing practices continue today.

Please watch the video below to learn more about redlining, including its connection to gentrification (discussed in the Patterns page).

This video discusses the history of redlining and other neighborhood problems. How does this highlight discrimination in housing practices?

The Legacy of Redlining by Urban Displacement Project is licensed under the standard YouTube license

  

Housing Insecurity and Houselessness

Personal Profile

Kandi (her street name) was 12 the first time she ran away from home. She had read about running away in books like My Side of the Mountain. These stories were supposed to be cautionary tales, but they showed Kandi a path out of an abusive home. She just wanted out. Rather than stay in one place for very long, she hitchhiked cross-country. She spent a lot of time in truck stops and bars. She used a lot of drugs. Every once in a while she got arrested, and there were close calls with dangerous people. She experienced sexual harassment daily and was sexually assaulted and exploited many times.

As she got older and tougher, she learned how to make people respect her no and pay for her yes, at least most of the time. She got her first bartending job at the age of 15. It was easy to find work, but she never stayed anywhere for long. She told people that she chose “the road.” Given the options, it seemed like a rational choice.

People she met shared spare pieces of their lives. She encountered art, music, and big ideas. She went to a lot of parties and listened to many stories around many fires. Sometimes, she had fun—once she got picked up because a group of whitewater rafters needed one more person to paddle. She learned how to survive, but dreamed of more, and spent long hours constructing a better life in her imagination. Eventually, in fits and starts, she began to move towards a life that was safer and softer.

It took years to get stable, but eventually, in her 20s she landed in a small coastal town and fell in love. She stayed put long enough to find a chosen family and make a home. Home was hard for Kandi to hold on to, and she continued to experience housing insecurity into her 40s until she went back to school for a better-paying career. Kandi is in her 50s now, stable, and happy with her family and work. She knows how lucky she is.

Kandi, described in the Personal Profile above, is one of an estimated 26 million people in the United States who have been unhoused during their lifetimes (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine et al. 2018). While Kandi now maintains stable housing, an estimated 11.4 million people in the United States reported housing insecurity in the summer of 2021. People experience housing insecurity when they are behind on rent and/or likely to be evicted in the next month (Pagaduan 2021).

Statistics about houselessness don’t tell the whole story, though. As a student, you may be housing insecure. You may know other students who couch surf, change addresses frequently or sleep in their cars. In 2022, the station KGW featured a student-created comic about unstable housing. As you watch the Comic Book Profiles 10 Portland State University Students’ Struggles With Housing Instability video below, please consider how housing instability has impacted these students.

In this video, Portland State University students describe their experiences of houselessness via a comic book series. Do these stories sound familiar?

“Comic Book Profiles 10 Portland State University Students’ Struggles With Housing Instability [Video]” by Bryant Clerkley, KGW8 is licensed under the Standard YouTube License

Kandi, college students, and others experience the social problem of houselessness, the condition of not having a place to live. As the cost of housing increases and wages stay the same, more and more people find themselves losing their housing or at risk of losing their housing. Stable housing also becomes one of the factors that can help resolve some of the other social problems we discuss throughout this textbook.

You may notice that we use the words houseless, unhoused, or housing insecure instead of homeless in most cases. As you’ll remember from the start of this textbook, a characteristic of a social problem is that it is socially constructed. One way we can recognize that a social problem is socially constructed is because the language used to define a problem changes over time.

Sociologists and community advocates currently prefer the terms houseless, unhoused, or housing insecure to define the social problem. This language helps emphasize structural problems that may cause someone to be without a home rather than the stigma associated with the word homeless. However, we may still use homelessness as this term aligns with measurements and governmental definitions of houselessness and housing instability.

Every year over 4 million young people experience houselessness, like this youth who might be couch surfing. How does this make houselessness a social problem?

“Photo” by Rex Pickar is licensed under the Unsplash License

Homelessness is defined by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as being unsheltered, having inadequate shelter, not having a permanent fixed residence, and/or lacking the resources to secure stable housing (US Department of Housing and Urban Development 2012). HUD uses four categories of homelessness, as described in the figure below, to determine eligibility for housing services. These subsidized and supported housing services include Emergency Shelters, Transitional Housing, Rapid Rehousing, Housing Choice Subsidized Housing Vouchers (also known as Section 8), and Homelessness Prevention Services.

US Department of Housing and Urban Development: Four Categories of Homelessness
1) Literally Homeless Individual or family who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, meaning: Has a primary nighttime residence that is a public or private place not meant for human habitation; or Is living in a publicly or privately operated shelter designated to provide temporary living arrangements (including congregate shelters, transitional housing, and hotels and motels paid for by charitable organizations or by federal, state, and local government programs); or Is exiting an institution where (s)he has resided for 90 days or less and who resided in an emergency shelter or place not meant for human habitatiinstitutionely before entering that institution. Note: An individual or family only needs to meet one of the three subcategories to qualify
2) Imminent Risk of Homelessness An individual or family who will imminently lose their primary nighttime residence, provided that: Residence will be lost within 14 days of the date of application for homeless assistance; No subsequent residence has been identified; and The individual or family lacks the resources or support networks needed to obtain other permanent housing. Note: Includes individuals and families who are within 14 days of losing their housing, including housing they own, rent, are sharing with others, or are living in without paying rent.
3) Homeless Under Other Federal Statutes Unaccompanied youth under 25 years of age or families with Category three children and youth who do not otherwise qualify as homeless under this definition but who: Are defined as homeless under the other listed federal statutes; Have not had a lease or ownership interest in permanent housing during the 60 days prior to the homeless assistance application; Have experienced persistent instability as measured by two moves or more during the preceding 60 days; and Can be expected to continue in such status for an extended period of time due to special needs or barriers Note: Includes individuals and families who are within 14 days of losing their housing, including housing they own, rent, are sharing with others, or are living in without paying rent.
4: Fleeing/Attempting to Flee Domestic Violence Any individual or family who: Is fleeing or is attempting to flee domestic violence; Has no other residence; and Lacks the resources or support networks to obtain other permanent housing Note: Domestic Violence includes dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and other dangerous or life-threatening conditions that relate to violence against the individual or family member that either takes place in or him or her afraid to return to, their primary nighttime residence (including human trafficking).

These definitions are part of policies around houselessness. These policies may help people who need it but exclude others who are also houseless. Who do you think is missing from these guidelines?

“Categories of Homelessness” adapted from The Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act by Nora Karena is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Housing instability can be harder to see than houselessness. Housing insecurity is a broad set of challenges related to housing, such as the inability to pay rent or utilities or the need to move frequently (Goldrick-Rab et al. 2019).

Housing insecurity is difficult to describe because there are many measurements of it. According to government definitions, if a person or a family are within 14 days of losing their housing and does not have the resources “to obtain permanent housing,” they are considered by HUD to be at imminent risk of homelessness. Additionally, a cost-burdened household is a household in which 30% or more of a household’s monthly gross income is dedicated to housing, making it difficult to pay for necessities.

Signs or measurements of housing insecurity include missing a rent or utility payment, having a place to live but not having certainty about meeting basic needs, experiencing formal or informal evictions, foreclosures, couch-surfing, and frequent moves. It can also include exposure to health and safety risks such as mold, vermin, lead, overcrowding, and personal safety fears such as abuse.

This student-created ancillary is a tri-fold pamphlet with information about soft evictions, including what people can do if they are the victim of a soft eviction.

  

Soft eviction by Ashley Miller, Samuel Shea, and Caden Kooiker is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

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In this chapter, we discuss social problems related to neighborhoods and housing. As you may have noticed, there is some overlap between this chapter and the last, as most people who experience housing insecurity and houselessness are living in poverty. However, we will dive into a range of neighborhood and housing related problems in the Patterns page that were not covered in the Poverty chapter. First we will frame neighborhood and housing problems using the classical theoretical perspectives in sociology. As with each chapter, we will end with a discussion on strategies to help address these problems.