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Housing, Neighborhoods, and Institutions: Structural Inequality in Urban Communities

Thursday, November 13, 1:45 to 3:15pm, Property: Hyatt Regency Seattle, Floor: 6th Floor, Room: 609 - Yakima

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

The intense commodification of housing—where “decent, safe, and stable” housing is most available to those who can afford it rather than to all as a right (Desmond and Bell 2015:28; Pattillo 2013)—has generated a rich body of research on housing insecurity among poor Americans. DeLuca and Rosen (2022) argue that a rigorous sociology of housing should draw out the social contexts in which people are accessing the housing market. Scholars have also recently highlighted the need to better integrate racialized residential sorting patterns in understanding people’s housing outcomes (Hwang and Zhang, forthcoming). Much research has paid attention to topics such as eviction or gentrification, but housing encompasses much more than these events. Indeed, the expansion of housing as a research area opens many opportunities for rich interdisciplinary discussions. A robust social science of housing needs to examine the role of micro-, meso-, and macro-level factors driving where people live.  

This panel deepens our understandings of the myriad stakeholders and institutions at play, in conjunction with market and demographic forces, to shape individual residential outcomes. We aim to advance critical and timely conversations about the factors perpetuating or ameliorating housing insecurity and racial inequality in residential outcomes. The work presented in the panel spans disciplines and uses a breadth of cutting-edge methods, qualitative and quantitative, to answer pressing questions in the housing and community development space.

The first paper by Louis orients the panel by providing a high-level, national view of the rental housing market in the most recent decade. The study proposes a framework of “corporate renter resegregation” to understand how rental market investors respond to and sustain a racially segregated housing market. This study uses an analysis of almost 23 million parcel records from 2010–2020 and a novel counterfactual simulation to measure racial segregation. The second paper by Leung zooms in on immigrant enclaves, providing insights on the role of immigration and immigrant communities in an era of residential instability and rapid neighborhood change. This study applies spatial analyses to 2000-2019 Census and ACS data. 

The third and fourth papers move the panel in the direction of the most disadvantaged on the housing market – those renters on the verge of becoming homeless and those who are currently experiencing homelessness. The third study highlights systemic issues that undermine renters from accessing their legal rights, even in a liberal and tenant-protective context. Despite awareness of tenant rights, low-income renters are often alienated from legal systems due to power imbalances and immediate affordability concerns. This study uses qualitative methods, drawing on a unique, racially stratified sample of low-income renters in the City of Oakland informed by a purposive sampling design. Lastly, Tien’s study examines the role of surrogate kinship networks in supporting individuals who have lost or do not have access to traditional kinship ties. Based on comparative fieldwork conducted in three sites and archival research, this study highlights the importance of social capital and community ties in preventing vulnerable people from entering homelessness.

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