Anna Maria Santiago

What's the 'hood got to do with it? Parental perceptions about how neighborhood mechanisms affect their children

ABSTRACT: During the past decade, a rapidly expanding body of empirical research has emerged that statistically links disadvantaged neighborhood environments with social and economic outcomes of low-income, minority children. Nonetheless, the mechanisms by which neighborhoods putatively affect children remain poorly understood. This article examines the perceptions of low-income parents regarding how their neighborhood might affect their children. We examine quantitative and qualitative data gathered from phone interviews with 246 parents who live in subsidized housing scattered across a wide variety of neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado. We supplement this information with data obtained through a series of focus group interviews with a subset of these parents. Our findings indicate that low-income parents perceive the following primary neighborhood mechanisms: (1) the degree (or lack) of social norms and collective efficacy (24%); (2) influence of children’s peers (12%); (3) exposure to crime and violence (11%); and (4) the presence and quality of institutional resources (3%). Approximately one-third of all parents reported that their neighborhood had no impact at all on their children, citing that their children were either “too young” to be affected by these mechanisms or that parents had sufficient resources to buffer any deleterious effects of the neighborhood. Parents residing in high-poverty neighborhoods were much more likely to perceive a neighborhood effect, however. Binary and multinomial logistic regression analyses were employed to identify the extent to which an array of demographic characteristics and neighborhood type correlated with parents’ perceptions. Latino parents were significantly less likely than other low-income parents to report a neighborhood impact mechanism. Relative to those who reported no particular neighborhood impact mechanism, those who identified: (1) safety issues were more likely to have a spouse or parent present, and have low self-esteem; (2) peer influences were more likely to have higher levels of education and live in a high-poverty but low-crime area.

Assessing the property value impacts of the dispersed subsidy housing program in Denver

This study tests the hypothesis that the acquisition of existing property by the public housing authority and its subsequent rehabilitation and occupancy by subsidized tenants significantly reduced the property values of surrounding single-family homes in Denver during the 1990s. This assessment examined pre- and post-occupancy sales, while controlling for the idiosyncratic neighborhood, local public service, and zoning characteristics of the areas in order to identify which sorts of neighborhoods, if any, experienced declining property values as a result of proximity to dispersed housing tenants. The analyses revealed that proximity to a subsidized housing site generally had an independent, positive effect on single-family home sales prices. The most notable exception to this pattern occurred in neighborhoods more than 20 percent of whose residents were black. Proximity to dispersed public housing sites in these neighborhoods resulted in slower growth in home sales prices in an other-wise booming housing market and suggest a threshold within “vulnerable” neighborhoods whereby any potential gains associated with rehabilitating existing units are offset by the increased concentration of poor residents.

Establishing LA VIDA: A Community-Based Partnership to Prevent Intimate Violence against Latina Women

LA VIDA—the Southwest Detroit Partnership to Prevent Intimate Violence Against Latina Women— evolved in response to community concern about the problem of intimate partner violence (IPV) and the lack of culturally competent preventive and support services for Latino women and men in southwest Detroit. Since 1997, diverse organizations have mobilized as a community-academic partnership to ensure the availability, accessibility, and utilization of IPV services. This article describes and analyzes the evolution of LA VIDA within a community-based participatory research framework using a case study approach that draws on multiple data sources including group and individual interviews and field notes. The challenges and lessons learned in addressing a complex multifaceted problem such as IPV in an ethnic minority community are highlighted in an examination of the process of mobilizing diverse organizations, conducting community diagnosis and needs assessment activities, establishing goals and objectives within a social ecological framework, and integrating evaluation during the development phase.

BACKGROUND CHARACTERISTICS AS PREDICTORS OF ACADEMIC SELF- CONFIDENCE AND ACADEMIC SELF-EFFICACY AMONG GRADUATE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING STUDENTS

This study uses data from the 1995-96 Graduate Experience Project to explore differences among, and possible predictors of, academic self-confidence, academic self-efficacy, and outcome expectations of entering graduate students in science and engineering. The results suggest that at time of entry, women and U.S. minority graduate students entered with similar academic credentials and academic expectations as their Anglo male peers. Further, gender was not found to be a significant factor in predicting academic self-confidence, academic self-efficacy, or careerrelated outcome expectations. Rather, student perceptions of academic preparedness, status-related disadvantages, and expectations about faculty/student interactions emerged as significant predictors of academic self-efficacy and career-related outcome expectations.

The impact of supportive housing on neighborhood crime rates

Quantitative and qualitative methods are employed to investigate the extent to which proximity to 14 supportive housing facilities opening in Denver from 1992 to 1995 affects crime rates. The econometric specification provides pre– and post– controls for selection bias as well as a spatial autocorrelation correction. Focus groups with homeowners living near supportive housing provide richer context for interpreting the econometric results. The findings suggest that developers paying close attention to facility scale and siting can avoid negative neighborhood impacts and render their supportive housing invisible to neighbors. Implications for structuring local regulations and public education regarding supportive housing facilities follow.

Moving from public housing to homeownership: Perceived barriers to program participation and success

ABSTRACT: The goals of public housing have evolved from providing shelter to providing opportunities for escaping from welfare and buying one’s own home. Despite numerous federal policies aimed at enhancing resident self-sufficiency and homeownership through programs run by local public housing authorities, little is known about who participates and who succeeds. This study explores barriers to participation and success in an innovative resident self-sufficiency/homeownership program developed by the Housing Authority of the city and county of Denver. We conduct surveys of participants in the Foundations for Homeownership program, eliciting their perceptions regarding willingness and ability to participate in the program and, thereafter, completing it successfully. We find that at time of entry into the program, participants reported, on average, 4.6 major barriers that they perceive would limit their ability to achieve current goals. OLS and logistic regression analyses were conducted to ascertain the degree to which perceived barriers were associated with participants’ demographic, economic, or attitudinal characteristics.

Neighbourhood Crime and Scattered-site Public Housing

In this paper, an assessment is made of the extent to which proximity to 38 dispersed public housing sites opening in Denver during 1992-95 affected post-development levels and trends in neighbourhood crime rates. A new econometric specification incorporating pre- and post-controls for selection bias as well as spatial autocorrelation was employed to test for statistical relationships between the development of dispersed public housing sites and subsequent increases in various types of crime. The findings suggest that proximity to dispersed public housing was not associated with any post-development increase in reported crime of any type.

Adrift at the Margins of Urban Society What Role Does Neighborhood Play

We quantify how social detachment (measured as neither working nor attending school) of low-income African-American and Latino young adults relates to their teen neighborhood conditions. Data come from retrospective surveys of Denver Housing Authority (DHA) households. Because DHA household allocation mimics quasirandom assignment to neighborhoods throughout Denver County, this program represents a natural experiment for overcoming geographic selection bias. Our multilevel, mixed-effects logistic analyses found significant relationships between neighborhood safety and population composition and odds of social detachment of low-income, minority young adults that can be interpreted as causal effects. The strength of these relationships was often contingent on gender and ethnicity, however. We draw conclusions for macroeconomic, income-support, subsidized housing and community development policy.

LOW-INCOME HOMEOWNERSHIP: DOES IT NECESSARILY MEAN SACRIFICING NEIGHBORHOOD QUALITY TO BUY A HOME?

ABSTRACT: Questions have been raised about the wisdom of low-income homeownership policies for many reasons. One potential reason to be skeptical: low-income homebuyers perhaps may be constrained to purchase homes in disadvantaged neighborhoods. This is a potential problem because home purchases in such neighborhoods: (1) may limit appreciation; (2) may reduce quality of life for adults; and (3) may militate against reputed advantages of homeownership for children. Our study examines the neighborhood conditions of a group of 126 low-income homebuyers who purchased their first home with assistance from the Home Ownership Program (HOP) operated by the Denver Housing Authority. Our approach is distinguished by its use of a comprehensive set of objective and subjective indicators measuring the neighborhood quality of pre-move and post-move neighborhoods. Do low-income homebuyers sacrifice neighborhood quality to buy their homes? Our results suggest that the answer to this question is more complex than it might at first appear. On the one hand, HOP homebuyers purchased in a wide variety of city and suburban neighborhoods. Nonetheless, a variety of neighborhood quality indicators suggest that these neighborhoods, on average, were indeed inferior to those of Denver homeowners overall and to those in the same ethnic group. However, our analyses also revealed that their post-move neighborhoods were superior to the ones they lived in prior to homeownership. Moreover, very few HOP destination neighborhoods evinced severe physical, environmental, infrastructural, or socioeconomic problems, as measured by a wide variety of objective indicators or by the homebuyers’ own perceptions. Indeed, only 10% of HOP homebuyers perceived that their new neighborhoods were worse than their prior ones, and only 8% held pessimistic expectations about their new neighborhoods’ quality of life. Finally, we found that Black homebuyers fared less well than their Latino counterparts, on average, in both objective and subjective measures.

Foreclosing on the American dream? The financial consequences of low-income homeownership

Federal programs have consistently encouraged ever-lower-income households to buy homes, despite concerns about the long-term sustainability and desirability of homeownership from the perspective of wealth-building, especially since the recent housing market collapse and the epidemic of mortgage foreclosures. We ask in this paper: can very low-income households build wealth through sustainable homeownership, with the aid of an innovative public program? We answer this question by examining 122 very low-income households who purchased their homes between 1996 and 2007 after completing an extensive asset-building and homeownership education/counseling program offered by the Housing Authority of the City and County of Denver (DHA), called HOP. We analyze our own longitudinal surveys and focus groups, as well as data compiled from administrative agency sources, real estate records, and longitudinal census data from the Neighborhood Change Database and the Piton Foundations Neighborhood Facts Database. We find that homeownership attained through HOP typically did provide very low-income households with opportunities to build home equity (both absolutely and relative to generic homeowner cohorts in Denver) and net wealth, although this was contingent on time of purchase and ethnicity. Our multivariate analyses revealed that changes in annualized home equity appreciation were associated with the ethnic composition of the neighborhood and age of property. Annualized wealth accumulation was associated with annualized home equity appreciation, being married throughout the tenure of homeownership, and year of home purchase. HOP homebuyers received exceptionally favorable initial mortgage terms and conditions, often enhanced with down-payment assistance from their own DHA escrow account or from local housing and neighborhood development organizations, resulting in a dramatically low rate of default and foreclosure to date. Moreover, HOP homebuyers were not immune to financial stresses, and the continuing lack of wealth for many makes them vulnerable to future interruptions in primary wage earners employment or health. We discuss the implications for low-income homeownership policy and argue that the goal of expanding homeownership opportunities should not be abandoned.