Brian J. McCabe

Public Schools, Public Housing: The Education of Children Living in Public Housing

In the United States, public housing developments are predominantly located in neighborhoods with low median incomes, high rates of poverty and disproportionate concentrations of minorities. While research consistently shows that public housing developments are located in economically and socially disadvantaged neighborhoods, we know little about the characteristics of the schools serving students living in public housing. In this paper, we examine the characteristics of elementary and middle schools attended by students living in public housing developments in New York City. Using the proportion of public housing students attending each elementary and middle school as our weight, we calculate the weighted average of school characteristics to describe the typical school attended by students living in public housing. We then compare these characteristics to those of the typical school attended by other students throughout the city in an effort to assess whether students living in public housing attend systematically different schools than other students. We find no large differences between the resources of the schools attended by students living in public housing and the schools attended by their peers living elsewhere in the city; however, we find significant differences in student characteristics and performance on standardized exams. These school differences, however, fail to fully explain the performance disparities amongst students. Our results point to a need for more nuanced analyses of the policies and practices in schools, as well as the outside-of-school factors that shape educational success, to identify and address the needs of students in public housing.

Body Mass Index and Physical Attractiveness: Evidence From a Combination Image-Alteration/List Experiment

The list experiment is used to detect latent beliefs when researchers suspect a substantial degree of social desirability bias from respondents. This methodology has been used in areas ranging from racial attitudes to political preferences. Meanwhile, social psychologists interested in the salience of physical attributes to social behavior have provided respondents with experimentally altered photographs to test the influence of particular visual cues or traits on social evaluations. This experimental research has examined the effect of skin blemishes, hairlessness, and particular racial attributes on respondents’ evaluation of these photographs. While this approach isolates variation in particular visual characteristics from other visual aspects that tend to covary with the traits in question, it fails to adequately deal with social desirability bias. This shortcoming is particularly important when concerned with potentially charged visual cues, such as body mass index (BMI). The present article describes a novel experiment that combines the digital alteration of photographs with the list experiment approach. When tested on a nationally representative sample of Internet respondents, results suggest that when shown photographs of women, male respondents report differences in levels of attractiveness based on the perceived BMI of the photographed confederate. Overweight individuals are less likely than their normal weight peers to report different levels of attractiveness between high-BMI and low-BMI photographs. Knowing that evaluations of attractiveness influence labor market outcomes, the findings are particularly salient in a society with rising incidence of obesity.

Homeownership and Social Trust in Neighbors

This paper investigates the role of homeownership in generating social trust among neighbors. Drawing on data from the 2006 Social Capital Community Survey, it tests whether homeownership contributes to the formation of social capital by strengthening the bonds of trust in local neighborhoods. Through a falsification strategy that compares trust in neighbors to trust in other social groups, the results confirm that homeowners are more trusting of their neighbors than renters, but are no more likely to trust strangers, shopkeepers, coworkers, or the police. While initial models reveal spillover effects into neighborhoods with high homeownership rates, further analyses suggest that median neighborhood income is the more salient predictor of neighborhood–level social trust. The findings contribute to a rich sociological tradition of neighborhood research by focusing on the role of homeownership in strengthening local communities.

Does Preservation Accelerate Neighborhood Change? Examining the Impact of Historic Preservation in New York City

Problem, research strategy, and findings: A number of studies have examined the property value impacts of historic preservation, but few have considered how preservation shapes neighborhood composition. In this study, we ask whether the designation of historic districts contributes to changes in the racial composition and socioeconomic status of New York City neighborhoods. Bringing together data on historic districts with a panel of census tracts, we study how neighborhoods change after the designation of a historic district. We find little evidence of changes in the racial composition of a neighborhood, but report a significant increase in socioeconomic status following historic designation. Takeaway for practice: Our research offers empirical evidence on changes in the racial composition and socioeconomic status of neighborhoods following the designation of a historic district. It suggests that historic preservation can contribute to economic revitalization in urban neighborhoods, but that these changes risk making neighborhoods less accessible to lower-income residents. Planners should consider ways that the city government can work to preserve the highly valued amenities of historic neighborhoods while mitigating the potential for residential displacement.

Does City-Subsidized Owner-Occupied Housing Improve School Quality?

Problem: Policymakers and community development practitioners view increasing subsidized owner-occupied housing as a mechanism to improve urban neighborhoods, but little research studies the impact of such investments on community amenities. Purpose: We examine the impact of subsidized owner-occupied housing on the quality of local schools and compare them to the impacts of city investments in rental units. Methods: Using data from the New York City Department of Education (DOE) and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), we estimate three main sets of regressions, exploring student characteristics, school resources, and school outcomes. Results and conclusions: The completion of subsidized owner-occupied housing is associated with a decrease in schools’ percentage of free-lunch eligible students, an increase in schools’ percentage of White students, and, controlling for these compositional changes, an increase in scores on standardized reading and math exams. By contrast, our results suggest that investments in rental housing have little, if any, effect. Takeaway for practice: Policies promoting the construction of subsidized owner-occupied housing have solidified in local governments around the country. Our research provides reassurance to policymakers and planners who are concerned about the spillover effects of subsidized, citywide investments beyond the households being directly served. It suggests that benefits from investments in owner occupancy may extend beyond the individual level, with an increase in subsidized owner-occupancy bringing about improvements in neighborhood school quality. Research support: None.

Why Buy a Home? Race, Ethnicity, and Homeownership Preferences in the United States:

There are many reasons why Americans prefer homeownership to renting. Owning a home can serve as a vehicle for economic mobility or a marker of status attainment. Homeownership may deepen feelings of ontological security and enable families to move into more convenient neighborhoods. While previous research on race, ethnicity, and housing focuses on homeownership attainment, identifying structural barriers to explain persistent racial disparities, there has been little investigation of the reasons why Americans prefer to own their own homes. Drawing on the National Housing Survey, a nationally representative survey of American adults, I ask how these reasons vary by race and ethnicity. I report that African Americans and Latinos are more likely than whites to identify the social status of ownership and the importance of building wealth as reasons to buy a home. While African Americans are also more likely to pursue homeownership as a way to improve their housing quality, they are less likely to view ownership as a tool for accessing more convenient neighborhoods. As a contribution to research on racial stratification in homeownership, my findings push beyond existing studies of revealed preferences to explain why buying a home endures as such an important goal for many Americans. African Americans and Latinos are more deeply invested in the social status of homeownership, the importance of building wealth, and the promise of moving into a nicer home when they pursue ownership opportunities.

Housing wealth and welfare

Schierup and Lisa Kings’ account of Swedish youth mobilizing to obtain their right to the city (Chapter 9). By its theoretical contributions and empirical focus on practices, materialities and senses, Reimagining Home in the 21st Century will interest any student, scholar and practitioner in the field of anthropology, cultural studies, housing studies, human geography and sociology. But the relevance of this book is greater than that. By employing the metaphor of home to practices of home-making within and outside the space of a dwelling, this collection documents the problematic negotiation of home-making and belonging in a neoliberal regime of late modernity where multiple lifeworlds are politically and socially normalized only through consumption (Bauman, 2000), with important implications for policy makers and policy scholars. Indeed, our sense of belonging, of feeling at home has never been more challenged and yet more essential than in this world where new precarities are being fashioned through ever more flexible labour markets and policies of austerity and when new walls to keep the strangers out are being imagined, including those of Brexit and Trump’s Mexican border-wall.

Costly, Regressive, and Ineffective: How Sensitive Is Public Support for the Mortgage Interest Deduction in the United States?

ABSTRACT Although the mortgage interest deduction enjoys broad public support, critics argue that the policy disproportionately benefits wealthy households, fails to expand homeownership opportunities to households on the margins, and costs the federal government an extraordinary amount of money in foregone tax revenue. Drawing on data collected through an online experiment, this analysis tests the sensitivity of public support to these critiques. The findings reveal that support for the mortgage interest deduction declines when respondents are presented with information about the cost, effectiveness, or distribution of benefits associated with the deduction. Support among renters is more sensitive to framing effects than that among homeowners. Republicans are less sensitive to framing effects than Democrats when the deduction is framed as distributing benefits unequally, but more sensitive to these effects when the issue is framed as costly. However, all groups register their lowest level of support when told that the mortgage interest deduction is not an effective tool for expanding ownership opportunities.

High-Dollar Donors and Donor-Rich Neighborhoods: Representational Distortion in Financing a Municipal Election in Seattle

Candidates for municipal office collect millions of dollars to fund their campaigns. While previous research about local fundraising coalitions investigates the role of specific interest groups—for example, real estate professionals and developers—and donors outside the political jurisdiction, there has been little systematic investigation of individual donors classified by the size of their contribution or their geographic concentration within the city itself. In this article, we draw on administrative records of campaign contributions from the 2013 Seattle elections to answer two questions about the financing of municipal elections. First, drawing on research from federal elections, we ask whether candidates build fundraising coalitions comprised primarily of small-dollar donors or whether they rely heavily on high-dollar donors to fund their campaigns. In Seattle, we find that only one-fifth of donors in the mayoral election contributed at least

When Property Values Rule

500, but their contributions account for 55% of the money raised in the election. Next, we ask how concentrated campaign contributors are within Seattle neighborhoods. Candidates collected nearly 25% of their funds from the wealthiest 10% of neighborhoods. By pointing to an outsized role for high-dollar donors and donors concentrated in affluent neighborhoods, this article identifies a critical dimension of representational distortion in municipal elections. In doing so, it opens a new window into the local campaign finance system—an aspect of our political process that has been largely overlooked in research on campaigns and elections.