Lena Magnusson Turner

Segregation, gentrification, and residualisation: from public housing to market-driven housing allocation in inner city Stockholm

From the 1930s and into the 1990s, public housing in Sweden was a key element in the Social Democrats’ ambition to construct a housing system that would secure high-quality, affordable housing for all. The Liberal–Conservative national government of the early 1990s initiated important changes to housing policy in Sweden and allowed for local decision-making concerning tenure conversion, the conversion of public rental housing into market-based (cooperative) housing. Stockholm city decided early on to invite public housing residents to buy their dwellings, under the condition that at least half of the residents living in a particular property were in favour of buying. In this paper we ask two questions: in what way did the subsequent and substantial tenure conversions change the population mix of affected neighbourhoods? Second, have tenure conversions in inner city Stockholm contributed to increasing levels of segregation in the city of Stockholm? We hypothesise that inner city Stockholm has further gentrified and that non-converted public housing properties, predominantly found in the suburban parts of the city, experience residualisation (households have become poorer in relative terms). In short, we expect and also document increasing levels of socio-economic segregation as the result of this right-to-buy policy.

Municipal Housing Companies in Sweden - Social by Default

An important issue in Sweden is the extent to which the public (or municipal) housing sector is a tenure form open to everyone and is on a level playing field with other tenure forms. The issue became more important when the European Union stated that public companies must have a pronounced social role, given their favourable institutional position. This paper reveals that vulnerable families are overrepresented in public housing, compared to other tenure forms, especially in the metropolitan cities and in the larger cities. This pattern is less pronounced in other cities and in rural areas. An index is constructed which measures the share of vulnerable families within a municipal housing company, when the share of vulnerable families within the municipality is controlled for. This index of social responsibility is used as a dependent variable in a regression analysis, using all Swedish municipalities as a database. The analysis reveals that the value of the index increases with a diminishing relative size of the municipal housing company. This effect is particularly strong for families on social benefits and immigrant families from poor countries. We also find evidence that the composition of the housing stock as well as the political regime in a municipality is correlated to the “index of social responsibility”. From an EU point of view, it is obvious that vulnerable families to a large extent are accommodated in the municipal housing sector. The relative size of this sector will in most cases determine the degree of dilution. In this respect, there is no separate social policy in public housing companies in Sweden. Instead, they seem to be social by default.

The special importance of housing policy for ethnic minorities: evidence from a comparison of four Nordic countries

The purpose of this article is to explore whether housing policy has a special importance for immigrants, compared with the whole population, by comparing housing policies and immigrants’ housing outcomes in four Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. There are substantial differences between housing policies and housing outcomes in Nordic countries, despite their common background as social-democratic welfare states. The study shows that immigrants occupy a very different position on the housing market in each of these countries, and in particular that the degree of overcrowding among immigrants compared with the whole population varies a great deal. These differences can only to some extent be explained by inequalities between income groups on the housing markets in the countries: inequalities that affect immigrants. Other important explanations as to why immigrants have worse housing outcomes is the shortage of rental housing (e.g. in Norway), which increases the scope for discrimination and forces immigrants into overcrowded owner-occupied housing, and also rent and price control that create surplus demand and stronger competition between house hunters, which makes room for discrimination and reduces immigrants’ access to private renting in particular (e.g. in Denmark). Housing policy initiatives that improve immigrants’ housing options are strict needs tests for social/public housing (as is the case in Finland).

UPWARDS, OUTWARDS AND WESTWARDS: RELOCATION OF ETHNIC MINORITY GROUPS IN THE OSLO REGION

Abstract Our purpose in this article is to examine socio‐economic and spatial integration of ethnic minorities in the Oslo region. We analyse relocation between 1998 and 2008 for members of ten minority groups along three overlapping dimensions: upwards in the neighbourhood hierarchy, outwards from the inner city to all suburbs, and westwards from a less affluent to a more affluent part of the region. The results provide some limited support for spatial assimilation theory. Two minority groups, Iranians and Vietnamese, comply partly with the theory. Another group, Filipinos, has stagnated in its socio‐economic and spatial integration. The remaining groups do not relocate in accordance with the native pattern, or fail to integrate in socio‐economic terms. The discrepancy between theory and results is most pronounced along the westward axis. We interpret the results in a broader context of regional and national circumstances: spatial assimilation theory may have different utility in different welfare regimes, depending on spatial inequality and the politics of place.

Linking Integration and Housing Career: A Longitudinal Analysis of Immigrant Groups in Sweden

This study investigates the extent to which immigrant groups are integrated in the Stockholm region through an analysis of their housing careers. Housing conditions are linked to many important life course events, as well as to the resources and preferences of each individual family. Housing conditions influence integration, but factors related to integration can also be a cause of housing conditions. In the study, we take a truly longitudinal approach to housing careers by exploring differences in the timing of career-related events between several immigrant groups and native Swedes. The objective of the study is to explore whether the housing careers of immigrant groups follow family and work careers in a similar way as the native population. The data are derived from a longitudinal individual-level register-based data-set maintained by Statistics Sweden. The analysis is carried out by way of survival analysis. Our results confirm that there are substantial ethnic differences in housing careers that cannot be attributed to family composition or career. Our results also highlight three important factors that reduce the differences between native Swedes and immigrants groups in the tendency to enter homeownership: university degree, type of municipality and duration of stay in Sweden.

Who Gets What and Why? Vacancy Chains in Stockholm's Housing Market

Abstract The importance of physical resources in influencing life chances makes the study of resource allocation processes and rules especially pertinent and this leads naturally to the question: who gets what and why? This article focuses on the significance of housing construction for residential mobility and addresses the vital question: who will gain from new construction? It examines whether it is possible to build directly for well-resourced households and hope that it indirectly also supports lower income households. It also examines the possibility that changes in the way in which the housing market operates with market-driven construction, geared at a post-modern housing lifestyle, have changed the situation for less well resourced households, compared to traditional housing construction. The study is based on a unique longitudinal database that covers the total population in Sweden over the period 2000–2002. The data are analysed using a Markov chain model that provides a way of analysing the relationship between vacancies in the housing market and household mobility. Tentative answers to questions on the length of the vacancy chains that are created when different types of dwellings become vacant in Stockholm city and what type of households are involved and not involved, are given. These answers have important implications for urban planning.

Survival and Exits in Neighbourhoods: A Long-Term Analyses

Neighbourhoods form a frame for our lives. At the same time, neighbourhoods are themselves formed by mobility into and out of them. This paper studies who stays in and who leaves in two districts of Oslo. The empirical analysis is based on a survival model, estimated on a 10-year long longitudinal data-set, because neither theory nor prior studies yield sufficient guidance to build an empirical model. We propose a way to nest and test survival models and utilise this in the model specification. We find that the intensity of the outflow of native Norwegian from an area is not to any substantial degree related to the size of the immigrant population. Hence, our results do not confirm the widespread narrative of white flight as a response to an increased immigrant population in areas of Oslo. Instead, the larger part of the outflow is explained by variables related to the life-course of families. Results do not suggest that increasing the ethnic or income diversity of Oslo neighbourhoods would substantially increase outflows of native Norwegians.

Status discrepancy as a driver of residential mobility: Evidence from Oslo

Planners have long advocated for “social mix” in neighborhoods without clear evidence that such mixing is stable over time. Indeed, if some groups perceive an intolerable discrepancy between their own economic status and that of their neighbors they may leave the neighborhood, thereby frustrating planners’ goals. We conduct a longitudinal analysis of Oslo household intrametropolitan residential mobility employing a panel model with fixed effects for both households and neighborhoods and interactions for status groups, which provides estimates of plausible causal effects. We theoretically and empirically identify two dimensions of intraneighborhood status discrepancy that prove important predictors of leaving a neighborhood, though impacts differ strongly depending on household income status as defined by Oslo-wide standards. More extreme relative standing above the neighborhood median income promotes exit (especially for low- and middle-status households), suggesting a status signaling motive. For high-status households, being below the median neighborhood income proves influential for out-mobility, suggesting a relative deprivation motive. The overall status composition of the neighborhood is a powerful mobility influence for both low- and high-status households, suggesting a strong preference for homophily. Results imply that policy-generated introduction of low-status households will encourage the exit of high- and, to a lesser degree, middle-status neighbors.