Susan Saegert

Healthy housing: a structured review of published evaluations of US interventions to improve health by modifying housing in the United States, 1990-2001.

We sought to characterize and to evaluate the success of current public health interventions related to housing. Two reviewers content-analyzed 72 articles selected from 12 electronic databases of US interventions from 1990 to 2001. Ninety-two percent of the interventions addressed a single condition, most often lead poisoning, injury, or asthma. Fifty-seven percent targeted children, and 13% targeted seniors. The most common intervention strategies employed a one-time treatment to improve the environment; to change behavior, attitudes, or knowledge; or both. Most studies reported statistically significant improvements, but few (14%) were judged extremely successful. Current interventions are limited by narrow definitions of housing and health, by brief time spans, and by limited geographic and social scales. An ecological paradigm is recommended as a guide to more effective approaches.

Social Capital and the Revitalization of New York City's Distressed Inner-City Housing

Abstract This article presents evidence that social capital can be an effective component of locally sponsored low‐income housing programs. It provides a model for measuring social capital at the building level, where it may be most effective in improving housing quality and security. The study compares five programs in New York City that house the citys poorest, mostly minority residents. The surveys from 487 buildings in Brooklyn, NY, were analyzed to compare the success of programs in maintaining and revitalizing landlord‐abandoned buildings taken by the city in lieu of taxes. Results of the analysis demonstrate that the positive effects of tenant ownership were largely mediated by the higher levels of social capital found in these buildings. These levels have implications for the survival and economic advancement of poor households and civic participation in poor communities. The study suggests the value of alternative homeownership programs.

Residential Density and Psychological Health among Children in Low-Income Families

The authors provide data on mental health sequelae of residential crowding among children, demonstrating significant associations between the number of persons per room and an index of psychological health. These relations are shown in two independent samples of urban and rural children living in poverty. The density–mental health link among the rural, low-income sample is qualified by a gender interaction indicating that boys are more vulnerable to negative outcomes. This interaction was not found among the smaller, inner-city sample. In both samples, children from higher density homes are less likely to persist in an achievement, problem-solving context. The authors did not find support for their hypothesis that learned helplessness would at least partially account for the relation between residential crowding and mental health among children.

Two Studies of Crowding in Urban Public Spaces.

In the past few years, an increasing amount of research has been directed toward discovering the psychological effects of high density. Most people who have lived in cities and have used crowded facilities find high density situations at least somewhat annoying some of the time. The question remains whether the effects of high densities are more significant than the transient frustration of waiting in lines, standing on subways, or finding that the movie one wanted to attend is sold out. The urgency for evidence on density effects is increasing. With rising construction and land costs in urban centers, developers call for revisions in zoning regulations to permit the construction of

Poverty, Housing Niches, and Health in the United States

Drawing on psychological, health, and social science literature, a housing niche model is developed that focuses on (a) housing markets and other societal processes that constrain residential choice, (b) effects of residential environments on health and access to human and social capital, and (c) family dynamic effects on health and the intergenerational consequences of particular housing niches for future health and housing choices. The model requires the examination of cumulative risks, mediating and moderating processes, and the use of multilevel statistical models. The health consequences of existing housing policies are explored and future directions for research and policy suggested.

BUILDING CIVIC CAPACITY IN URBAN NEIGHBORHOODS: AN EMPIRICALLY GROUNDED ANATOMY

ABSTRACT: While community building and organizing initiatives aimed at improving marginalized communities have proliferated in recent decades, controversies have arisen as to their efficacy. A divide has emerged between community builders, who emphasize bonding and bridging social capital, and community organizers who work with disenfranchised communities to make demands on the existing power structure though confrontational actions. Drawing on four case studies this article examines the differences and similarities of the two approaches in practice. Based on an extensive review of the literature and interviews with U.S. community builders and organizers, this article presents a heuristic model of community building and organizing activities and their ability to bring about change, including increased external social capital, ability to confront the power structure, and engagement with the political process. Case study examples of consensus and confrontational approaches and of intentional and unintentional approaches to community building are presented and compared. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Paths to community empowerment: Organizing at home

This study examines how low-income minority communities build on their strengths to improve material conditions and how these actions lead to further empowerment at the individual and group level, and increase engagement with civic life. Based on earlier qualitative research, low-income limited equity housing co-ops were chosen as research. Using quantitative questionnaire data, a path model was tested in which variables were organized into four levels.Level One: Attributes of the person and the context were conceptualized asexogenous variables leading to activities first at the co-op level.Level Two:co-op activities were thought to affect living conditions in the building and evaluations of co-op ownership, which comprisedLevel Three,quality of life in the building. All preceding levels were thought to influenceempowerment, as measured atLevel Four through an attitudinal measure of empowerment, and reported participation in civic activities in the broader community.The model, which emphasizes the collective and material nature of empowerment in addition to the psychological, seems justified by the data. It is especially significant that the aggregate measure of perceived participation of others predicted building quality, and that the aggregate measure of building quality went on to influence empowerment and voting behavior. Personal participation in building activities also proved a good predictor of empowerment, indicating that empowerment operates at both the individual and the group level. Furthermore, increased empowerment at the level of attitude did influence civic activities, in conjunction with personal characteristics and perceived neighborhood qualities. (Tests of causality in the opposite direction were not significant.) Our findings confirm the importance of all three components of empowerment, as articulated by Zimmerman and his colleagues (1992), that is, empowerment at the psychological, interactional, and behavioral level. It extends the conceptualization by introducing the group level of analysis.

The Role of Housing in the Experience of Dwelling

Units of housing are commodities produced and marketed within particular economic and technological constraints. For most North Americans, they are something we search for rather than produce. Home is a more elusive notion. Not only is it a place, but it has psychological resonance and social meaning. It is part of the experience of dwelling—something we do, a way of weaving up a life in particular geographic spaces. We may center our experience of dwelling in our own home, in our neighborhood, in a network of places connected by airplane routes, or in an image of our place in the world, to name but a few alternatives. The word dwelling is not often used in social science except to refer to dwelling units (or d.u.s., the discrete measure of housing) or to the dwellings of premodern societies, for example Hopi dwellings or the cliff dwellings of the Southwest. The notion of dwelling highlights the contrast between house and home. First it does not assume that the physical housing unit defines the experience of home. It connotes a more active and mobile relationship of individuals to the physical, social, and psychological spaces around them. It points to a spiritual and symbolic connection between the self and the physical world that was overtly recognized in premodern dwellings and may now seem uselessly poetic or fanciful. It emphasizes the necessity for continuing active making of a place for ourselves in time and space. Simultaneously, it points to the way in which our personal and social identities are shaped through the process of dwelling.

Social capital and crime in New York City's low‐income housing

Abstract This article presents evidence that components of social capital can play a prospective role in preventing crime in low‐income housing. It develops a conceptual approach to crime prevention involving social capital, alternative forms of ownership, and environmental design considerations. The study compares five programs that house New York Citys poorest, mostly minority residents. The effectiveness of social capital in preventing crime is assessed using data from surveys of 487 buildings in Brooklyn, NY, and crime data from the New York City Police Department. Results of the analysis indicate that three components of social capital—basic participation in tenant associations, tenant prosocial norms, and a buildings formal organization—were all related to reducing various types of crime in the buildings under study 6 to 12 months after social capital was measured. The effectiveness of social capital was related to alternative ownership structures, building characteristics, and housing policy.

Parents as moderators of psychological and physiological correlates of inner-city children's exposure to violence

This paper discusses the psychological and physiological correlates of inner-city violence on children, and the potential mediating and moderating roles of parents. Data are based on interviews regarding exposure to community violence (ECV), parenting practices, child distress, posttraumatic symptomology, and competence. Cardiovascular activation was also measured. Community violence exposure related to distress, posttraumatic symptomology, and incompetence. Harsh parenting related to aggression, distress, incompetence, and higher heart rates. Parenting moderated but did not mediate the effects of violence on measures of competence. High violence plus harsh parenting predicted lower levels of systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP). Results are discussed within an ecological framework of parent-child relations and as they relate to the conclusion that children undergoing dual levels of stress may experience a dissociative response.