Elsevier

Social Networks

Volume 33, Issue 2, May 2011, Pages 152-165
Social Networks

Integrated or isolated? The impact of public housing redevelopment on social network homophily

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socnet.2011.01.001Get rights and content

Abstract

Do mixed income housing programs increase the poor's social network diversity? Using unique, longitudinal, egocentric social network data, this research investigates changes in social network homophily for both Vietnamese and English-speaking original residents of a public housing redevelopment site. Changes in mixing occur for both those who return and those who moved away, but only increases in ethnic mixing were associated with returning to the new site. Thus, changes in social networks may be associated with disruption rather moving to a mixed-income site. Vietnamese residents also experienced increases in ethnic diversity compared to English-speaking respondents. The results raise questions about the social mixing intent of such programs. The high expectations for social network benefits of income mixing housing programs should be tempered.

Section snippets

Personal social networks and homophily

A social network consists of individuals connected through personal relationships; those personal relationships imply some sort of interaction or contact between individual members. Furthermore, personal relationships tend toward homophily. As McPherson et al. (2001) summarize in their comprehensive review of the literature, homophily is perhaps the most fundamental structure of personal social networks. Patterns of homophily – of similar people sharing ties more frequently than those who are

Site and data

To investigate this relationship between neighbourhood social distance and patterns of homophily, this paper employs data collected as part of longitudinal evaluation of the High Point HOPE VI public housing redevelopment site in Seattle, WA, USA. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) a HOPE VI grant of $35 million to support the redevelopment of the High Point public housing community in June of 2000, with an eventual redevelopment

Methodology

We have three basic questions: has mixing has changed from before redevelopment to after, is moving to the new mixed-income neighbourhood is associated with changes in levels of mixing, and do Vietnamese speakers differ from English speakers in how their mixing changes over time? Therefore, we examine two broad issues: how mixing differs between groups and how baseline levels of mixing change after redevelopment. For each question we consider job ties and social ties separately.

In order to

Results

To begin our analysis, we first examine descriptively how mixing has changed over time (Hypothesis 1). Fig. 1 shows the average IQV by alter characteristic for social ties and job ties, comparing before and after redevelopment levels of mixing. For both tie types there are few real differences in mixing overall from before to after redevelopment. Only in the case of job ties do respondents have more homogeneity among alters but only with regard to employment. In general, most alters are

Discussion

This research focuses on whether public housing redevelopment brings about changes in the structure of social ties of low-income people that would indicate less isolation and more mixing. Echoing a conversation in the literature, does living in mixed-income housing influence social ties – those that people depend for getting along – or job ties – those people depend on to get ahead? Given that social networks tend toward homogeneity, and that even among neighbours relationships tend to be based

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Seattle Housing Authority and Neighborhood House staff for their support and help throughout this research, especially Denise Sharify, Jennifer Calleja, James Krieger, Lin Song, Mark Beach, Willard Brown, Editha Costales, John Forsyth, Andria Lazaga, Al Levine, Tina Narr, and Tom Phillips and others too numerous to name. Research assistants supported this work over 8 years: thank you to Jennifer Allison, Allegra Abramo, Jay Berman, Catrina Lucero, Colin Smith,

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