Tag Archives: social class

Low-income women evicted more often than men partly because of gender dynamics with landlords

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A recent analysis of evictions in Milwaukee shows the gender of a landlord and a tenant influences who is more likely to be evicted:

It’s an all-too-common story. Low-income women are evicted at much higher rates than men. The reasons are varied, including lower wages and children, but one rarely discussed reason is the gender dynamics between largely male landlords and female tenants…

But the interactions between predominantly male landlords and female tenants is also a culprit, and it often turns on gender dynamics. Men who fall behind on rent, for example, often went directly to the landlord. When Jerry was served an eviction notice, he promptly balled up and threw it in the face of his landlord. The two commenced yelling at each other until Jerry stomped back to his trailer.

Meanwhile, Larraine, who had also been served notice, recoiled from conflict. “I couldn’t deal with it. I was terrified by it, just terrified,” she told the researcher. After Jerry calmed down, he returned and offered to work off his rent by cleaning up the trailer park and doing some maintenance work, something men often offer to do, I found. The landlord accepted his offer. The outcome for Larraine was different. After avoiding her landlord, she would eventually come up with the rent, borrowing from her brother. But by that time, her landlord had had enough. He felt that Lorraine had taken advantage of him. In keeping with women’s generally non-confrontational approach, Larraine, like many other women renters facing eviction, engaged in “ducking and dodging” landlords often put it.

This dynamic has long-term implications. An eviction record can make it extremely difficult for them to find housing again. Evictions can ban a person from affordable housing programs. And many landlords will not rent to someone who’s been evicted. As they like to say, “I’ll rent to you as long as you don’t have an eviction or a conviction.” These twinned processes—eviction and conviction—work together to propagate economic disadvantage in the inner city.

This sounds like a confluence of race, class, gender. Being non-white and having a lower income leads to fewer housing opportunities and then gender compounds the particulars of interacting with male landlords. The difficulty in finding decent affordable housing then affects what neighborhoods people can live in, influencing social networks, collective efficacy, exposure to violence and crime, differences in educational systems, and access to economic opportunities.

Desmond’s brief report suggests the best solution is to help avoid evictions:

The most important policy solution, however, would be to ensure that low-income families do not end up in eviction court in the first place. Stopgap measures that provide emergency funds for families in a jam – those who have lost a job, experienced a family death, or suffered a medical emergency – could help thousands stay in their homes…

More fundamentally, making housing more affordable could prevent many evictions.

A tough issue to address in a country that tends to accept residential segregation as well as the prevalence of market forces in the housing industry.

More Americans again view owning a home as a good investment

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The burst housing bubble reduced the value of many homes yet more Americans are again seeing a home as one of their best investments:

According to a recent Gallup poll, real estate beats out stocks, bonds, savings accounts and even the Great Recession’s investment darling, gold, as the favored form of long-term investment. A full 30 percent of Americans see real estate as the best investment—up from just 19 percent in 2011.

A new survey by the Pulte Group echoes such sentiments: 35 percent of Americans reported that they would like to buy a home soon in part because they see it as a smart financial investment, said Valerie Dolenga, spokesperson of Michigan-based home builder, Pulte Homes.

This kind of growing confidence should make us all wonder, though: Haven’t we learned anything from the housing crash? One of the big takeaways from the crash was to avoid this exact line of thinking…

Now that the market is recovering, and home prices are growing again—in fact home prices are at an all-time high in nearly 1,000 cities across the country, according to Zillow—the siren song of seeing your home as an investment is becoming tempting once again.

Then four tips are offered to help ensure your home can be a decent investment: location matters, buy a home that needs some work so you can increase its value, “don’t buy the best house on the block,” and expect to stay in the home a while to allow the value to increase. In other words, a house is not automatically a good investment yet good planning can go a long ways.

At the same time, sentiment about seeing homes as good investments is not necessarily related to making bad choices about buying houses. In other words, we need to see how these beliefs become translated into actions. For example, more Americans may want to buy homes but if other pieces are not in place, such as good inventory or readily available mortgage credit, then this may not lead to another housing bubble. The bigger issue may come when everyone involved from buyers to lenders to the media gets caught up in a housing rush and it takes on an inertia of action that goes far beyond consumer sentiment.

Finally, views on homeowership as a good investment are tied to other factors:

Upper-income Americans are much more likely to say real estate and stocks are the best investment, possibly because of their experience with these types of investments. Upper-income Americans are most likely to say they own their home, at 87%, followed by middle (66%) and lower-income Americans (36%). Gallup found that homeowners (33%) are slightly more likely than renters (24%) to say real estate is the best choice for long-term investments.

Social class and wealth matter when determining what are viewed as good investments.

Dunphy’s home from Modern Family isn’t exactly a middle-class home

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The home used as the Phil and Claire Dunphy household on Modern Family is up for sale:

[G]et ready for a blast of memories from “Modern Family,” the Golden Globe & Emmy-winning ABC prime-time comedy that was filmed at 10336 Dunleer Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90064.

The price is $2.35 million, but listing agent Mitch Hagerman of Coldwell Banker Previews International said there’s decent income potential given the fact that TV producers have forked over generous fees for the right to film exterior shots of the property. He said it would be up to the new owners to negotiate with ABC Studios…

The home is a traditional, two-story style and has been impeccably remodeled, complete with crown molding, wood floors and upgraded appliances. It sits on a prime street in the coveted Cheviot Hills neighborhood. Hagerman says the home should sell pretty easily on its own merits.

“It’s a charming, gorgeous, cozy, family-oriented and classic-style home in a fantastic neighborhood where there’s very little inventory,” he said.

The home offers 4 bedrooms with en suite bathrooms, plus a powder room. The home last sold for $1.97 million in 2006.

A nice and expensive home. This is interesting because the Dunphy family is portrayed as being fairly middle-class. Phil is a realtor who is not the most successful or smart (these are running points throughout the shows). Claire recently returned to work, working for her father’s closet business, after not working. Where do they get all of their money? How do they afford such a nice house?

Sociologist Juliet Schor argued in The Overspent American that one problem of post-World War II television is that it showed an increasingly lavish middle-class lifestyle. The evolving image of the middle-class on television showed families with more money and possessions and not much discussion about how they could afford it all. The Dunphys are supposed to look like normal Americans yet their lifestyle is pretty wealthy with little concern about money and pretty nice possessions. Schor suggests portrayals like this pushed more Americans to consume more.

In other words, the show plays off the idea the extended family depicted is a “typical” American family yet its class status is far from what many American families experience.

Ironic but enjoyable living in cheaper inner-ring suburbs?

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James Lileks contrasts the criticism of 1950s suburbia and the current cool cheapness of such communities:

So it’s great when suburbs die! Except they’re not dying. A recent story in my local paper noted how the first-ring suburbs are great bargains for young people, which makes them cool again. So: Twenty-somethings in 1962 with two kids and a house full of Danish Modern furniture with push-button appliances and a Siamese ceramic cat on the mantle: the oppressive falsehood of the postwar American dream. Twenty-somethings with the same house in 2014, the same decor (they’re into mid-century design), and two pugs: the salvation of urban America, because the style section can do a piece that includes the phrases “lovingly restored” and “Josh works as a web designer for a nonprofit.”

Josh may go to the mall, but rest assured he’ll have the proper attitude: Here I am, ironically inhabiting the lifestyle of suburbanites, when I’m really the sort of guy who’s planning a Kickstarter campaign for my artisanal-shaving-cream company. We’re going to use fair-trade sustainable eucalyptus.

But he’ll go to the mall when the pugs are replaced by kids and they need something to do on a dreary February Tuesday, and everyone needs diversion. He’ll find himself in the food court, the tots fighting over a pretzel, the anodyne music leaking from speakers overhead, an Apple Store bag at his feet. Then one of the kids spies the ride that takes a quarter and lets you pretend you’re driving a car.

I have become my father, he thinks, and realizes that’s actually a good thing.

This hints at the gentrification possibilities of inner-ring suburbs: the homes are relatively cheap and the communities were once thriving suburbs, places that have good if not aging housing stocks. Plus, a number of them have more diverse populations as the cheaper housing allows for more lower-class residents as well as more immigrants and minorities. Their proximity to the big city can mean short commutes downtown even as one lives in a suburb.

At the same time, Lileks may just be downplaying the issues facing these inner-ring suburbs. They may have some potential for gentrification but unlike gentrifying urban neighborhoods, they don’t have the broader financial backing of a big city. In other words, their tax bases may not be very strong which limits what kind of local services and programs are possible. Additionally, there may not be the same cool factor in being in a suburb compared to a hip urban neighborhood. The suburb may be more dependent on cars, upping the cost of living there. The community may not have the quality of life amenities – good schools, safer streets – that wealthier suburbs are known for and that might attract wealthier residents.

h/t Instapundit

Photographing the class divide on LA mass transit

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A photographer considers what is revealed at the bus stops of Los Angeles buses during late night hours:

J. Wesley Brown’s vivid nighttime portraits of bus riders are a refreshing look at a rarely seen side of Los Angeles. The city’s freeway interchanges are iconic, but for many Angelinos, these bus stop dwellers represent an even more authentic feeling of home.

Brown, 34, spent two and a half years roaming the city to shoot Riders, a series of fascinating portraits of ordinary people doing ordinary things. That might seem like a mundane topic, but Riders offers a commentary on the societal strata of Los Angeles.

“Riding a bus in L.A. is the most outwardly visible sign of class divide,” says Brown.

In shooting Riders, Brown found the movie posters in bus stop advertising sometimes offered a commentary on the scenes framed by the bus shelters. And his exploration of the city noted that poorer neighborhoods that don’t attract advertising dollars often don’t have bus shelters at all.

Los Angeles is known for its cars, highways, and driving. Yet, owning a vehicle is expensive and mass transit is a necessary part of life for those with fewer resources. The current LA Metro might not be as expansive as the once-extensive streetcar systems but a major city today can’t function well or serve its full population without at least some mass transit.

It sounds like the pictures also highlight one of the odd features of car ownership in the United States: outside of a few places, like Manhattan, many Americans would choose to purchase a car when they have the economic means. Whether this is because a car offers more independence or is a symbol of having reached a certain social status or mass transit is viewed as more lower class or a combination of these, attaining car ownership is an important part of American life.

Chicago’s race and class differences on display in fight over Obama Library

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Six groups are vying for the Barack Obama Presidential Library in Chicago:

The library is “such a prize that nobody is going to yield power to anybody else,” veteran Chicago political analyst Don Rose said.The squabble also puts Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff, in the difficult position of trying to present a single, unified bid, lest the feuding weaken the city’s odds against rival campaigns to put the library in New York or Hawaii…

The main point of tension is between the University of Chicago, where Obama spent 12 years as a constitutional law professor until his 2004 election to the U.S. Senate, and a group advocating for Bronzeville, the city’s historic center of black culture, business and politics.

“They think that they can get whatever they want,” Bronzeville organizer Harold Lucas said of the university. “If you compare the cranes in the sky and that opulent growth of this university to the surrounding, predominantly African-American community, it’s a travesty. It’s a clear tale of two cities.”…

There are also two potential bids on the Far South Side, one led by Chicago State University and the other by a group promoting the historic Pullman neighborhood. It was in those areas that Obama established his earliest roots in the city as a community organizer in the mid-1980s, setting up job training programs and defending the rights of public housing tenants.

The University of Illinois at Chicago, on the Near West Side, is also taking a shot, as is a real estate developer pushing the former U.S. Steel Corp. site on the southeast lakefront.

Lots of interested actors and a number of them could make a good case that the library would help economic development – even the University of Chicago says their plan would be to build the library off-campus so it would help a neighborhood. This seems like a classic situation for some backroom deals and a growth machine perspective where those with more political and business power will end up calling the shots.

Is this a true test of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s abilities as a mayor? It will be interesting to see how he moves among all of these options.

“They get McMansions, we get McJobs”

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One columnist suggests McMansions are for the few thriving in the current economy while everyone else gets low-paying jobs:

The Great Recession ended in mid-2009, but for middle class Americans the economic “recovery” never began.

Times will get harder in 2014 for thousands of families in Bucks and Montgomery counties. As reported in this newspaper, long-term unemployment benefits ceased on Saturday for 73,000 Pennsylvanians, about 6,000 of them in the two counties. These people and their dependents will have the penultimate hope ’n change experience – no job, few prospects for full-time work and no unemployment benefits.

The economic news for the majority of Americans has not been good in recent years. However, I’m intrigued by the argument about who McMansions are for. The suggestion here is that McMansions are only for the wealthy, those who have still done well in the economic crisis. Yet, the typical usage of the word McMansion implies that they are big houses for the masses, not just the wealthy. At the economic peak in the early 2000s, the idea of a McMansion meant that a middle-class American could purchase a large and ostentatious home.

At play here is the relative status of McMansion owners. Are they the nouveau riche who are trying to conspicuously present their wealth? Are they the top 10% of the population? The truly wealthy don’t need McMansions – they have mansions – but in times of more scarcity, McMansions might not be for the masses. Also, the article seems to present its criticism of McMansions from those of lower economic and social standing whereas some of the critique of McMansions in recent decades has come from the top in suggesting the owners aren’t really wealthy or don’t have much architectural taste.

Limited social mobility: 70% of those born in bottom quintile of income don’t reach the middle

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Social mobility up from the bottom is relatively limited in the United States:

The most exhaustive of these reports is Pew Charitable Trust’s Economic Mobility Project. Since 2006, the public policy organization has studied such movement up and down the socioeconomic ladder, focusing on just how much better or worse adult children are faring in terms of family income and wealth than their parents at the same age.

For the last 35 years, the news has not been good, researchers said, with the inequality gap growing ever wider. Some 43 percent of Americans raised in the bottom quintile remain stuck at the bottom as adults, with household income of less than $28,900 a year. An additional 27 percent have bumped up just one rung, earning less than $44,000 annually. Consequently, a total of 70 percent never reach the middle, the study found.

More and more, the life chances of a child are dependent on the education and income of his parents. The study found that having a college degree, being part of a dual-earning couple and building up savings and home equity were key qualities in climbing the economic ladder.

Even those who have managed to increase their earnings compared with their parents have lost ground, relative to everyone else. Only 4 percent who start in the bottom make it to the top. Access to opportunities is actually better in Scandinavia and western Europe than in the country that invented the Horatio Alger story, experts said.

So while 30% are able to move from the bottom quintile to the middle, the majority do not. Yet, the narrative in the United States is that everyone can make this move, particularly if they work hard and take advantage of the opportunities available to them.

Natural gas bus commercial misses that riding the bus is already helping the environment

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This commercial from America’s Natural Gas Alliance highlights natural gas buses in Los Angeles. The message is that the natural gas buses are better for the environment. They may be – but it misses the point that individuals using mass transit are already helping the environment (let alone traffic congestion). So having a natural gas bus is a bonus. Perhaps we would all be better off if more people were willing to ride any kind of bus in the first place.

However, given that it is difficult to get wealthier people to ride buses, we should then ask when we might have cars powered by natural gas. If natural gas is cleaner to burn, why not reduce the emissions from cars rather than focusing on the limited number of Americans who regularly ride the bus?

(I realize the natural gas buses may just be a marketing ploy. However, it is really about helping the environment, not good PR or trying to sell more natural gas, why not use natural gas to power more things?)