Forever Homes and Temporary Stops: Housing Search Logics and Residential Selection

Residential selection is central in determining children’s housing, neighborhood, and school contexts, and an extensive literature considers the social processes that shape residential searches and attainment. While this literature typically frames the residential search as a uniform process oriented around finding residential options with desired characteristics, we examine whether individuals may differentially conceive of these searches in ways that sustain inequality in residential attainment. Drawing on repeated, in-depth interviews with a stratified random sample of 156 households with young children in two metropolitan counties, we find that parents exhibit distinct residential search logics, informed by the constraints they face. Higher-income families usually engage in purposive searches oriented around their residential preferences. They search for “forever homes” that will meet their families’ needs for years to come. In contrast, low-income parents typically draw on a logic of deferral. While they hope to eventually search for a home with the unit, neighborhood, and school characteristics they desire, aspirations for homeownership lead them to conceive of their moves (which are often between rental units) as “temporary stops,” which justifies accepting homes that are inconsistent with their long-term preferences. In addition, because they are often “pushed” to move by negative circumstances, they focus on their immediate housing needs and, in the most extreme cases, adopt an “anywhere but here” approach. These logics constitute an unexamined mechanism through which economic resources shape residential searches and ultimate attainment.

Differential Attainment of Affordable Housing among America’s Ethnoracial Groups; 2005-2017

Affordable housing is an under researched area of residential attainment despite is importance and the potential consequences of households spending too much on housing—such as forced moves and financial instability. This study analyzes disparities in attainment of affordable housing between white, black, Hispanic, and Asian households using 2005-2017 American Community Survey microdata linked to county-level ACS 5-year estimates. I test hypotheses regarding the overall disparities between ethnoracial groups, potential limited returns on socioeconomic status and acculturation characteristics for black, Hispanic, and Asian households relative to white households, and the positive effects of high coethnic populations within the county of residence. Results show there are significant gaps between whites and the other groups regarding their attainment of affordable housing throughout the study period. Differential returns on socioeconomic status are also present, with Hispanics and Asians receiving lesser returns on education relative to whites. Hispanics received significant benefits regarding immigrant status compared to other ethnoracial groups. When accounting for county-level ethnoracial composition there is clear evidence that black, Hispanic, and Asian households are more likely to benefit than white households if they live in a county with an increased coethnic population. However, all groups become less likely overall to live in affordable housing as a county’s percentage white decreases suggesting that ethnoracial composition affects both the overall attainment of affordable housing for all groups and the relative disparities between groups within counties.

Do More-Assimilated Latinxs Leave the Barrio and Move to “White” Neighborhoods? Latinxs, Young Adults, and Spatial Assimilation

Studies of Latinx–white residential segregation and of Latinx residential attainment consistently report findings consistent with spatial assimilation. Nevertheless, most studies of this theory use statistical models that cannot account for multiple dimensions of neighborhoods that may influence residential attainment. In this article, we test predictions of the spatial assimilation model using discrete choice analyses, a multidimensional model. We use data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study on the residential attainment of 1,080 Latinx young adults, most of whom have recently left their parents’ homes. After accounting for the multiple dimensions of neighborhoods, we find little evidence that assimilation from income, generation, or barrio background influences young adult residential attainment. The consequences of language assimilation are modest. However, we find that Latinx young adults with a bachelor’s degree live in “whiter” and “less Latinx” neighborhoods than those without a BA net of these multiple dimensions. The findings suggest that increased assimilation among Latinx young adults is unlikely to improve their residential attainment unless it specifically includes greater education.

Differential Returns?: Neighborhood Attainment among Hispanic and Non–Hispanic White New Legal Permanent Residents

We use data from the New Immigrant Survey to examine patterns of residential attainment among Hispanic immigrants who recently became legal permanent residents (LPRs) relative to new LPR non–Hispanic white immigrants. We focus on whether these Hispanic and non–Hispanic white immigrants differ in their ability to transform human capital into residential advantage. Our results suggest that the answer depends on the neighborhood attribute in question. When predicting residence in tracts with relatively more non–Hispanic whites, the answer is yes, with evidence in support of the place stratification model of residential attainment. We find that non–Hispanic white immigrants have access to relatively whiter neighborhoods than their Hispanic immigrant counterparts, irrespective of differences in education levels. When assessing Hispanic immigrants’ ability to enter socioeconomically advantaged neighborhoods, however, the differences we observe are mostly accounted for by compositional differences in sociodemographic and acculturation factors. Taken together, our findings suggest that Hispanic immigrants are more similar to their white immigrant counterparts when it comes to converting higher education into higher income neighborhoods than into increased residential integration with whites; although their exposure to more socioeconomically advantaged neighborhoods at all levels of education remains lower than that of their white immigrant counterparts.

Disability Status, Housing Tenure, and Residential Attainment in Metropolitan America

In 2010, 18.7 percent of the U.S. non-institutionalized population had a disability. Despite the existence of the Fair Housing Amendments Act (FHAA), which prohibits housing discrimination on the basis of disability, recent research has found that individuals and/or families with disabilities live in poorer quality housing and neighborhoods than those without disabilities. However, no research has examined such disparities in residential attainment separately by housing tenure; our research seeks to fill this gap. The findings suggest that residential disadvantage among households with people with disabilities is worse in the sales market compared to the rental market. These findings are discussed as they relate to theories on residential attainment. The implications of our study suggest that more attention should be given to people with disabilities as they navigate the housing market, particularly in the sales market, and that greater enforcement of the FHAA is warranted in the sales market.

Black-White Inequality

This chapter documents patterns and trends in black-white inequality, focusing on education, income, wealth, poverty, residential attainment, and health. While some progress has been made in reducing black-white inequality along some dimensions, there has been little progress on others. The chapter provides an evaluation of the factors that contribute to racial differences, reflecting on the theories raised in the previous chapter. In doing so, it also discuss the role of incarceration and family structure in shaping patterns of inequality.

Ethnic Origin and Residential Attainment of Immigrants in European Countries

Segregated ethnic neighborhoods are prevalent in most contemporary European cities. Whereas patterns of segregation have been studied extensively in America, research on immigrants’ segregation and residential location in Europe is relatively new. The present research utilizes data from the European Social Survey to examine patterns of locational attainment among immigrants across 13 European countries and the extent to which they are influenced by immigrants’ tenure in the host country, socio–economic characteristics, preferences for residential location, exposure to discrimination, and ethnic and cultural origin. The analysis reveals that residential attainment varies considerably across ethnic and cultural groups: immigrants from Asia or Africa as well as Muslims are less likely to reside in neighborhoods which are perceived to be inhabited mostly by Europeans. Although the effects of generation, ethnic origin, and Muslim religion on residential location are quite uniform across countries, some meaningful cross–national differences in patterns and levels of immigrants’ residential segregation are observed and discussed. Net of other effects, differential residential preferences and perception of discrimination are found to influence perceived ethnic composition of immigrants’ neighborhoods.