The constructivist paradigm was used in the research study to focus on the challenges with affordable housing and concentrations of Housing Choice Voucher recipients in a county in Southern California. Viewed through the lens of Social Stratification posed by Max Weber, ones opportunities in life are based on his/her position of class, status and power, where by those with lower positions are excluded from opportunities. The literature discusses the goal of the Housing Choice Voucher Program is to deconcentrate poverty and provide opportunities to move to higher income areas in order to provide opportunities for social upward mobility. Residential socioeconomic segregation has considerable consequences for public health. Keeping in mind the sensitivity of this controversial topic, the researcher protected and maintained confidentiality through the research process. Thus, the member‑checking meeting in which the joint construction is shared with the study participants was held on a secured internet website. Data was gathered by interviewing a diverse group of participants from various levels of agency, including government agencies. This qualitative data was analyzed by identifying “units” of information that were then grouped into categories of topics relevant to the research focus. The result of the final data analysis was a formulation of sixteen categories which was then interpreted in the form of a social construction which concludes that there is a lack of affordable housing in the county, and concentrations of subsidized housing in lower income cities versus affluent cities is due to the demographics of cities as well as exclusion brought on by NIMBY occurrences. Implications for macro Social Work practice included community organizing and policy advocacy at various governmental levels. The termination of the study did not result in the study participants planning to move forward with the solutions that were formed during the research process. A “Thank you” email was sent to the participants with the final joint construction attached as well as the instructions on where to find the final report. The researcher invited the study participants to contact her in the future regarding any opportunities related to affordable and public housing in the County.

Thesis advisor: Rebekah L. Coley / Recent decades have witnessed the increasing spatial concentration of poverty and affluence in the United States (Biscoff & Reardon, 2013). Given well-documented links between neighborhood economic contexts and wellbeing (Chow et al., 2005), this has the potential to exacerbate disparities in health, particularly for people with limited neighborhood choice. However, limited research has systematically examined the neighborhood features underlying these links. A more nuanced understanding of why neighborhood poverty matters is essential for promoting equitable neighborhood development. Using rigorous analytic techniques that account for the dynamic nature of neighborhoods and help adjust for selection bias, I considered two complementary questions: 1) do observed neighborhood resources and stressors mediate associations between neighborhood poverty and wellbeing within and between individuals; and 2) how do observed versus perceived changes in neighborhood features mediate links between neighborhood poverty and wellbeing? I combined individual-level longitudinal data from the Post-Katrina Study of Resilience and Recovery with administrative neighborhood data drawn from the Census Bureau, FBI, and EPA. Analyses focused on a sample of 606 participants – primarily young Black mothers with low levels of income – who were affected by Hurricane Katrina, most of whom experienced some period of forced relocation. Participants were surveyed once before (2003/04) and twice after (2006/07; 2009) the hurricane. Results paint a complex picture. Contrasting with prior research, total effects of neighborhood poverty on wellbeing were limited. However, changes in neighborhood poverty were linked to wellbeing indirectly through intermediary neighborhood features, with results pointing to benefits and detriments of rising neighborhood poverty. Results were driven by those who changed neighborhoods over the course of the study. For participants that lived in the same New Orleans neighborhood across waves, changes in neighborhood poverty proved less consequential. Overall, results suggest that rather than treating neighborhood poverty as uniformly problematic for wellbeing, efforts to promote health equity should identify and build upon existing assets of neighborhoods, like affordability and amenity access, while also reducing stressors. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

Studien syftar till att undersöka hur socioekonomisk segregation behandlas och kommuniceras inom olika instanser. Studien undersöker om kommuner och nationella organ arbetar utifrån samma mål och strategier rörande socioekonomisk segregation. Studien har en lokal avgränsning till det nyexploaterade området Gävle strand i Gävle. Segregationen mellan olika socioekonomiska samhällsgrupper har ökat under de senaste årtiondena. Höga bostadspriser och uppsatta hyreskrav gör det svårt för samhällsklasser med lägre inkomst att etablera sig på bostadsmarknaden. Detta leder till att socioekonomiskt starka grupper har större möjlighet att följa utvecklingen på bostadsmarknaden. Studien har genomfört en kvalitativ innehållsanalys samt en kvalitativt jämförande analys, där en jämförelse har gjorts mellan den kommunala stadsplaneringen och nationellt uppsatta mål och strategier som berör ämnet socioekonomisk segregation. Ämnet tystnad i text har också behandlats. Studiens resultat visar att det finns tydliga likheter och skillnader i hur ämnet socioekonomisk segregation behandlas i de olika dokumenten. För att säkra mångfalden i bostadsområden anses i majoriteten av dokumenten att blandade upplåtelseformer är viktigt. Samtidigt beskrivs det i dokumenten om problematiken med att nyproduktion är för dyrt och leder till homogenitet. En stor skillnad i denna studies resultat är hur i de nationella dokumenten lyfts fram vikten av att ställa mer krav i den kommunala planeringen. Samtidigt som det i de kommunala dokumenten redogörs att kommunen inte vill begränsa byggherrarnas byggkoncept. Det finns även skillnader internt hur kommunala och lokala plandokument behandlar socioekonomisk segregation. Studien har skapat en ökad förståelse för hur arbetet kring socioekonomisk segregation behandlas och genomförs genom att påvisa vilka skillnader och likheter som finns mellan olika styr- och plandokument. Studiens resultat kan användas för att bättre förstå dessa likheter och skillnader i syfte att kunna säkerställa att arbetet på kommunal och nationell nivå i större utsträckning behandlar socioekonomisk segregation likvärdigt i framtiden. / This study aims to investigate how socio-economic segregation is treated and communicated within different instances. The study examines whether municipalities and national agencies work on the same goals and strategies regarding socio-economic segregation. The study has a local delimitation to the newly developed area of Gävle Strand in Gävle. Segregation between different socioeconomic social groups has increased in recent decades. High housing prices and rental requirements make it difficult for social classes with lower incomes to establish themselves in the housing market. This leads to socio-economically strong groups having a greater opportunity to follow developments in the housing market. The studies have conducted a qualitative content analysis as well as a qualitative comparative analysis, where a comparison has been made between the municipal urban planning and national targets and strategies related to socio-economic segregation. Silence has also been addressed in the text. The results of the study show that there are similarities and differences in how the subject socio-economic segregation is addressed in the documents. In order to ensure the diversity of residential areas, most of the documents considered mixed forms of tenure to be important. At the same time, the documents describe the problems of new production being too expensive and leading to homogeneity. A big difference in this study's results is how the national documents emphasize the importance of placing more demands on municipal planning, while the municipal documents explain that they do not want to limit the building concepts of the building developers. There are also differences internally between municipal and local plan documents that deal with socio-economic segregation. The study has created an increased understanding of how the work on socio-economic segregation is treated and implemented, by demonstrating what differences and similarities exist between different control and planning documents. The study's results can be used to better understand these similarities and differences in order to ensure that work at the different levels to a greater extent deals with socio-economic segregation in the same way in the future.

Segregation refers to the uneven spatial distribution of social groups over space. Segregation can be perceived as the spatial representation of social, cultural, and economic exclusion. There is no accepted standard way segregation is measured; instead, studies have used a wide range of methods, measurements, and indices to estimate levels of segregation. Existing studies are seldomly longitudinal in character, mostly because of lack of data, and have only been conducted until 2010 for Stockholm. The aim of this thesis is to investigate trends of residential poverty segregation in Stockholm County for the period 1991-2016. This study has utilized the isolation index, the dissimilarity index, percentile plots and location quotients on data aggregated to both administrative units and individualized neighborhoods on multiple scales to assess how these common techniques influence results. Results show that segregation patterns vary depending on technique, but most results indicate increasing levels of segregation of individuals at risk of poverty for the period 1991-2011, in line with previous research. On the other hand, the results indicate stagnating or decreasing levels of poverty segregation in recent years. Poverty segregation varies substantially by scale level, and therefore this thesis recommends multiscalar methods in segregation studies.

Since the foundation of the Nordic welfare state, architecture and urban planning have been central elements in the creation of post‐war, modern welfare cities. Ideals of healthy, socially conscious and productive capitalist futures have been articulated through housing design, planning strategies and infrastructure projects. Today however, the welfare city is under pressure due to the current crises our cities are facing. Central issues to these crises are housing unaffordability, rising inequality and socio‐ economic segregation. Over the past few decades, urban planners have become more concerned about these themes in relation to our cities. Housing policies have taken a turn to a more market‐ oriented approach and while there are high investments in real estate, affordable housing supply is still lacking behind. On the other hand, new housing policies are arising that should help make cities fairer and more just for everyone, often referred to as inclusionary housing policies. In this research, various housing policies are being investigated to explore how inclusionary housing addresses the current housing distribution and rising inequality in our cities. To introduce this research, a theoretical framework is outlined, introducing four different concepts that revolve around affordable housing: inclusionary housing policies, socio‐economic segregation, social mix and people‐based policies. This is followed by a methodology section and analysis consisting of two separate parts. First, a literature review is conducted to see how each of the described concepts relate to the Nordic context, after which the geographical focus is laid on Copenhagen, Denmark. In the second part of the analysis, a socio‐economic and geographical analysis is conducted, investigating the distribution of different tenure types in the city of Copenhagen. In this case study, a total of four different tenure types are analysed, namely (1) owner‐occupied housing, (2) private rental housing, (3) housing cooperatives and (4) non‐profit housing. Geographical information systems were used to map the change in distribution of each tenure type, for the period of 2000 to 2021. In addition, possible relations to patterns of socio‐economic segregation are explored, by comparing the change in distribution of tenure types to changes in distribution of average income levels. A significant overlap was found between new housing development areas and areas showing a higher average disposable income in 2019 compared to 2000. In regard of this, recent literature have warned that more market involvement in housing is expected to contribute to income disparities and segregation (Van Ham et al., 2016). The obtained results of this research can be considered in light of this, confirming that the distribution of tenure types is related to patterns of segregation. While this research brings new insights on housing developments in Copenhagen, it is suggested that the case of Copenhagen provides more widely applicable warnings for other cities undergoing a similar neoliberalization of the local housing market. This calls for a political shift in housing development, in which housing must be approached as a public good. On top of that, affordable housing should be made accessible and equally distributed around cities, to avoid further processes of socio‐spatial segregation and polarization. To achieve this, political and ideological strategies must be restored in order to build further on a modern welfare state, providing affordable and good housing for all.