GEOG 340: Day 10 Immigration and Neighbourhood Change, including Social Housing

Housekeeping Items “The Clean Bin Project” is showing at Worldbridger tonight at 7 in 356, Room 109, by donation. I want share with you, with permission, a presentation that was put together last year by Emily Hannah on “DIY Urbanism,” as it’s relevant to what we were talking about on Tuesday. It’s interesting that DIY Urbanism is cited as a potential contributor to gentrification, as improved qualify of life can attract more affluent people, as can ‘green development’ and enhanced green space. This is the focus for a session at the American Association of Geographers’ conference in 2015.

Housekeeping Items Did you know that there is funding available at VIU for students to participate at a conference, workshop or a scholarly event? This funding is available through the Student Travel and Conference Fund and/or the Jessica Wilde Conference Participation Fund. To be considered for funding students must submit a proposal to Kathryn Jepson at the Research & Scholarly Activity Office by the specified deadlines: Thursday, October 30, 2014 Thursday, February 5, 2015 For details about the funding criteria, eligibility and instructions on how to apply please see the funding opportunity web page: portunities/studenttravelandconference.asp. portunities/studenttravelandconference.asp

Immigrant Residential Patterns Where people live, and under what conditions – crime, absence of role models, or of useful networks – can affect people’s life chances. Moving into immigrant enclaves can be positive or negative. Their attraction is that they often provide useful networks for employment and the like. Burgess’ original theory of immigrants moving into ‘zones in transition,’ and then into working-class areas (better amenities, but higher housing costs), and eventually to better areas on the periphery. The second and third stage involve penetration, invasion, and succession. Massey, et al. argue that immigrants at first stick close together, but as their knowledge and confidence grows, they move further afield. That notwithstanding, relative affluence does not always explain the extent to which people live in desirable neighbourhoods. Teixeira found, in a study of Kelowna, that Asian immigrants have difficulty accessing housing information because of limited English, often not having vehicles, and having low-paying jobs.

Residential Patterns (cont’d) Sometimes, there is a cultural clash when the wealthy members of one group move into an area that has been traditionally dominated by members of another ethnic elite, as in the case of Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale in Vancouver.

‘Ethnic Businesses’ In view of limited career mobility, some immigrants choose to start their own businesses. Initially, these pay appeal to members of their own ethnicity but, over time, they can become patronized by members of a number of national groups.

Both Canada and the U.S. have had public housing programs. In the U.S., 810,000 units were built under the Housing Act between 1949 and 1974, and it was of poor quality and located in economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods (see pp for an analysis of why U.S. public housing proved such a failure). Regent Park in Toronto (1949) was the first public housing project in Canada. In contrast with the U.S., where only 1% of all -housing is purpose-built social housing, in countries like Holland is 35%. The HOPE IV program in the U.S. was intended to break up the dense concentrations of public housing slums with a more ‘new urbanist,’ mixed income approach, but it was criticized for a lack of one-to-one replacement. Public Housing

In Canada, senior – federal and provincial governments – largely got out of social housing in the early 1990s. BC has still been paying for the rehabilitation of some Single-Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels – especially around the time of the Olympics – and then turning them over to non-profits to manage. And a few purpose-built housing projects have been built to house people with mental health and addiction issues, but they have quite problematic because they lack adequate supportive services. “Marguerite Ford Apartments produced 729 police calls in initial 16 months of operation” Public Housing

Pp of the text discuss why people move from, or stay in, a given neighbourhood. However, some people are constrained by a variety of factors in terms of where they can move. Affordability is certainly one factor. Access to work, especially for those without cars, is another. There is a long tradition of housing being segregated by race, class, and ethnicity. There were and are a number of strategies by which this was and is achieved: Sales specifications on title (covenants, as with British Properties) Real estate agents keeping the ‘wrong’ type of people out Large lot zoning to make areas less affordable and/or creating different subdivisions with different sized (and priced) houses for different clientele. “Block busting” is also mentioned on p. 225 and we discussed “red-lining last week. Mobility and Segregation

Discussion Questions In your experience/ based on your observations, what have been the spatial residential patterns of new immigrants, and how has this changed over time? What about job mobility and/or business development? In your experience, are there differences between Canadian cities and/or between Canadian cities and cities in other countries?