Mobility is generally seen as a positive thing for the economy, as people can move from areas with few employment prospects to those with more opportunities. It’s not a completely benign process, however, as new research from Johns Hopkins illustrates.
The researchers examined 17 years’ worth of data on 1,200 low-income households from five different cities. The data revealed that urgent crises, such as housing policy changes, landlord behaviors, or income changes, often force these families to choose the safest and most convenient locations for their immediate survival. This prevents them from taking a more considered approach to their search to allow them to find locations with good job prospects or strong schools.
“By listening to how low-income families make their housing decisions we can develop better policies to target what is really getting in their way of moving to higher opportunity neighborhoods with less racial and economic segregation,” the researchers say. “They’re not making that move because there is seldom enough time before the next emergency arises and forces them out and demands an immediate solution.”
Fragile circumstances
It’s a level of precarity that the researchers believe will only be exacerbated by the current pandemic, as unemployment is likely to rise, especially in low-income communities. They urge lawmakers to consider the extent to which policies make various assumptions about how and why low-income families decide where to live and send their children to school. Currently, they argue, decision-makers often assume that their decisions are based on personal preferences, with structural impediments, such as racial discrimination also a factor.
The analysis suggests that long-term exposure to economic disadvantage and racially segregated neighborhoods result in repeated reactive moves that don’t benefit those households. Residents revealed that the sudden changes in their circumstances forced them to move without being able to search for the ideal location, with a “trial and error approach” most common.
The federal government is already believed to be incorporating the insights from the research into specific policies to help families better choose the right locations for them, not only in terms of their employment prospects, but also to support their physical and mental health, and the education of their children.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the already existing housing crisis in the United States; with unemployment rates more than tripling in the first three months of the pandemic, an enormous eviction wave looms on the horizon,” the authors conclude. “As more families are forced to make ‘reactive’ moves under duress and financial constraints, our research has potential to highlight the consequences for households and neighborhoods, as well as provide guidance on how to respond to such a fast-moving crisis.”
