Tenant Immobility and Family Well-Being: Considering the Role of Networks, Neighborhoods, and the Indoor Environment

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济科学(SBE)博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在南加州大学安·欧文斯博士的赞助下，这一博士后奖学金奖项支持一位研究租户不动和士绅化之间关系的早期职业科学家。不断上涨的租金和停滞不前的工资导致了美国的经济适用房危机。衡量住房负担不起对美国家庭影响的社会学家倾向于关注不断上涨的住房成本如何将租房者赶出社区，以及租房者在流离失所后会搬到哪里。然而，这种关注忽略了住房负担不起可能会对低收入租房者产生负面影响，甚至在他们经历流离失所之前。因为搬家既昂贵又不确定，家庭很可能会做出重大权衡，才能留在现在的房子里。利用深度访谈和调查数据，该项目将调查居住在加利福尼亚州洛杉矶县的固定家庭的经历，洛杉矶县是美国最负担不起的租赁市场之一。它将确定租房者留在家里使用的策略，以及这些策略如何塑造他们的物质、身体和情感幸福感。更具体地说，它将检验一种预测，即租户在家中管理不善的维护工作，以便留在他们看重的社区，以及严格的租户筛选做法会阻止他们远离低质量的出租房。这个项目将关注低收入少数民族家庭的经历，他们在居住决策的社会学研究中处于不足地位。这项研究的发现可以指导政策干预，更好地保护租户不受公寓撤资的影响，并使租赁住房在租户筛选阶段更容易获得。近40年来，社会学家一直在研究中产阶级化和流离失所(例如，非自愿迁移)之间的关系。然而，较少的研究考察了中产阶级化社区中处于不利地位的租房者的经历，这些人是固定的。由于忽视了不搬家的低收入家庭，现有的关于中产阶级化的社会学研究低估了住房成本上升对家庭福祉的影响。为了解决这一差距，本项目将回答以下研究问题：(1)社交网络、邻里环境和楼层条件如何影响租房者的流动性？和(2)，什么是潜在的抵消途径，通过固定塑造租房者的物质，情感和身体健康？该项目总部设在加利福尼亚州洛杉矶县，将使用来自80名低收入移民租户的采访和调查数据--这一群体在住宅流动性文献中鲜有学术关注。我将用两项调查作为采访的补充--评估社会融合的伯克曼赛姆社交网络指数和美国人口普查的住房充分性衡量标准，该指标涵盖了室内环境质量。我假设，固定租户管理不符合标准的居住环境，以保持邻近社区资源、就业机会和支持性社交网络。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Ann Owens at the University of Southern California, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the relation between tenant immobility and gentrification. Rising rental costs combined with stagnating wages have led to an affordable housing crisis in the United States. Sociologists measuring the impact of housing unaffordability on U.S. families tend to focus on how rising housing costs displace renters from neighborhoods, and where renters move after they have been displaced. However, this focus overlooks how housing unaffordability may negatively impact low-income renters even before they experience displacement. Because moves are expensive and uncertain, it is likely that families make significant trade-offs to remain in their current home. Using in-depth interviews and survey data, this project will examine the experiences of immobile families living in Los Angeles County, California—one of the nation’s least affordable rental markets. It will identify the strategies that renters use to remain in their home and how these strategies shape their material, physical, and emotional well-being. More specifically, it will test the prediction that tenants manage poor maintenance at home to remain in neighborhoods that they value, and that strict tenant screening practices discourage moves away from low-quality rentals. This project will focus on the experiences of low-income minority households, who are understudied in sociological research on residential decision-making. The findings from this study can direct policy interventions that better protect tenants from apartment disinvestment and make rental housing more accessible at the tenant screening stage of housing searches. Sociologists have studied the relationship between gentrification and displacement (e.g., involuntary moves) for nearly four decades. However, less research has examined the experiences of disadvantaged renters in gentrifying neighborhoods who are immobile. By overlooking low-income families who do not move, existing sociological research on gentrification underestimates the impact of rising housing costs on family well-being. To address this gap, this project will answer the following research questions: (1) How do social networks, neighborhood contexts, and building-level conditions influence renter immobility? And (2), what are the potentially countervailing pathways through which immobility shapes renters’ material, emotional, and physical well-being? Based in Los Angeles County, CA, this project will use interviews and survey data from 80 low-income, immigrant renters—a population that has received scant scholarly attention in the residential mobility literature. I will supplement interviews with two surveys—the Berkman Syme Social Network Index to assess social integration and a housing adequacy measure from the U.S. Census that captures indoor environmental quality. I hypothesize that immobile renters manage substandard living environments to remain near neighborhood resources, job opportunities, and supportive social networks.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.