Mapping Upward Mobility for Residents of a Mixed-Income

Housing Project in Salishan, WA

Natasha Boyde, Master’s ProgramDr. Deborah Thien (Chair), Geography Dept.

April 24, 2015

~800 households-Market rate + low income + apartments-75% of population under 18 years old-Median Household income <14,000 annually

-WorkSource office, health clinic, Housing Authority office

STUDY SITE: SALISHAN

-Negative effects of typical income-based housing design;

“stuck in place” (Sharkey 2013)

-Shift toward Income Integration design

Little evaluation of results (Brophy and Smith 1997; Schwartz and Tajbaksh 1997)

-Measuring housing satisfaction:

-access to essentials

-sense of community

-acceptance of neighbors; ”people here are like me”

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Cabrini Green, Chicago, Ill.

1) Do Salishan residents feel they have access to the resources they need to move up and out of poverty?a) Is development of social network(s) an important

resource to enhancing mobility?

2) Can ethnographic and mental map methods reveal one’s personal geography and map of resources?

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1) Despite theorized benefits of Mixed-Income housing, the experience of residents say otherwise.

2) Qualitative methods capture that experience, and help to evaluate housing policy design.

Goal: to demonstrate that participatory mapping methods can get at new kinds of data on identity, socio-spatial, and socio-political contexts within a city.

ARGUMENT AND PURPOSE

Mixed Income: housing policies that integrate units affordable to multiple income levels within a development site(Schwartz 2010)

Mental maps: hand-drawn maps that represent how a place is perceived and lived by an individual or collective group(Dictionary of Human Geography 2009)

Ethnographic Interviews: interviews + immersion into culture(Briggs 2011)

KEY TERMS/CONCEPTS

1 hour Mental Map InterviewRecruit homeowners and rentersAudio-record interviewsTranscribe and code interviews

METHOD: THE MENTAL MAP INTERVIEW

Den Besten (2010)

The Analytics (Gieseking 2013)

-Resources identified/knowledge of

-Social network and identity

-Upward Mobility

-Program Experience

-Feelings ‘empowered’ or ‘downtrodden’

Mapping + interview = substantial data that inform policy

Project is not working, but explanations are not simple

ANALYZING RESULTS

PARTICIPATORY METHODS

PPM - Dennis 2009

Youth PGIS - Dennis 2006

Youth den Besten (2010)

Less visual, more analytic

Little social interaction between housing and homeowners

Vast differences among just 6 participants

-nomenclature

-knowledge of resources

-family/financial history

Experience in the project

Impressions, perceptions of the Housing Authority

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

“The resources here in Salishan might give people what they need to live a good life, but no one’s probably ever heard of them” (Nicole).

“Aside from those three resources I don’t really know of any programs for residents in general. I think they did used to have some, but if there are or there were most people don’t know where the locations are. There might be more resources around here but people just don’t know how to get to them. […] they don’t advertise enough. They do have newsletters sometimes that come in the mail. I read through it but it’s nothing helpful. There’s nothing that’s going to apply to me or anything.” (Breanna)

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

“I see it as this: some people feel torn, some people feel that if they got a good job they would go someplace else, but then if they live somewhere else they’ll have to pay more in rent and everything else. In the end they’ll probably just stay here because it’s easier to make payments. Once you move out it’s not just rent that goes up, everything is more expensive. It’s a lot! A car, transit…especially if you don’t have a lot of bills now and then you move out there are just tons more bills. Maybe a mortgage. There’s just more bills. I think a lot of them feel obligated to stay here because you can get kind of trapped.” (Breanna)

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

“I help the neighbors keep track of their kids. When you have nothing better to do like work then you tend to get to know your neighborhood more and what your kids are experiencing every day. In the neighborhood I’m another community member that a lot of the kids and parents come to, because I have useful resources and I am connected to a lot.” (Nicole)

“When one does get a job and the other doesn’t it’s easy to blame. Instead of taking personal responsibility and doing the work to get a job, they just say things like ‘oh well she didn’t deserve that’. It’s just a defense thing. If you’re in a position where you don’t feel safe or good enough you build a tough shell that keeps you safe and keeps you feeling like you’re good enough – sadly at the expense of other people sometimes…there’s a lot of resentment and it’s a barrier to building the community. You know, we can’t focus, we just have to love those people regardless and not try to get caught up in all of that.” (Becca)

“Because we’re not all that comfortable here we’re striving for better. Even if it’s just wanting to get out of this neighborhood, there’s something inside people here that they want things and that can grow into great things.” (Becca)

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS

KEY REFERENCES

Axhausen, K.W. “Social Networks, Mobility Biographies, and Travel: Survey Challenges.” Environment and Planning B, Planning and Design, Vol. 35 (2008): 981-996.

Briggs, Daniel. “Emotions, Ethnography and Crack Cocaine Users.” Emotions, Space and Society, (2011)

Brophy, Paul C. and Rhonda N. Smith. “Mixed-Income Housing: Factors for Success.” Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, Vol. 3 No. 2 (1997): 3-31.

Gieseking, Jack Jen. “Where We Go From Here: The Mental Sketch Mapping Method and Its Analytic Components.” Qualitative Inquiry, 19(9) (2013): 712-724.

Gillespie, Carol Ann. “How Culture Constructs Our Sense of Neighborhood: Mental Maps and Children’s Perceptions of Place.” Journal of Geography, 109 (2010): 18-29.

Lynch, Kevin. The Image of the City. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1960.

Schwartz, Alex F. Housing Policy in the United States. New York: Routledge, 2010.

Further References Available on Request

TOP REFERENCES