Soc (2008) 45:392–394 DOI 10.1007/s12115-008-9114-4

BOOK REVIEW

The Housing Divide: How Generations of Immigrants Fare in New York’s Housing Market. By Emily Rosenbaum and Samantha Friedman New York University Press. 2006, 304 pp. ISBN-10: 081477590X; ISBN-13: 978-0814775905, $45.00 Alex Schwartz

Published online: 24 June 2008 # Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008

Its title notwithstanding, this book is as much about race and racial discrimination as it is about immigrants and immigration. Drawing from a data set unique to New York City, Rosenbaum (professor of sociology at Fordham University and Friedman (assistant professor of sociology at Northeastern University) trace housing and neighborhood conditions over succeeding generations of immigrants of different races and ethnicities. They find that while the descendents of white immigrants tend to live in higherquality homes and neighborhoods than did their parents and grandparents, the same is not true of black immigrants and many Hispanic immigrants. The research shows that the children and grandchildren of black and, to a lesser degree, Hispanic, immigrants face housing and neighborhood conditions that are no better and sometimes worse than those of their immigrant forebears. This book, in other words, highlights the role of race and ethnicity in allocating housing opportunities to foreign-born and native population of New York City. In so doing, the book casts much light on longstanding debates over the assimilation and economic advancement of foreign immigrants in the USA. The heart of the book consists of a close-grained analysis of the New York City Housing Vacancy Survey (HVS). Conducted every two or three years by the US Census Bureau for the City of New York, the HVS is designed to estimate the city’s rental vacancy rate—and whether it

A. Schwartz (*) Milano the New School for Management and Urban Policy, New School University, 72 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011, USA e-mail: [email protected]

remains below the 5% threshold necessary for the continuation of rent regulation. The survey is based on a sample of approximately 15,000 households and allows researchers to study many aspects of the City’s housing market. The authors focus on the 1999 HVS. They compare three housing characteristics (owner-occupancy, crowding, and physical deficiency) and six neighborhood characteristics (crime rate, percentage of households receiving public assistance, percentage of students at or below grade level in math, percentage white, teenage fertility rates, and percentage one-to-two-family homes) for various racial and ethnic groups, including immigrants and native-born residents. To frame the analysis, the first part of the book reviews the role of housing and neighborhood in fostering economic mobility and the social integration of immigrants into American society, and summarizes the history of immigration to New York City. The authors situate their analysis in terms of three theories of immigrant incorporation—spatial assimilation, place stratification, and segmented assimilation. Spatial assimilation is essentially a geographic analog to traditional notions of assimilation. Just as immigrants and their offspring gradually become acculturated into American society and move up the economic ladder, the residential location of immigrants and their descendents shifts over time from geographic isolation in ethnic or racial ghettos to integration with the dominant social group. According to this perspective, spatial and economic inequality is due primarily to differences in education, work ethic, and other aspects of human capital. In contrast, the theory of “place stratification” argues that individual attributes are important but not sufficient predictors of residential outcomes. Advances in socioeco-

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nomic status do not always translate into housing and neighborhood improvements. Racial discrimination and other structural barriers often constrain the ability of blacks and nonwhite Hispanics to become homeowners or live in desirable neighborhoods. As a result, many members of these groups reside in segregated communities with less access to economic opportunity. A third perspective, favored by the authors, is segmented assimilation. Closely related to place stratification, segmented assimilation argues that “contemporary immigrants enter a social world that is characterized not by one undiversified culture but by a variety of subcultures, organized largely by race and ethnicity. As a consequence, contemporary immigrants and their descendents may follow various paths of adaptation to life in the United States—as opposed to the straight line associated with the experiences of earlier immigrants” (p.40). Whereas the expectations of assimilationism continue to hold for European and many Asian immigrants, where residential location is primarily a function of socioeconomic status, the prospects for black and other nonwhite immigrants, are constrained by residential discrimination. While white and other favored immigrant populations assimilate into middle class society, other groups assimilate into an Other America of discrimination, segregation and shortened opportunity. “Immigrants of African ancestry…face the very real prospect to be incorporated not simply as Americans but as black Americans and thus finding themselves near or at the bottom of the racial hierarchy”(p. 40). After laying out the theoretical context for the study, chapters two and three provide a historical overview of immigration in New York City, focusing both on the countries of origin and the neighborhoods of settlement. The discussion is thorough but somewhat disengaged from the rest of the book. The reader learns much about the history of immigration to New York City, and the residential settlement patterns of New York’s immigrants, but the findings are not closely tied to the subsequent analysis of residential outcomes among immigrants and their descendents. The Housing Divide’s major contribution consists of the statistical analysis of housing and neighborhood outcomes presented in the second half of the book. In Chapter 4, the authors compare housing and neighborhood conditions among New Yorkers of different races and ethnicities. Using multivariate regression analysis, the authors control for income, education and other individual-level characteristics. The authors show that housing and neighborhood conditions improve in most respects from generation to generation, although some improvements are small. In some cases, the biggest improvements are between the first and second generation; housing and neighborhood conditions for the third-plus generation are often no better or

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worse than for the preceding generation. For example, after controlling for income, education, and other individual characteristics, the homeownership rate rises from 23% among first generation immigrants to 31% in the second generation but then subsides to 28% in the subsequent generations. The authors find several measures that support the assimilationist perspective. Housing and neighborhood conditions consistently improve with increases in education and income. Housing characteristics are markedly superior in neighborhoods with low percentages of recent immigrants compared to predominantly immigrant neighborhoods. On the other hand, the authors also find substantial evidence for place stratification. Controlling for income, education, family types, and other factors, housing conditions deteriorate as the percentage of black residents in a neighborhood increases. Housing and neighborhood conditions for white households are significantly better than for black and Hispanic households. Moreover, in an analysis limited to affluent Hispanic homeowners with at least some college education, the authors find that black Hispanic households face significantly worse housing and neighborhood conditions than their white Hispanics counterparts. In Chapter 5, the most original section of the book, Rosenbaum and Friedman compare housing and neighborhood conditions by immigration status for whites, blacks and Hispanics (the data set is too small for separate analysis of Asians and for Hispanics from different countries of origin). The analysis shows that while housing and neighborhood conditions improve across most indicators for whites, they often decline after the first generation for blacks. Conditions for Hispanics show modest levels of improvement, but start from extremely poor levels. For example, after controlling for income, education, and other factors, homeownership rates among white households increase from 32% in the first generation to 52% in the second and decline to 42% in the third-plus generation. Among blacks, however, homeownership decreased from 36% in the first generation to 27% in the second and 26% in the third-plus. While neighborhood crime rates decline slightly from generation to generation for whites, they increase slightly for blacks. For seven of nine indicators, residential quality for black households declines after the first generation. Moreover, while black immigrants showed higher levels of homeownership than white immigrants, and were more likely to live in suburban-style neighborhoods (predominantly single-family housing), by the second generation, whites occupied the top position in both respects. What explains the divergent experiences of the descendents of white and black immigrants in New York City? The authors draw from the segmented assimilation literature and argue that the children and grandchildren of black immigrants tend to assimilate into mainstream black society and face the same type and intensity of racial discrimination in

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the housing market as the descendents of native-born blacks. However, the authors stress different factors than previous analyses based on segmented assimilation. Previously, segmented assimilation theory has been applied to the attitudes and social behavior of immigrant youth. The offspring of black immigrants were said to assimilate into an “adversarial” culture, one that disdains educational achievement, standard English, and steady employment in the formal sector of the economy. Rosenbaum and Friedman point out that their statistical models control for education and other socioeconomic factors, greatly reducing the likelihood that second and third generation black immigrants are economically or educationally distinct from the descendents of white immigrants. Instead, the authors suggest that first generation black immigrants possess certain traits, most notably accented English, that seem to make them less susceptible to racial discrimination in the housing market. A West Indian or other accent may signify to property owners, lenders, and other actors in the housing market, that a black immigrant is “different” from native-born blacks and therefore more deserving of fair treatment. As a result, first-generation blacks experience less discrimination and resistance in the housing market. However, as the children and grandchildren of black immigrants acculturate into [black] US society—their accents may fade or disappear altogether, thus losing a critical marker of immigrant status. Instead, they are perceived in the real estate market as black (i.e., African American) and are treated as such. The authors certainly do not prove that the children and grandchildren of black immigrants are subject to racial discrimination, but their findings are quite consistent with other studies that document the pervasiveness of racial discrimination in the housing market (see for example, Margery Austin Turner et al., “Discrimination in Metropolitan Housing Markets: National Results from Phase 1 HDS 2000. Final Report [2002]. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. http://www. huduser.org/Publications/pdf/Phase1_Report.pdf.” One limitation of the research, as the authors discuss at some length, is the geographic confinement of the data set to New York City. The HVS focuses exclusively on New York City; households that move out of the city, either to the suburbs or to other regions altogether, are not covered. It is therefore possible that intergenerational differences in housing and neighborhood characterizes could be distorted by selection bias. Members of the third-plus generation, especially the more affluent ones, may move out of the city, leaving behind less prosperous counterparts. The authors

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address this possibility in several ways. First, they compare the income, education, and other characteristics of immigrants and their descendants and find that by most measures members of the third-plus generation are better off than their predecessors. Later on, the authors broaden the geographic scope of the analysis from New York City to the greater metropolitan area for the one variable with available data, homeownership. Using pooled data from the 1997, 1999, and 2001, Current Population Survey for the New York Consolidated Metropolitan Area, the authors replicate their multivariate analysis and find little difference from their New York City-only analysis. At least as far as homeownership is concerned, third generation blacks fare worse than their predecessors after controlling for income, education, and other relevant variables. The book concludes with policy recommendations designed to address the racial inequality and discrimination suggested in the preceding chapters. Their recommendations are divided into “people-based” and “place-based” approaches, all of which have been promoted many times before. The “people-based” policy recommendations include stepped up enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, increased funding for federal rental vouchers, and relocation counseling, and improvements in New York City’s system of rent regulation. The “place-based” policies put forth are intended to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods with disproportionate minority populations, thereby softening the socioeconomic impact of racial discrimination in the housing markets. Included here are targeted investment of public funds for housing, schools and community development and creative usage of the Community Reinvestment Act to leverage private resources into low-income neighborhoods. All of these recommendations are reasonable if not particularly original. The Housing Divide offers a unique perspective on the effect of race in determining housing and neighborhood outcomes. Systematically comparing the experience of white and minority immigrants and their descendents in the New York City housing market, the authors provide new evidence of the tenacity of racial discrimination.

Alex Schwartz is Associate Professor and Chair of policy programs at Milano the New School for Management and Urban Policy. He is the author of Housing Policy in the United States: An Introduction (Routledge, 2006).