Abstract Leading sociologists have long conducted research and applied their work to major social problems and public policy issues. Students have been increasingly finding partners outside of academia to pursue rigorous collaborative social justice research. Sociology as a discipline and profession, however, has been somewhat schizophrenic toward this research, nurturing it in some ways but constituting some of the strongest barriers to its proliferation. This chapter draws four lessons from the author’s pursuit of such inquiry and a reading of other similar ventures. First, there must be great trust among the academic and nonacademic partners. Second, there must be pressure from the bottom up and the top down for this work to proceed and pay off. Third, it is vital to connect the research and partnerships with mainstream institutions. Fourth, universities need to do more to incentivize and less to discourage such engagement.

Racially unequal home mortgage loan patterns are alive and well today with many financial institutions. Efforts to change these trends are difficult when few question the 'reinvestment thesis'-an environment in which financial institutions are assumed to meet community needs, even when data suggest the opposite. In this article, we analyze thirteen years of financial institution lending data from 2007 to 2019 in Pittsburgh that show how the city's African American neighborhoods are starved for private capital as vastly more loans and loan dollars were approved in white neighborhoods. Conversely, an analysis of public expenditures for affordable housing between 2010 and 2020 demonstrate the majority of government dollars went to minority neighborhoods. These data provide a partial explanation as to why Pittsburgh lost > 10,000 Black residents over the past decade. These wide disparities are a significant barrier to building African American wealth and present challenges to community development efforts.

Consumer preferences are made, not chosen. At least in housing markets when buyers work with real estate agents, as most do, those agents often shape or at least significantly change the units their clients ultimately buy and the neighborhoods they land in. One prominent effect, as Max Besbris shows in Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality, is that buyers routinely pay more, often considerably more, than their initial price ceiling as a direct result of interactions with their agents. A more important outcome is that neighborhood inequalities are heightened, as are racial wealth disparities. This provides further evidence that market transactions are not the result of rational, utility-maximizing decision-making proffered by the neoclassical model expounded by most economists. Particularly where informational asymmetries exist—as is the case in housing, where most households may purchase two or three homes in a lifetime, but agents deal with such transactions daily—buyers are dependent on the ‘‘experts’’ they are hiring to help them make the best decision. Buyers depend on agents primarily because they believe their agent knows details of properties they visit, amenities of neighborhoods, property values and likely changes in home prices, and all relevant characteristics of the housing market generally. And this belief is nurtured by real estate agents. While more house-hunters today use online services like Craigslist, Zillow, and Redfin, among many others, agents are quick to point out frequent inaccuracies, particularly the price, in their communications. And as one agent observed, a computer algorithm cannot tell you what is under the new floorboard. Another noted that agents can tell you where the best bakeries are, and how many bakeries there are in a neighborhood. Agents also convey their superior knowledge about recent sale prices and projected future (always upward) prices of the homes they are showing. And they share far more than factual information. As one agent told Besbris, ‘‘I’m a mother, a therapist, a cheerleader, an interior decorator, a financial advisor’’ (p. 54). But perhaps their greatest skill is their ability to separate buyers from their money. The key evidence presented in Upsold is drawn from the interactions Besbris observed between 12 agents and 57 buyers in New York (primarily Manhattan and Brooklyn) over 27 months beginning in January 2012. He observed initial meetings of agents and buyers, visits to housing units that were available, and meetings where they developed offers they were going to make. He also interviewed another 45 agents in other cities across the state. Of these, 25 came from a randomized list of licensed agents in the state and the rest came from personal contacts and snowball sampling. (It might have been interesting to see if there were any differences in what he was told by these two separate lists.) He interviewed 21 of the buyers who made offers and conducted follow-up interviews with most four or five years later. He conducted quantitative analyses of the agents’ office Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality, by Max Besbris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. 221 pp. $33.99 paper. ISBN: 9780226721378.

Background: Providing an adequate supply of affordable housing has become an increasingly difficult challenge for US cities. Inclusionary zoning (IZ) policies have become an increasingly popular response. Substantial research has demonstrated the health benefits of stable, affordable housing. There is anecdotal but not systematic evidence that IZ policies may be associated with some health benefits of affordable housing. Methods: We rely on data from the 2017 500 Cities Project, the 2016 to 2017 Lincoln Institute for Land Policy survey, and the 2011 to 2015 American Community Survey. We perform bivariate tests and cluster ordinary least squares regression to examine associations at the municipal level between having inclusionary zoning (IZ) policies, the attributes of those policies, and the prevalence of several cardiovascular outcomes. Results: Cardiovascular outcomes and socioeconomic characteristics were uniformly better in cities with IZ policies. IZ policies were associated with lower blood pressure (95% CI, -0.50 to -0.13), cholesterol (CI, -0.89 to -0.31), and blood pressure medication (CI, -0.57 to -0.03) prevalence. Some characteristics of IZ programs such as being mandatory, prioritizing rental development, and allocating a larger share of affordable housing are associated with cardiovascular risk prevalence. Conclusions: Characteristics of IZ programs that ultimately benefit low-income residents are associated with favorable municipal-level cardiovascular health. Further, IZ policies could potentially address complex health challenges among economically vulnerable households.

The federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) passed in 1968 has long had a dual mandate: ameliorating discrimination and creating more integrated neighborhoods. Far more attention and commitment has been pai...

"Perspectives on fair housing, by Vincent J. Reina, Wendell E. Pritchett and Susan M. Wachter (eds.)." Journal of Urban Affairs, 43(7), pp. 1048–1049

Despite the gradual decline of the poverty rate in the United States in recent years, rising housing costs have continued to make access to affordable housing a substantial problem across the count...

Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes. 2023;16:e009697. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.122.009697 April 2023 Correspondence to Wayne R. Lawrence, DrPH, MPH, Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, 9609 Medical Center Dr, Bethesda, MD 20850. Email wayne.lawrence@nih.gov Supplemental Material is available at https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/suppl/10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.122.009697. For Sources of Funding and Disclosures, see page 325. © 2023 The Authors. Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes is published on behalf of the American Heart Association, Inc., by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited, the use is noncommercial, and no modifications or adaptations are made. ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Neighborhood life expectancy varies by as much as 10 years across the City of Louisville. In 2013, the Greater Louisville Project funded by local government, businesses, and foundations, argued these differences had little to do with environmental factors. The Greater Louisville Project (2013) study argued that these neighborhood differences could be attributed 40% to socio-economic factors (with a major emphasis on education), 10% to physical environment, 30% to health behaviors, and 20% to access to medical care. To test these claims, we construct our own model of neighborhood variation in years of potential life lost (YPLL) by adding two variables testing environmental degradation. We operationalise two separate measures of environmental contamination: proximity to EPA designated brownfield sites and proximity to chemical factories in an industrial park in the neighborhood known as "Rubbertown". We conduct several regression analyses, which show a relationship between proximity to environmental contaminants and an increase in neighborhood YPLL. Our beta weights challenge the claims made by the Greater Louisville Project, which minimize the impact nearness to environmental contaminants has on reductions in life expectancy in Louisville neighborhoods.

ABSTRACT The calls for greater racial equity also means cleaning up the air, water, and soil. Poor people needlessly suffer more in Louisville than the same low-income people in West Coast cites. If we adopted the same tough, environmental regulations as our West Coast Counterparts West Louisville would surely bloom instead of slowly die. The unfairness between black and white neighbourhoods is stark and vivid. As the great urbanist, Jane Jacobs, once said: “everyone hungers for a first class neighbourhood for both pride and dignity … nobody wants a second class neighborhood.” First class neighbourhoods are safe, healthy, sustainable, and prosperous. It is a human right; a Worldwide right.

With prior research on home insurance largely focused on supply side practices, we know little about demand side attributes of this market, especially about consumer perceptions of insurance. This article demonstrates that, despite seemingly more equitable industry practices, ethnic homeowners (Mexican Americans in this study), relative to the majority White population, have a greater tendency to view home insurance as a cost burden (as opposed to coverage against potential damages and injuries) and, hence, are more vulnerable to living with minimal or no home insurance coverage. The findings suggest that this disparity is attributable to cultural differences rooted in diverse structural and institutional circumstances in which ethnic homeowners often find themselves situated. The role of ethnic identity is salient even after accounting for personal, household, property, mortgage, and natural calamity factors. New directions for policy are proposed to address the situation by informing and empowering vulnerable consumers.

Objectives: As social determinants of health, mortgage possessions (primarily foreclosures in the US context) and housing instability have been associated with certain mental and physical health outcomes at the individual level. However, individual risks of foreclosure and of poor health are spatially patterned. The objective of this study is to examine the extent to which area-specific social and economic characteristics help explain the relationship between mortgage possessions and obesity prevalence in 75 of the 100 most populous US metropolitan areas. Study design: This is a cross-sectional study. Methods: The study relies on three sources of data: the Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends (SMART) project, RealtyTrac foreclosure data, and the American Community Survey. Focal social and economic characteristics include foreclosure rates, levels of racial residential segregation, and poverty. Obesity prevalence and several control measures for each metropolitan area are also used. Ordinary least squares regression, weighted using the SMART project data, is used, and statistical significance is set at 0.05. Results: The results suggest that mortgage possessions are independently associated with higher obesity prevalence and that foreclosures operate through the specific channel of racial residential segregation and its tie to the racial composition of a metropolitan area. Socio-economic status of an area, and not poverty, is related to foreclosures and obesity prevalence. Conclusion: Mortgage possessions not only are socio-economic but also have negative health consequences, such as obesity. The findings provide an empirical base for other researchers to uncover the relationships between segregation, mortgage possessions, and obesity at the individual level of analysis. The public health community should be engaged in addressing the issue of foreclosures in the US because the failure to engage may have broad financial and health consequences across large cities. (c) 2019 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

nomena. The discussion of new understandings of the nature of human nature, informed by sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and comparative species analysis, is up to date and appropriately balanced by an understanding of what these disciplines can and cannot offer the sociologist. Yet the authors’ merging of these two strands of evolutionary thought is not without problems. In particular, their argument for a neo-Spencerian functionalism at the societal level does not always sit comfortably with their arguments about the evolved nature of human nature at the individual level. Turner and Machalek’s picture of an individualist, minimally social individual with emotional propensities that enable the forging of social ties does not fit well with their presentation of human society as a ‘‘superorganism’’ evolving by the process of sociocultural group selection. The image of the societal ‘‘superorganism’’ suggests a much more tightly integrated and harmonious social unit than could be supported by the individualistic human nature the authors present. Nor does the neo-Spencerian functionalism the authors advocate avoid all the problems of tautology, teleology, and inherent conservatism that critics of functionalism discussed in the 1960s, beginning with Homans’s famous paper criticizing Parsonsian structural-functionalism entitled ‘‘Bringing Men Back In’’ (1964). Assuming a societal superorganism, Turner and Machalek argue that rather than having ‘‘needs,’’ this societal superorganism is subject to selection pressures on four axes or dimensions: production, reproduction, distribution, and regulation. That is, societies must produce enough for their populations to live on, they must be able to distribute these products throughout the society and regulate distribution of products and other activities, and they also must reproduce themselves. Given that if these selection pressures are not met the society fails and dies, it is hard to see how these ‘‘selection pressures’’ are analytically distinct from societal ‘‘needs’’ or ‘‘requisites.’’ Despite this, the book makes a strong case for the value of evolutionary theory and analysis in sociology, particularly for understanding the nature of human nature. It is a must-read for anyone wanting to learn about current evolutionary sociology and would be highly suitable as a text for graduate students.

“Everybody does better when everybody does better” (p. vi) is the appropriate opening epigram, penned by Jim Hightower, for this retrospective on the 50th anniversary of the Report of the National ...

We argue that by conducting systematic research with communities rather than on communities, community-based research (CBR) methods can both advance the study of human interaction and strengthen public understanding and appreciation of social sciences. CBR, among other methods, can also address social scientists’ ethical and social commitments. We recap the history of calls by leading sociologists for rigorous, empirical, community-engaged research. We introduce CBR methods as empirically grounded methods for conducting social research with social actors. We define terms and describe the range of methods that we include in the umbrella term, “community-based research.” After providing exemplars of community-based research, we review CBR’s advantages and challenges. We, next, summarize an intervention that we undertook as members of the Publication Committee of the URBAN Research Network’s Sociology section in which the committee developed and disseminated guidelines for peer review of community-based research. We also share initial responses from journal editors. In the conclusion, we revisit the potential of community-based research and note the consequences of neglecting community-based research traditions.