Rental listings offer a window into how urban space is socially constructed through language. We analyze Chicago Craigslist rental advertisements from 2018 to 2024 to examine how listing agents characterize neighborhoods, identifying mismatches between institutional boundaries and neighborhood claims. Through manual and large language model annotation, we classify unstructured listings from Craigslist according to their neighborhood. Further geospatial analysis reveals three distinct patterns: properties with conflicting neighborhood designations due to competing spatial definitions, border properties with valid claims to adjacent neighborhoods, and "reputation laundering" where listings claim association with distant, desirable neighborhoods. Through topic modeling, we identify patterns that correlate with spatial positioning: listings further from neighborhood centers emphasize different amenities than centrally-located units. Natural language processing techniques reveal how definitions of urban spaces are contested in ways that traditional methods overlook.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:Family members are a central source of care and support in later life, yet older adults in the United States increasingly live apart from non-resident kin, raising questions about how geographic dispersion shapes relational dynamics. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS:Using nationally representative data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its Disability and Use of Time supplement, this study develops a multidimensional typology of family relationship configurations among adults aged 60 and older. Latent class analysis of contact, reciprocal support, and emotional affinity identifies 4 distinct profiles: harmonious but detached, isolated, strained givers, and tight-knit. We then examine how structural features of non-resident kin networks-including geographic proximity, number and type of nearby relatives, and relatives' socioeconomic resources-predict membership in these profiles. RESULTS:Results show that proximity to multiple kin, particularly parents, children, and siblings, strongly shapes the likelihood of belonging to tight-knit or strained families, while greater dispersion contributes to isolation or emotionally positive but low-contact ties. The availability of financially stable kin further differentiates profiles, with higher-income relatives linked to less exchange-based configurations. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS:By moving beyond simple measures of co-residence or "any nearby kin," this study demonstrates the diversity of older adults' family experiences. Our findings highlight that geographic proximity operates within a broader network ecology: the presence of multiple nearby kin, the types of relatives who live close, and the relative economic resources of family members all contribute to whether older adults experience cohesive, strained, or weak family ties.

Neighborhood-based social capital – defined as resources within neighborhood social networks – is a potential contributor to adolescent oral health, but mechanisms that link the two are not well elucidated. We evaluated the potential mediating role of neighborhood, household, and individual oral health risk factors in the neighborhood social capital-tooth decay relationship. We collected cross-sectional data from 331 Medicaid-enrolled adolescents (ages 12–18 years) and one of their caregivers from 73 census tracts (neighborhoods) in three counties in Oregon, U.S.A in 2015 and 2016. Medicaid is a public insurance program in the U.S. providing no-cost dental insurance to low-income children. We measured four neighborhood social capital constructs: social support, social leverage, informal social control, and neighborhood organization participation. Oral health risk factors included worrying about food money, poor access to vegetables and fruits, inconsistent family and oral health routines, and adolescent stress. The outcome was number of untreated decayed tooth surfaces. Causal mediation analyses with mixed effect models were used to examine associations. Neighborhoods with higher social support had a lower prevalence of worrying about food money (prevalence ratio [PR] 0.74;95% CI: 0.56, 0.96;p = .02) as did neighborhoods with higher informal social control (PR 0.75;95% CI:0.58, 0.97;p = .03). All oral health risk factors were strongly associated with untreated decayed tooth surfaces. No form of neighborhood social capital was significantly associated with tooth decay. Natural indirect effects of neighborhood social support and informal social control operating through worrying about food money were not statistically significant. Future longitudinal studies that include robust measures of neighborhood social capital and adequate sample sizes are needed to enable neighborhood-based interventions that promote adolescent oral health.

Objective: This study aimed to examine the association between neighborhood poverty and ovarian reserve. Methods: Among 1,019 healthy premenopausal women in the Ovarian Aging Study, aggregate exposure to neighborhood poverty was examined in relation to biomarkers of ovarian reserve, antim & uuml;llerian hormone (AMH) and antral follicle count (AFC). Specifically, the interaction of age-x-neighborhood poverty was assessed cross-sectionally to determine whether AMH and AFC declines across women may be greater in women exposed to more neighborhood poverty. Neighborhood poverty was assessed by geocoding and linking women's residential addresses in adulthood to US Census data. Results: Independent of covariates, a significant interaction term showed the association between age and AMH varied by degree of exposure to neighborhood poverty in adulthood (b = -0.001, P < 0.05). AMH declines increased progressively across women exposed to low, medium, and high levels of neighborhood poverty. In addition, main effects showed that higher neighborhood poverty was related to higher AMH in the younger women only (b = 0.022, P < 0.01). Results related to AFC were all nonsignificant (P > 0.05). Conclusions: Across women, greater aggregate exposure to neighborhood poverty in adulthood was related to lower ovarian reserve, indexed by AMH. In addition, there was a positive association between neighborhood poverty and AMH in younger women that attenuated in the older women. Together, results suggest that neighborhood disadvantage may have detrimental impacts that manifest as initially higher AMH, resulting in greater ovarian follicle loss over time. However, it remains unclear whether these results examining differences across women may replicate when AMH declines by neighborhood poverty are examined longitudinally.

Case studies have illuminated that U.S. real estate agents, as key housing market gatekeepers, continue to maintain racial residential stratification well into the twenty-first century. We use novel survey data gathered from real estate agents across the United States to descriptively explore agents' ideas about clients of color in the housing market, as well as their practices, such as conducting business through social networks. Our findings provide evidence of the subtle and more overt ways that these ideas and practices that, when taken together, constitute what we call racialized real estate agency and contribute to ongoing racial segregation. We issue a call for future research to continue examining the ways agents' and other gatekeepers' ideas and practices contribute to or mitigate stratifying processes and describe the utility of such research for policy.

Housing affordability is a growing challenge for households in the United States and other developed countries. Prolonged exposure to housing cost burden can have damaging effects on households, and, in particular, children. These burdens can exacerbate parental stress, reduce investments in children and expose households to greater neighborhood disadvantage. In this study, we use national survey data to assess whether cumulative housing cost burden exposure is associated with disadvantages to children's well-being and health. We observe that long-term exposures are linked to lower achievement in math and reading standardized test scores, as well as higher levels of behavior problems. Moreover, we identify that three mechanisms--caregiver distress, economic strain, and neighborhood disadvantage--operate as mediating pathways for these disadvantages to different degrees between these three outcomes. Overall, our study highlights how the dimension of time is increasingly important to our understanding of the challenges that families face related to housing affordability.

This study examines the relationship between household compositional change and residential mobility of subsidized householders. Data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Annual Longitudinal Files 2005-2018 is used to measure household compositional change and mobility for subsidized householders in the Public Housing and Housing Choice Voucher programs. Householders are 67% more likely to move when a change in household composition occurs. Members entering the household induce larger estimated mobility effects than members exiting the household. Although the odds that a householder move are associated with a household compositional change is greatest in the Housing Choice Voucher program for tenant-based vouchers, there is still a strong association with household compositional changes and mobility in Public Housing and for project-based voucher units where options for mobility are limited. The results have implications for future research on program design factors such as occupancy standards in subsidized housing in the United States.

Against the backdrop of an acute rental affordability crisis and a resurgent tenant's rights movement, rental industry groups have frequently argued that tenant protection laws disproportionately harm "mom-and-pop" landlords and, by extension, the disadvantaged tenants they serve. The authors leverage a changing regulatory environment in Seattle to provide a rare empirical interrogation of these claims. This analysis of a novel set of consumer data linked with parcel records provides no evidence that tenant protection laws drove "mom-and-pop" landlords out of the rental market. Moreover, an analysis of a survey of almost 4,000 Seattle landlords suggests that "mom-and-pop" landlords use management practices that are largely similar to those used by landlords with larger rental portfolios. These findings run counter to pervasive political narratives regarding the detrimental effects of tenant protection regulations on the small-scale rental sector and bring needed attention to the repercussions of claims-making for stratification in the housing context.

Housing cost burden-defined as paying more than 30% of household income for housing-has become a central feature of the American stratification system with dire consequences for the health and well-being of adults and children living in burdened households. To date, existing research has largely focused on the overall prevalence and distribution of housing cost burden-that is, the percentage of households that are cost burdened at a given time and differences in exposure to housing cost burden based on race and income using cross-sectional sources of data. To more fully understand the dynamics of housing cost burden among renter households in the United States including the frequency and duration of spells, we use 50 years of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The analysis reveals that, in contrast to the episodic nature of poverty, housing cost burden is deep, frequent, and persistent for a growing share of American households.

This article examines racial and ethnic disparities in the relationship between gentrification and exposure to contextual determinants of health. In our study, we focused on changes in selected contextual determinants of health (health care access, social deprivation, air pollution, and walkability) and life expectancy during the period 2006-21 among residents of gentrifying census tracts in six large US cities that have experienced different gentrification patterns and have California; and Seattle, Washington. We found that gentrification was associated with overall improvements in the likelihood of living in Medically Underserved Areas across racial and ethnic groups, but it was also associated with increased social deprivation and reduced life expectancy among Black people, Hispanic people, and people of another or undetermined race or ethnicity. In contrast, we found that gentrification was related to better (or unchanged) contextual determinants of health for Asian people and White people. Our findings can inform policies that target communities identified to be particularly at risk for worsening contextual determinants of health as a result of gentrification.

Throughout its history, the real estate industry has emphasized privacy and exclusion in housing advertisements, helping entrench patterns of residential segregation in the process. Recently, however, some forms of neighborhood-level social diversity are becoming more common, as indicated by the growing number of neighborhoods that are mixed-income. Does the proliferation of income-diverse neighborhoods suggest that advertisers are curtailing their exclusionary rhetoric when marketing homes in mixed-income communities? To answer this question, this study analyzes over one million Craigslist rental listings posted in the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in July and August of 2019. Findings show that real estate advertisers continue to rely on rhetorical strategies that likely reinforce, if not encourage, privacy and exclusion in mixed-income neighborhoods. Specifically, rental advertisements in mixed-income neighborhoods were disproportionately likely to mention that the advertised unit came with a home security device, a rhetorical tool likely aimed at calming homeseekers’ apprehension toward living in an income-diverse neighborhood. This finding suggests that scholars have underexamined the strategies that real estate actors use to persuade homeseekers to live in diverse neighborhoods. Furthermore, the security rhetoric prevalent in income-diverse neighborhoods may encourage homeseekers’ fears of mixed-income settings and impede cross-class social integration.

An increasing number of American renters within major metropolitan housing markets rely on online platforms such as Craigslist to find rental units. Landlords that advertise rentals on these websites have been found to tailor the language used in their listings in reference to surrounding neighborhood demographics to influence prospective tenants' rental searches. This work investigates the underexplored subject of move-in fees, referring to upfront costs to secure a lease, such as security deposits, application charges, and advanced rent payments that can affect whether a prospective renter can afford an advertised unit. This study advances a framework for how housing researchers can assess variations in landlord discourse within online housing marketplaces using text analysis methods and web scraping. It then illustrates how the resulting measures about move-in fees have distinct variations in prevalence along sociodemographic, spatial, and policy measures through a series of descriptive analyses, with subsequent conclusions toward policy implications designed to assist low-income renters with overcoming financial barriers in securing rental housing.

Objective This study examined changes in geographic proximity to family members among race and income groups in the United States from 1981 to 2017. Background Close geographic proximity to family members can facilitate mutual support and strengthen family bonds. Some scholars argue that institutional sources of support have replaced many core family functions, which might mean that households are likely to live increasingly farther away from family. Advancing technology and changing labor market opportunities might reinforce this pattern. Yet, the ongoing cultural and emotional salience of family might curtail the effects of these factors on the increasing distance to family. Method We conducted a quantitative analysis of longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). We utilized the multigenerational structure of the PSID and restricted-use geocodes to map kin proximity at every interview from 1981 to 2017. We cross-classified our sample by race and income, focusing on Black and White respondents across income quartiles (n = 171,501 person-periods). Results High-income White respondents showed the greatest increases in distance from kin over time, whereas proximity to kin among other race-income groups was relatively stable. Conclusion Proximate kin has become less central in the lives of high-income White households over time, whereas close proximity to kin has been the norm over time for other racial and income groups. These results have implications for racial and income differences in kin relations over time.

Background: Although overall air quality has improved in the United States, air pollution remains unevenly distributed across neighborhoods, producing disproportionate environmental burdens for minoritized and socioeconomically disadvantaged residents for whom greater exposure to other structurally rooted neighborhood stressors is also more frequent. These interrelated dynamics and layered vulnerabilities each have well-documented associations with physical and psychological health outcomes; however, much remains unknown about the joint effects of environmental hazards and neighborhood socioeconomic factors on self-reported health status. Objectives: We examined the nexus of air pollution exposure, neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage, and self-rated health (SRH) among adults in the United States. Methods: This observational study used individual-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics merged with contextual information, including neighborhood socioeconomic and air pollution data at the census tract and census block levels, spanning the period of 1999–2015. We estimated ordinary least squares regression models predicting SRH by 10-y average exposures to fine particulate matter [particles ≤2.5μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5)] and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage while controlling for individual-level correlates of health. We also investigated the interaction effects of air pollution and neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on SRH. Results: On average, respondents in our sample rated their health as 3.41 on a scale of 1 to 5. Respondents in neighborhoods with higher 10-y average PM2.5 concentrations or socioeconomic disadvantage rated their health more negatively after controlling for covariates [β=−0.024 (95% CI: −0.034, −0.014); β=−0.107 (95% CI: −0.163, −0.052), respectively]. We also found that the deleterious associations of PM2.5 exposure with SRH were weaker in the context of greater neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage (β=0.007; 95% CI: 0.002, 0.011). Discussion: Study results indicate that the effects of air pollution on SRH may be less salient in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods compared with more advantaged areas, perhaps owing to the presence of other more proximate structurally rooted health risks and vulnerabilities in disinvested areas (e.g., lack of economic resources, health access, healthy food options). This intersection may further underscore the importance of meaningful involvement and political power building among community stakeholders on issues concerning the nexus of environmental and socioeconomic justice, particularly in structurally marginalized communities. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP11268

Recent theoretical arguments suggest that, in addition to ongoing, overt racial housing discrimination and unequal access to resources, multiple subtle housing search processes are racially stratified and contribute to persistent racial segregation. Yet, little prior research has examined these processes. The present paper helps to fill this gap by investigating the racialized differences in the subtle ways that individuals use online housing search tools and identify real estate agents to assist them through the housing search process. To do so, we rely on novel survey data collected by Redfin from 2647 housing consumers using multiple online platforms to search for housing in markets across the United States and examine racialized differences in the likelihood of homebuyers attempting various types of activities using online housing search tools, successfully using the online search tools, and methods of identifying real estate agents with whom to work. While the nature of the data preclude definitive conclusions, our findings point to significant racialized differences in attempting, and successfully completing, online activities across three different ‘types’ of online tool engagement—early search, neighborhood search, and housing unit—as well as in identifying real estate agents. After reviewing our results, we discuss the implications of these findings for persistent racial residential stratification, and directions for future research.

This study examines exposure to four contextual Determinants of Health (cDOH): healthcare access (Medically Underserved Areas), socioeconomic condition (Area Deprivation Index), air pollution (Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) and Particulate Matter 10 (PM 10)), and walkability (National Walkability Index) among residents of gentrifying and not gentrifying lower income neighborhoods in central cities for the 100 largest metropolitan regions in the US using their location in 2006 and 2019 based on individual level consumer trace data. Individuals who lived in gentrifying neighborhoods as of 2006 had more favorable cDOH in terms of MUA, ADI and Walkability Index and similar levels of pollution. Between 2006 and 2019, they experienced worse changes in MUAs, ADI, and Walkability Index but a greater improvement in exposure to air pollutants. The negative changes are driven by movers, while stayers actually experience a relative improvement in MUAs and ADI and larger improvements in exposure to air pollutants. The findings indicate that gentrification may contribute to health disparities through changes in exposure to cDOH through mobility to communities with worse cDOH among residents of gentrifying neighborhoods although results in terms of exposure to health pollutants are mixed.

Online platforms have become an integral component of the housing search process in the United States and other developed contexts, but recent studies have demonstrated that these platforms offer uneven representation of different neighborhoods. In this study, we use listings covering the largest 50 U.S. metropolitan areas to assess how GoSection8, a platform uniquely focused on affordable housing and voucher-assisted households, compares with "mainstream" alternatives of Craigslist, Apartments.com and Zillow. Through descriptive and regression analyses of the housing and neighborhoods represented on these websites and a new way of measuring the distribution of rental housing opportunities, we advance a multisource perspective on the role of online information exchanges in housing search processes. Specifically, we find that GoSection8 and mainstream alternatives capture spatially-segmented information about housing markets, with GoSection8 ads representing units that are more affordable but also more constrained to higher-poverty neighborhoods where assisted households are already concentrated. The findings suggest that disadvantaged households are potentially funneled toward high-poverty, isolated neighborhoods by the operation of stratified information systems available for online housing searches.

This article uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to analyse Black-White differences in housing cost burden exposure among renter households in the USA from 1980 to 2017, expanding understanding of this phenomenon in two respects. Specifically, we document how much this racial disparity changed among renters over almost four decades and identify how much factors associated with income or housing costs explain Black-White inequality in exposure to housing cost burden. For White households, the net contribution of household, neighbourhood and metropolitan covariates accounts for much of the change in the probability of housing cost burden over time. For Black households, however, the probability of experiencing housing cost burden continued to rise throughout the period of this study, even after controlling for household, neighbourhood and metropolitan covariates. This suggests that unobserved variables like racial discrimination, social networks or employment quality might explain the increasing disparity in cost burden among for Black and White households in the USA.

Although neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage is negatively related to overall physical activity, prior studies reveal a complex relationship between disadvantage and particular walking behaviors. While disadvantage is associated with reduced recreational walking through a hypothesized "fear-of-crime" mechanism, the built environment in disadvantaged neighborhoods may encourage utilitarian walking. To date, no study has assessed how disadvantage relates to dog walking, a distinct walking behavior that is neither strictly recreational nor utilitarian but represents a key mechanism through which pet ownership may affect human health. We employ a large (n = 19,732) dataset from the Dog Aging Project to understand how neighborhood disadvantage is associated with dog walking when controlling for individual-, household-, and environmental-level factors. We find that dog owners in more disadvantaged neighborhoods report less on-leash walking activity compared to owners in advantaged neighborhoods and discuss the possibility of a fear-of-crime mechanism underlying this association. These findings improve our understanding of the relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and physical function and highlight the need for public health interventions that encourage dog ownership to consider neighborhood disadvantage.

Objective This study examined whether exposure to, and perceptions of, local violence were associated with families' probabilities of moving and whether that relationship varied by the level of perceived collective efficacy in the neighborhood. Background Local violence can shape individuals' outcomes in long-lasting ways. Parents who perceive their neighborhoods to be violent may be especially concerned about moving their children away from local violence and this desire may be heightened when families perceive that there are few social resources in their neighborhoods. However, limited research exists concerning the associations between perceptions of local violence, collective efficacy, and mobility decisions of families with children. Method The analyses used Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study Data (n = 3636) and mixed-effects models to examine the relationship between primary caregivers' reported perceptions of neighborhood violence and their probabilities of moving with their families. The moderating role of community collective efficacy was assessed, as was the relationship between mobility and changes in families' perceptions of local violence. Results Perceptions of violence were significantly associated with increases in the probabilities that families move and decreases in perceptions of local violence after moving. Implications These results provide evidence for the importance of individuals' perceptions for shaping mobility outcomes and the value of mobility for shielding families from local violence.