Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

While low-income people move more frequently than those with higher incomes, many low-income individuals are residentially immobile, remaining in the same location over time. In the United States, nearly 80 percent of low-income adults stay put in a given year (Ihrke and Faber 2012). However, researchers and policy makers tend to focus on residential mobility – the causes and consequences of moving from one place to the next and the long-term and often multigenerational patterns of movement between high-poverty neighborhoods. Focusing on residential mobility instead of residential immobility means that we know less about low-income individuals who stay put in the same neighborhood over time, including whether staying put is a voluntary choice or, conversely, the result of a set of involuntary factors that limit mobility options.

In Detroit, a city recognized for its historic depopulation, the common belief is that those who remain would leave if they could, but are forced to stay because they are unable to escape. This dominant narrative overlooks what may be anomalies or facts that fail to conform to this portrait of residential immobility in Detroit and other depopulated cities. In this paper, I combine qualitative and quantitative data to identify the correlates and antecedents of low-income residential immobility in Southeast Michigan. First, I use three waves of panel survey data from the Michigan Recession and Recovery Study to predict residential immobility for a sample of residents living in high-poverty neighborhoods in Metropolitan Detroit. Second, I incorporate results from 33 in-depth interviews with residents from two high-poverty neighborhoods in Detroit to gain a deeper perspective of their immobility narratives.

Results from qualitative interviews show that neighborhood context gives rise to a unique set of reasons why residents want to either stay put or move out of their neighborhoods. Three immobility narratives of residents emerged from the interviews: neighborhood sentiments, social ties, and involuntary immobility, or the desire to move, but being unable to do so. For residents who lived in a neighborhood that they liked and perceived as “improving,” positive neighborhood sentiment was the primary motivation for remaining in place. In contrast, residents who lived in a neighborhood that they did not like and perceived as unsafe identified two main factors for their residential immobility: (1) social ties with neighbors, friends, and family members and (2) involuntary immobility, usually due to an inability to afford to move.

These results have implications for place-based and people-based housing policies as well as for “shrinking cities.” Because staying put represents a voluntary choice for some low-income residents, it is necessary to focus on and augment the factors that keep such residents stably housed, namely improving neighborhood characteristics. At the same time, many shrinking cities like Detroit have limited funds available to improve the quality of all neighborhoods. For low-income people who involuntarily live in dangerous neighborhoods, increasing access to housing choice vouchers is warranted. Findings from this study support a balanced approach to place-based and people-based housing policies, particularly for shrinking cities.