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Self-help housing has been widely studied across the developing world. Little is known, however, about the contemporary use of self-help housing in the U.S. In this study we examine self-help housing in the U.S. and its potential links to two related concepts: incremental development and informal housing. We use data from the American Housing Survey from 1997 to 2011 to examine the prevalence, location, and the development process of self-help housing in comparison with that of conventional housing. Our analysis shows that self-help housing is common in the United States, comprising approximately 10% of new owner-occupied single-family housing units nationwide and more than double that in rural areas across the country. We analyse home improvement activity for self-help and conventional homeowners, illustrating the incremental process by which self-builders improve their homes, widespread reliance on do-it-yourself (DIY) methods, and the impact of these methods on housing affordability. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for housing research and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholarship on informal housing focuses on developing countries and little research investigates how low-income populations in the US participate in homeownership through self-built and self-provided housing. Meanwhile, informally developed areas are increasingly being uncovered in the US, especially in the urban periphery of growing metropolitan regions. This paper documents and analyses largely unknown housing conditions and needs for the growing number of people that live in such communities. Data for this paper were collected through a survey of 133 households in two unincorporated low-income, self-help settlements in Central Texas. In this survey we address (1) household composition, (2) specific housing conditions, and (3) reported structural and infrastructural problems. Through regression analyses we identify factors that mitigate or aggravate the severity of overall housing problems and identify the most significant concerns for residents. Our results offer future lines of action regarding property titles, financing and dwelling upgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper builds on earlier data presented in an Urban Studies paper for a major household survey in 2002 that evaluated the impact of title regularization intervention among low-income homeowners in ten colonias in Starr County, Texas. In 2011 the research team returned to those low-income households, oversampling more than half of them in order to compare and analyse the extent and nature of housing improvement, levels of overcrowding and access to home amenities, and the methods of financing for home improvement and extension. Significant improvements and investments were observed totalling an average of almost US$9000 over ten years, mostly financed out of income and savings, although an increasing trend to seek loans from the formal market was observed. Correlation analysis explores how self-help and self-managed dwelling environments are adapted to family and household dynamics over the life course. Awareness of ‘green’ housing applications and sustainability is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: This paper develops a methodology for integrating remote sensing/aerial photographs and GIS techniques to identify low-income informal homestead subdivisions (IFHS, also known as colonias) in peri-urban areas of US metropolitan areas. Unlike their self-build counterparts in Latin American cities which start as illegal occupations of totally un-serviced lots, in the USA housing production is largely self-managed (embracing trailer homes, manufactured homes, modular units with self-help home improvement, etc.), placed on legally developed lots, albeit poorly or minimally serviced. As researchers begin to understand the logic and rationale underpinning their existence, and better appreciate where (spatially), and what (physical) “footprints” to look for, it becomes possible to identify and quantify the full extent of these peri-urban settlement phenomena. This paper reports on a three Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the USA to demonstrate the methodology and argues that this has wider application both in the USA and elsewhere. Specifically for the US, the paper outlines some of the policy implications that arise from using integrated techniques to develop an inventory of IFHS and from a deepening of public recognition of the phenomenon. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article examines the meanings and uses of self-help housing practices by focusing on two quite distinct cases--the reform movement for tenant self-management in New York City and the "rehab-squatters movement" in West Berlin. In New York tenant self-management has been incorporated into the current repertoire of municipal housing programs to a degree unimaginable a decade ago, affecting the lives of several thousand poor tenants. Self help activities focused not merely on housing, but addressing virtually every facet of everyday life, have arisen in the past decade or so on the basis of, and against, an increasingly crisis-ridden system of the material and reproduction of labor power, i.e. the reproduction of labor power organized by the capitalist state. The centrality of the state in this process is not coincidental, although it is contradictory. Rather, the state has been the key institutional means by which the relationship between labor and capital was restructured during the years of the depression, the Second World War and the immediate postwar period.

Self-help Housing in the United States has taken many forms. But probably the most popular form of self-help housing is the "shell" or incomplete but habitable house. Builders specializing in this type of housing include a few dominant construction companies operating in a regional, interstate market. The economics of self-help housing seems to recommend the means of increasing the housing stock-at least in low-income, rural areas. Ideally, a prospect buys a house "package" unfinished to a stage within his ability (and willingness) to complete construction. The saving in cost depends on the amount of owner-labor contributed to the enterprise. The study suggests that higher risks were compensated by higher than normal financial charges and interest rates. In effect, the more solvent buyers, to an unusual degree, apparently subsidized poor credit risks among buyers of incomplete but habitable houses. The contractor-builder who normally assigns the mortgage to a financial intermediary assumes virtually no control over the quality of owner construction.