Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

An Exploration of Rural Housing Insecurity as a Public Health Problem in California’s Rural Northern Counties

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Community Health Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Although widely acknowledged as an important social determinant of health, until recently researchers and policymakers have primarily approached housing insecurity as an urban issue, obscuring the visibility of its impacts in rural contexts, including the ways in which housing insecurity intersects with other health and structural inequities facing rural populations. Working to address this gap in the existing literature, this paper explores the experiences of housing insecurity in a rural context by reporting on an analysis of 210 in-depth interviews with 153 adults between the ages of 18–35, living in California’s rural North State, a relatively overlooked far northern region of the state comprised of 12 north central and north eastern counties. Using in-depth qualitative interview data, we conducted an exploratory pattern-level analysis of participants’ narratives structured by four dimensions of housing insecurity defined in the literature (housing affordability, housing stability, housing conditions, and neighborhood context). Drawing attention to the pervasiveness of rural housing insecurity within our sample, this analysis highlights the unique ways in which rurality creates distinct experiences not currently captured in the existing literature. Further research is needed across different types of rural communities to better understand the various ways that housing insecurity affects the everyday lives and health of rural residents. By grounding research within the experiences of rural residents, we are better able to respond to the crisis of rural housing insecurity and develop solutions that are tailored to rural residents’ unique needs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Braveman, P. (2023). Housing, Health, and Health Disparities. In P. Braveman (Ed.), The Social Determinants of Health and Health Disparities (p. 0). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190624118.003.0008.

  2. Krieger, J., & Higgins, D. L. (2002). Housing and health: Time Again for Public Health Action. American Journal of Public Health, 92(5), 758–768. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.92.5.758.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  3. Swope, C. B., & Hernández, D. (2019). Housing as a determinant of health equity: A conceptual model. Social Science & Medicine, 243, 112571. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112571.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Taylor, L. (2018). Housing And Health: An Overview Of The Literature | Health Affairs Brief. Health Affairs Health Policy Brief. Retrieved from https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hpb20180313.396577/full/.

  5. DeLuca, S., & Rosen, E. (2022). Housing Insecurity among the poor today. Annual Review of Sociology, 48(1), 343–371. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-090921-040646.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Cutts, D. B., Meyers, A. F., Black, M. M., Casey, P. H., Chilton, M., Cook, J. T., & Frank, D. A. (2011). US Housing Insecurity and the health of very young children. American Journal of Public Health, 101(8), 1508–1514. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2011.300139.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  7. Fowler, P. J., Henry, D. B., & Marcal, K. E. (2015). Family and housing instability: Longitudinal impact on adolescent emotional and behavioral well-being. Social Science Research, 53, 364. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2015.06.012.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  8. Cutuli, J. J., Ahumada, S. M., Herbers, J. E., Lafavor, T. L., Masten, A. S., & Oberg, C. N. (2017). Adversity and children experiencing family homelessness: Implications for health. Journal of Children and Poverty, 23(1), 41–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/10796126.2016.1198753.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Cox, R., Henwood, B., Rodnyansky, S., Rice, E., & Wenzel, S. (2019). Road Map to a unified measure of Housing Insecurity. Cityscape, 21(2), 93–128.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Clair, A., Reeves, A., McKee, M., & Stuckler, D. (2019). Constructing a housing precariousness measure for Europe. Journal of European Social Policy, 29(1), 13–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928718768334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Aurand, A., Emmanuel, D., Foley, E., Clarke, M., Rafi, I., & Yentel, D. (2023). The gap: A shortage of affordable rental homes. National Low Income Housing Coalition.

  12. Farero, A., Sullivan, C. M., López-Zerón, G., Bowles, R. P., Sprecher, M., Chiaramonte, D., & Engleton, J. (2022). Development and validation of the housing instability scale. Journal of Social Distress and Homelessness, 0(0), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/10530789.2022.2127852.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Gleason, K. D., Dube, M., Bernier, E., & Martin, J. (2022). Using geographic information systems to assess community-level vulnerability to housing insecurity in rural areas. Journal of Community Psychology, 50(4), 1993–2012. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22589.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Yousey, A., & Samudra, R. (2018). Defining homelessness in the Rural United States. Online Journal of Rural Research & Policy, 13(4). https://doi.org/10.4148/1936-0487.1094.

  15. Fitchen, J. M. (1992). On the Edge of Homelessness: Rural poverty and housing Insecurity1. Rural Sociology, 57(2), 173–193. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1549-0831.1992.tb00462.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Sherman, J. (2021). Please don’t take this: Rural gentrification, Symbolic Capital, and Housing Insecurity. Social Problems, spab041. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spab041.

  17. McKee, K., Hoolachan, J. E., & Moore, T. (2017). The precarity of Young people’s Housing experiences in a rural context. Scottish Geographical Journal, 133(2), 115–129. https://doi.org/10.1080/14702541.2017.1321136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Laufer, P. (2014). All we ask is to be left alone. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 36, 17–33.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Davis, W. N. (1952). State of Jefferson. California Historical Society Quarterly, 31(2), 125–138. https://doi.org/10.2307/25156352.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Tickner, B., & Fiorini-Jenner, G. (2006). The state of Jefferson. Arcadia Publishing.

  21. Potts, M. (2019, October 4). In the Land of Self-Defeat. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/04/opinion/sunday/trump-arkansas.html.

  22. California Health and Human Services Open Data Portal (2023). County Health Status Profiles. Retrieved from https://data.chhs.ca.gov/dataset/county-health-status-profiles.

  23. Seabrook, J. A., & Avison, W. R. (2012). Socioeconomic status and cumulative disadvantage processes across the Life Course: Implications for Health outcomes. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie, 49(1), 50–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-618X.2011.01280.x.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. US Census Bureau (2020). Explore Census Data. Retrieved from data.census.gov.

  25. Albrecht, D. E., & Albrecht, S. L. (2000). Poverty in Nonmetropolitan America: Impacts of Industrial, Employment, and Family structure variables. Rural Sociology, 65(1), 87–103. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1549-0831.2000.tb00344.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Rural County Representatives of California (2014). Counties | Rural Counties. Rural County Representatives of California. Retrieved January 21, 2019, from http://rcrcnet.org/counties.

  27. Ratcliffe, M., Burd, C., Holder, K., & Fields, A. (2016). Defining Rural at the U.S. Census Bureau (No. 1). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2016/acs/acsgeo-1.html.

  28. National Center for Health Statistics (2017). Urban Rural Classification Scheme for Counties. Retrieved July 21, 2023, from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data_access/urban_rural.htm.

  29. LeCompte, M. D., & Schensul, J. J. (2013). Analysis and Interpretation of Ethnographic Data: A Mixed Methods Approach (2nd ed., Vols. 1–7, Vol. 5). Plymouth, UK: AltaMira Press.

  30. Marcouiller, M. L. (2016). David. Rural Housing, Exurbanization, and Amenity-Driven Development: Contrasting the Haves and the Have Nots London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315607160.

  31. Han, C. (2018). Precarity, Precariousness, and vulnerability. Annual Review of Anthropology, 47(1), 331–343. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041644.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Shim, S. H. (2008). A philosophical investigation of the role of teachers: A synthesis of Plato, Confucius, Buber, and Freire. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(3), 515–535. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.09.014.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Ayers, W. (1995). To become a teacher: making a difference in children’s lives. New York: Teachers College Press. Retrieved from https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1130282272425501568.

  34. Rosenthal, A., Stover, E., & Haar, R. J. (2021). Health and social impacts of California wildfires and the deficiencies in current recovery resources: An exploratory qualitative study of systems-level issues. PloS One, 16(3), e0248617. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248617.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  35. Tsai, A. C. (2015). Home Foreclosure, Health, and Mental Health: A systematic review of Individual, Aggregate, and Contextual associations. Plos One, 10(4), e0123182. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0123182.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  36. Ziol-Guest, K. M., & McKenna, C. C. (2014). Early Childhood Housing Instability and School Readiness. Child Development, 85(1), 103–113. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12105.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  37. Sherman, J. (2006). Coping with rural poverty: Economic survival and Moral Capital in Rural America. Social Forces, 85(2), 891–913. https://doi.org/10.1353/sof.2007.0026.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Salvador, C., Nieto, R., Vicente-Serrano, S. M., García-Herrera, R., Gimeno, L., & Vicedo-Cabrera, A. M. (2023). Public Health Implications of Drought in a Climate Change Context: A critical review. Annual Review of Public Health, 44(1), 213–232. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-071421-051636.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  39. Schmid, T. (2021, November 11). Vehicle Residency: Homelessness We Struggle to Talk About. Retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/society/homelessness-vehicle-residency-housing/.

  40. Rosenberg, A., Keene, D. E., Schlesinger, P., Groves, A. K., & Blankenship, K. M. (2021). I don’t know what home feels like anymore: Residential spaces and the absence of ontological security for people returning from incarceration. Social Science & Medicine, 272, 113734. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113734.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Henwood, B. F., Redline, B., Semborski, S., Rhoades, H., Rice, E., & Wenzel, S. L. (2018). What’s next? A grounded theory of the relationship between ontological security, mental health, social relationships, and identity formation for young adults in supportive housing. Cityscape (Washington D C), 20(3), 87–100.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  42. Dupuis, A., & Thorns, D. C. (1998). Home, Home Ownership and the search for Ontological Security. The Sociological Review, 46(1), 24–47. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-954X.00088.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  43. Ward, S. K. (2016). Chronic poverty, Community decline, and amenity-rich growth in Rural America. In D. Marcouiller, M. Lapping, & O. Furuseth (Eds.), Rural Housing, exurbanization, and amenity-driven development: Contrasting the haves and the have nots (pp. 157–173). Routledge.

  44. Bunce, M. (1994). The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape. London: Routledge. Retrieved from https://www.routledge.com/The-Countryside-Ideal-Anglo-American-Images-of-Landscape/Bunce/p/book/9780415104357.

  45. Matthews, H., Taylor, M., Sherwood, K., Tucker, F., & Melanie Limb. (2000). Growing-up in the countryside: Children and the rural idyll. Journal of Rural Studies, 16(2), 141–153. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-0167(99)00059-5.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

Sincere appreciation is due to the 153 participants who volunteered their time and stories to us. Without them, this research would not have been possible. We would also like to thank Shelly Brantley and her many colleagues at RISE, the Rural Initiatives Strengthening Equity project of the California Health Collaborative. We are so grateful for their support and guidance throughout the study.

Funding

This research is supported by funds from the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP), grant number T31IR1513 (Tamar Antin, PI), and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant number 1R01AA027992-01A1 (Geoffrey Hunt, PI). The content provided here is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of TRDRP or the NIH.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Critical Public Health, Institute for Scientific Analysis, Alameda, CA, 94501, USA

    Tamar MJ Antin, Emile Sanders, Sharon Lipperman-Kreda, Geoffrey Hunt & Rachelle Annechino

Authors
  1. Tamar MJ Antin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Emile Sanders
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Sharon Lipperman-Kreda
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Geoffrey Hunt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Rachelle Annechino
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tamar MJ Antin.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of Interest

The authors have no known conflicts of interest to report.

Additional information

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Electronic Supplementary Material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary Material 1

Supplementary Material 2

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Antin, T.M., Sanders, E., Lipperman-Kreda, S. et al. An Exploration of Rural Housing Insecurity as a Public Health Problem in California’s Rural Northern Counties. J Community Health (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-024-01330-z

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-024-01330-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation