Abstract
Over the past few decades, area-based initiatives have become a regularly employed means to tackle geographically concentrated deprivation. One such initiative is Tøyenløftet, which took place between 2014 and 2018 in the inner-eastern district of Tøyen in Oslo. A common criticism levied against area-based initiatives is that they have the potential to displace the residents that they are meant to help. The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether this was the case in Tøyen. To operationalize this notion, an empirically oriented research question is formulated, reading: “Did Tøyenløftet lead to a decrease in the proportion of long-term residents in Tøyen?”. Furthermore, area-based initiatives are thought of as part of the broader welfare policies in Norway. Accordingly, a theoretically oriented research question was formulated to investigate the role that area-based initiatives play in the conceptual frame of a social democratic welfare state. Welfare regime theory provides the conceptual principles that the area-based initiative is compared to, articulated by the terms universalism, (low) stratification and decommodification. The research question is formulated as follows: “To what extent do Norwegian area-based initiatives reflect the social democratic ideals of universalism, (low) stratification and decommodification?”. To investigate this, the thesis employs a synthetic control model. This is a comparative case study design that uses a combination of trends in comparable city sub-districts in Oslo. The argument for combining these trends is that a weighted combination of trends in comparable units produce a stronger comparison unit than might otherwise be empirically available. This method is useful in cases where there is only one or a few treated units. The models produced using this method outline what would have happened to the outcome of interest in Tøyen if Tøyenløftet was never implemented. Five models were constructed, four of which provided consistent results for the posttreatment trends, estimating that the proportion of long-term residents were lowered by a magnitude between 1,7 to 2,2 percent at the last year of measurement in 2020. In absolute terms, this constitutes a difference of 249 to 310 residents that had lived in Tøyen for 10 or more years. Models 3 and 4 pass all available significance tests, while models 1 and 2 come close. Overall, the consistent trends and significance testing suggests that the findings are reliable. Two aspects are emphasized as possible explanations for these findings. The first relates directly to a decision made in Tøyenløftet of closing down two social housing blocks, due to what was deemed a too large concentration of social housing in the area. The residents were offered to buy their rental dwellings at 80% market value, but for many this was economically infeasible. The other aspect discussed is the relation area-based initiatives may have with the local housing market, serving as a significant “pull” for economic actors on the Oslo housing market. A concluding remark is that area-based initiatives should be wary of the potential that such initiatives have on influencing local market structures, and consequently implement measures that exempt the most vulnerable residents from the rising housing costs that are an unintended consequence of area-based initiatives. Future synthetic control research designs investigating policy evaluations would be well served to include variables indicating housing stock and housing characteristics, as well as population group characteristics of the units in the data material.