What is a 'scattered unit'? (housing)?

Question

What is a 'scattered unit'? (housing)?

Answer 1

The way the terminology is normally employed is with regard to the construction of subsidized housing, whether it be pure, totally subsidized public housing, low-moderate income housing with some income qualification, senior citizen housing, etc.  Rather than concentrating the housing in high-density projects in areas close to urban centers, the trend now is to "scatter" it throughout a municipal jurisdiction in clusters of small attached garden apartment or townhouse style structures.  The basic premise is that higher densities themselves promote the negative aspects of subsidized housing (crime, neglect, loss of property values in the surrounding communities).  At the very least, low density scattered sites are easier to maintain physically, and, from a law enforcement perspective, monitor and develop a rapport with residents (ie community policing), as well as integrate the residents into the mainstream community.  You'll see fewer and fewer high-rise housing projects and more scatter site developments.  Of course, the nature of scattering them brings them closer to many more people in the community and generates opposition from those paying market rates to buy or rent, perceiving a lowering of their own property values and the introduction of crime, etc into their community.  Properly managed, these negative effects can be mitigated.  It does take active management however, and many communities are just not adept at managing themselves, let alone housing authorities of which they have limited (but strictly defined) oversight.  

As a local government planner, I've seen it work successfully, and in some cases, well, not so successfully.  In any case, it's better than the high-rise thinking of the 1950's and 1960's.  At the densities that were built to back then, deterioration, crime and sinking property values (and resultant lost tax revenue) were inevitable.