Movers and shakers

Since the 1960s, the West End of Newcastle has seen extensive renewal of social housing. However in the mid-1990s, a further threat to social renewal seemed to be emerging with relatively large numbers of families moving house very frequently.

Were they the cause of the abandonment of sound housing stock? Was a life style of living by benefit and other frauds emerging? Certainly continuity of education was threatened as children moved between schools. And all six recent unusual deaths of children were thought to have taken place within families of frequent movers. However, although all professionals saw frequent movers as problematic for them, some saw families themselves as culprits, while others felt they were more victims of circumstance.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation funded our research to explore this phenomenon. To avoid simply interviewing families known to the professional agencies, we began with 202 doorstep interviews - 34 with households who had moved three times in the past year and 168 with more settled residents. Then 16 frequent movers from the doorstep interviews and 17 more settled residents were interviewed in-depth a number of times to draw out their life history.

The door to door survey confirmed the existence of a pattern of movement within and beyond the north east. Looking at the last three moves of frequent movers, 50 per cent had had more than one house in the West End in the last year. However, 23 per cent of people had not lived in the north east in the last year.

The in-depth interviews showed that frequent movers are not a homogenous group, even in terms of the reasons given for moving house. All of them currently lived in private rented property (although most had lived in social housing in the past). The physical state of some of the housing was very poor, but about half of the frequent movers had done up properties at their own expense. These families were not poorly managing "problem" families. In total eight of the frequent movers lived as single parents, two were living alone and six were living with partners.

The study distinguished three groups based around their reasons for moving, which suggests that there might be a "career path" into frequent moving in the West End.

Firstly there was a "new entrants" group, with few or no social ties, who had moved less than average, had spent less of their lives in the West End, and emphasised positive housing reasons for moving, such as getting bigger or cheaper accommodation. This group seemed new to frequent moving, having moved, on average, 7.8 times in the last three years.

Then there was an "on the fringe" group, who emphasised positive personal reasons for moving, such as to move in with a partner. Generally they did not report suffering harassment from neighbours and had moved an average 10.2 times.

Thirdly there was an "on the circuit" group, who emphasised poor housing or harassment as the reason for moving. Nearly all had had contact with the police. They had extensive networks of friends and had lived much of their lives in the area. Perhaps only for this group had frequent moving become part of a style of life.

When asked directly why they moved, replies centred on negative reasons such as neighbour harassment which tallied with studies by the local authority housing management.

However, when reasons for moving were elicited as part of the more general account of people's lives, the emphasis changed. Now positive personal reasons, such as moving in with or next to a friend or partners, came to the fore. Because there is a void level of around 25 per cent people can move on relatively easily in the face of any failure to form a stable satisfying adult relationship.

Frequent movers had often been abandoned by one or both parents or were clearly unloved, being as one put it the "black sheep of the family". All the frequent movers had experienced traumatic events and poverty in their childhood or youth, as had many of the more settled residents.

But it seems that trauma, conflict and poverty do not in themselves create frequent movers. What seems to be lacking is an environment and family to help them deal with these difficulties. So, we suggest that an unsatisfied desire to find a stable relationship, to find someone to love or someone to love them, may underlie much frequent moving.

If this is the case it provides further evidence that there are no quick fixes to either social exclusion It reinforces the argument that regeneration cannot simply be a matter of pragmatically renewing the housing stock or providing employment training.