“They're Colonizing My Neighborhood”: (Perceptions of) Social Mix in Canada

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 486-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra M. Bucerius ◽  
Sara K. Thompson ◽  
Luca Berardi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Neighborhood Revitalization ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Social Mix ◽  
Regent Park

In recent years, urban neighborhoods in many Western nations have undergone neighborhood restructuring initiatives, especially in public housing developments. Regent Park, Canada's oldest and largest public housing development, is a neighborhood currently undergoing ‘neighborhood revitalization’ based on the social mix model. One tenet of this model is the idea that original public housing residents are benefiting from interactions with middle class residents. Based on qualitative interviews and ethnographic observations with original housing residents as well as new middle–class homeowners, we examine whether cross–class interactions actually occur “on the ground” in Regent Park. By examining an iteration of the model that differs with respect to the direction of resident movement—that is, the revitalization of Regent Park involves more advantaged residents buying into the once low–income neighborhood, as opposed to providing lower–income residents with housing vouchers to move out of the community (and into more affluent neighborhoods across the city)—our study provides a unique contribution to the existing research on social mix. In particular, our research examines whether the direction of this resident movement has any distinct or demonstrable impact on: (1) the daily perceptions, attitudes, and actions of original and new residents, and (2) the nature of cross–class interactions. Second, unlike the vast majority of studies done in Europe and the United States, which are conducted “postrevitalization,” we examine the effects of neighborhood revitalization as the process unfolds.

“SOCIALLY MIXED” PUBLIC HOUSING REDEVELOPMENT AS A DESTIGMATIZATION STRATEGY IN TORONTO'S REGENT PARK

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Social Mix ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Housing Redevelopment ◽  
Regent Park

AbstractOver the last two decades decision makers have sought to address problems with large concentrations of poverty and minority ethnoracial groups in the cities of Western Europe and the Anglo-American world that are the direct result of the manner in which public housing was built in the early postwar era. The United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia have developed programs that introduce “social mix” into such public housing developments. These initiatives are designed to alter the social dynamics of places with high levels of concentrated poverty and ethnoracial minority groups that are believed to magnify the disadvantages of poverty and marginalization. In this paper, I argue that this is a destigmatization strategy, but not the same kind of destigmatization strategy that has been described in the literature. Using the example of Toronto's Regent Park, a large public housing development near downtown, I develop a research agenda for understanding the gap between a quasi-state agency's efforts to destigmatize public housing sites (“place destigmatization”) and the everyday destigmatization practices and experiences of residents (“personal destigmatization”). The paper begins with a review of the putative mechanisms linking socially mixed public housing redevelopment and outcomes for residents, including social capital, social control, role modelling, and changes to the political economy of place. This review finds little evidence of these effects in the literature. Consequently, I argue for an inductive approach to the study of the outcomes of social mix, rather than the common practice of judging such outcomes against the benchmark of close, intimate relationships between new, middle-class residents and existing public housing residents. I further argue that the “normalization” of the built form that is a major part of socially mixed redevelopment is a form of place destigmatization, and may alter both material practices and representational practices related to stigma, which have very real effects on the everyday experience of residents.

scholarly journals “Trailer Trash” Stigma and Belonging in Florida Mobile Home Parks

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarethe Kusenbach
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mobile Home ◽  
Central Florida ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
Mobile Homes ◽  
Community Belonging

<p>In the United States, residents of mobile homes and mobile home communities are faced with cultural stigmatization regarding their places of living. While common, the “trailer trash” stigma, an example of both housing and neighborhood/territorial stigma, has been understudied in contemporary research. Through a range of discursive strategies, many subgroups within this larger population manage to successfully distance themselves from the stigma and thereby render it inconsequential (Kusenbach, 2009). But what about those residents—typically white, poor, and occasionally lacking in stability—who do not have the necessary resources to accomplish this? This article examines three typical responses by low-income mobile home residents—here called resisting, downplaying, and perpetuating—leading to different outcomes regarding residents’ sense of community belonging. The article is based on the analysis of over 150 qualitative interviews with mobile home park residents conducted in West Central Florida between 2005 and 2010.</p>

Theorizing Gentrification as a Process of Racial Capitalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 153568412110547
Author(s):  
Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Composition ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Prior Literature

Academics largely define gentrification based on changes in the class demographics of neighborhood residents from predominately low-income to middle-class. This ignores that gentrification always occurs in spaces defined by both class and race. In this article, I use the lens of racial capitalism to theorize gentrification as a racialized, profit-accumulating process, integrating the perspective that spaces are always racialized to class-centered theories. Using the prior literature on gentrification in the United States, I demonstrate how the concepts of value, valuation, and devaluation from racial capitalism explain where and how gentrification unfolds. Exposure to gentrification varies depending on a neighborhood’s racial composition and the gentrification stakeholders involved, which contributes to racial differences in the scale and pace of change and the implications of those changes for the processes of displacement. Revising our understanding of gentrification to address the racialization of space helps resolve seemingly contradictory findings across qualitative and quantitative studies.

Moving From Inequality: Housing Vouchers and Escaping Neighborhood Crime

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lens
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Subsidized Housing ◽  
Neighborhood Crime ◽  
Housing Vouchers ◽  
Housing Developments ◽  
Moving To Opportunity ◽  
High Crime ◽  
Housing Voucher

The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program is the largest housing subsidy program in the United States, serving over 2.2 million households. Through the program, local public housing authorities (PHAs) provide funds to landlords on behalf of participating households, covering a portion of the household’s rent. Given the reliance on the private market, there are typically many more locational options for HCV households than for traditional public housing, which has a set (and declining) number of units and locations. The growth of this program has been robust in recent decades, adding nearly 1 million vouchers in the last 25 years. This has been a deliberate attempt to move away from the traditional public housing model toward one that emphasizes choice and a diversity of location outcomes through the HCV program. There are many reasons for these policy and programmatic shifts, but one is undoubtedly the high crime rates that came to be the norm in and near far too many public housing developments. During the mid-20th century, when the vast majority of public housing units were created, they were frequently sited in undesirable areas that offered few amenities and contained high proportions of low-income and minority households. As poverty further concentrated in central cities due to the flight of higher-income (often white) households to the suburbs, many public housing developments became increasingly dangerous places to live. The physical design of public housing developments was also frequently problematic, with entire city blocks being taken up by large high-rises set back from the street, standing out as areas to avoid within their neighborhoods. There are many quantitative summaries and anecdotal descriptions of the crime and violence present in some public housing developments from sources as diverse as journalists, housing researchers, and architects. Now that the shift to housing vouchers (and the low-income housing tax credit [LIHTC]) has been underway for over two decades, we have a good understanding of how effective these changes have been in reducing exposure to crime for subsidized households. Further, we are beginning to better understand the limitations of these efforts and why households are often unsuccessful in moving from high-crime areas. In studies of moving housing voucher households away from crime, the following questions are of particular interest: What is the connection between subsidized housing and crime? What mechanisms of the housing voucher program work to allow households to live in lower-crime neighborhoods than public housing? And finally, how successful has this program been in reducing participant exposure to crime, and how do we explain some of the limitations? While many aspects of the relationship between subsidized housing and crime are not well understood, existing research provides several important insights. First, we can conclude that traditional public housing—particularly large public housing developments—often concentrated crime to dangerously high levels. Second, we know that public housing residents commonly expressed great concern over the presence of crime and drugs in their communities, and this was a frequent motivation for participating in early studies of housing mobility programs such as Gautreaux in Chicago and the Moving to Opportunity experiment. Third, while the typical housing voucher household lives in a lower-crime environment than public housing households, they still live in relatively high-crime neighborhoods, and there is substantial research on the limited nature of moves using vouchers. Finally, while there is research on whether voucher households cause crime in the aggregate, the outcomes are rather ambiguous—some rigorous studies have found that clusters of voucher households increase neighborhood crime and some have found there is no effect. Furthermore, any potential effects on neighborhood crime by vouchers need to be weighed against their effectiveness at reducing exposure to neighborhood crime among subsidized households.

Public Housing and Vouchers

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Affordable Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Housing Subsidy ◽  
Housing Program ◽  
Design Evolution ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Privately Owned ◽  
Low Income Households

Public housing and rental vouchers constitute two distinct forms of housing subsidy in the United States. Public housing, the nation’s oldest housing program for low-income renters provides affordable housing to about 1.2 million households in developments ranging in size from a single unit to multibuilding complexes with hundreds of apartments. The Housing Choice Voucher Program, founded more than 35 years after the start of public housing is now the nation’s largest rental subsidy program. It enables around 2 million low-income households to rent privately owned housing anywhere in the country. Although both programs provide low-income households with “deep” subsidies that ensure they spend no more than 30 percent of their adjusted income on rent, and both are operated by local public housing authorities, they offer distinct advantages and disadvantages. This chapter reviews and compares the two programs, examining their design, evolution, and strengths and weaknesses, including issues of racial segregation and concentrated poverty.

Moral Identity Among Low–Socioeconomic Status Adolescents: Stressful Events and Family Relationships Considered

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-415
Author(s):  
Alexandra N. Davis ◽  
Cara Streit
Keyword(s):  
Low Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Conceptual Models ◽  
Moral Identity ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Processes ◽  
Stressful Events ◽  
Low Socioeconomic

The current study aimed to examine themes surrounding the moral identity of adolescents from two low-income communities in the United States using qualitative interviews. Based on previous conceptual models, the authors aimed to examine the co-occurrence of themes of morality, stressors, and family processes. Participants were adolescents from the Northeast and Midwest ( n = 38; mean age = 15.64; 73.7% female; 23.7% Black, 30.6% Latino, and 47.4% White). The results demonstrated that morality was a salient theme among adolescents. In addition, a subset of adolescents discussed stressors and family processes in conjunction with morality. The discussion will focus on the resiliency of youth living in low-income communities.

Calling upon the Genius of Private Enterprise: The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 and the Liberal Turn to Public-Private Partnerships

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander von Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Public Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Private Enterprise ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Private Partnerships ◽  
Housing Program ◽  
For Profit

President Lyndon Johnson declared the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 to be “the most farsighted, the most comprehensive, the most massive housing program in all American history.” To replace every slum dwelling in the country within ten years, the act turned from public housing, the government-run program started in the 1930s, toward private-sector programs using both nonprofit and for-profit companies. As a result, since its passage, for-profit businesses have developed the great majority of low-income residences in the United States. The law also helped popularize the idea of “public-private partnerships,” collaborations of government agencies and non-government entities—including for-profit companies—for social and urban improvements. Remarkably, political liberals supported the idea that private enterprise carry out social-welfare programs. This article examines the reasons that Democratic officials, liberals, and housing industry leaders united to create a decentralized, ideologically pluralistic, and redundant system for low-income housing. It shows that frustrations with the public housing program, the response to widespread violence in the nation's cities, and the popularity of corporate America pushed the turn toward the private sector. The changes in housing and urban policy made in the late 1960s, the article concludes, helped further distinguish the American welfare state and encourage the rise of neoliberalism in the United States.

scholarly journals A Critical Review of Bilingual Education in the United States: From Basements and Pride to Boutiques and Profit

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 14-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Flores ◽  
Ofelia García
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Bilingual Education ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Structural Barriers ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Immersion Programs ◽  
Middle Class Families

ABSTRACTIn this article we connect the institutionalization of bilingual education to a post–Civil Rights racial formation that located the root of educational inequalities in the psychological condition of people of color in ways that obscured the structural barriers confronting communities of color. Within this context, bilingual education was institutionalized with the goal of instilling cultural pride in Latinx students in ways that would remediate their perceived linguistic deficiencies. This left bilingual educators struggling to develop affirmative spaces for Latinx children within a context where these students continued to be devalued by the broader school and societal context. More recent years have witnessed the dismantling of these affirmative spaces and their replacement with two-way immersion programs that seek to cater to White middle-class families. While these programs have offered new spaces for the affirmation of the bilingualism of Latinx children, they do little to address the power hierarchies between the low-income Latinx communities and White middle-class communities that are being served by these programs. We end with a call to situate struggles for bilingual education within broader efforts to combat the racialization of Latinx and other minoritized communities.

Housing

Getting By ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 635-730
Author(s):  
Helen Hershkoff ◽  
Stephen Loffredo
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tax Credits ◽  
Housing Assistance ◽  
New Public ◽  
Housing Rights ◽  
Federal Housing ◽  
New Construction ◽  
Private Owner

This chapter discusses the major federal programs providing rental and homeownership assistance to poor and low-income people. On the supply side, for decades the United States has not funded new Public Housing that it owns and manages; instead, tax credits are the major driver of new construction, with buildings owned and operated by private developers who commit to time-limited affordability requirements. On the demand side, the leading rental support program gives tenants “vouchers,” allowing them choice where they can live but no guarantee that a landlord will rent to them at the subsidized payment levels. Moreover, many households, and disproportionately people of color, have been or continue to be arbitrarily denied rental assistance because of a family member’s prior contact with the criminal justice system, even just an arrest—a policy that has caused great hardship and contributed to homelessness. For those tenants who receive it, federal housing assistance is a critical lifeline. This chapter focuses on how prospective tenants can apply for and maintain eligibility for Public Housing or subsidized units in Multifamily Programs, and how to obtain and keep a voucher. The chapter also discusses issues critical to housing justice—tenant participation in assisted housing; rights of tenants when a private owner leaves an assisted program; housing support for the homeless; the government’s duty to affirmatively further fair housing; and problems of environmental displacement.

scholarly journals Dismantling Persistent Deficit Narratives About the Language and Literacy of Culturally and Linguistically Minoritized Children and Youth: Counter-Possibilities

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Su-hua Wang ◽  
Nora Lang ◽  
George C. Bunch ◽  
Samantha Basch ◽  
Sam R. McHugh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Academic Language ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Language And Literacy ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
White Middle Class ◽  
Word Gap

Despite decades of efforts, deficit narratives regarding language development and use by children and students from historically marginalized backgrounds remain persistent in the United States. Examining selective literature, we discuss the ideologies that undergird two deficit narratives: the notion that some children have a “word gap” when compared to their White middle-class peers, and students must develop “academic language” to engage in rigorous content learning. The “word gap” concept came from a study wherein a group of young children in low-income families heard fewer words than those in middle-class families. It assumes that language can only be acquired in one way—vocabulary exchange from one parent to one child—and ignores decades of research on diverse pathways for language development. We highlight an alternative perspective that language development builds on children’s experience with cultural practices and the harm on minoritized children by privileging a specific form of vocabulary acquisition. The second deficit narrative concerns “academic language,” a concept championed by scholars aiming to address educational inequity. The construct runs the risk of undervaluing the potential of students from historically marginalized backgrounds to engage in learning using language that is “informal,” nonconventional, or “non-native like.” It also is sometimes used as a rationale to relegate students to special programs isolated from more rigorous academic discourse, thus ironically removing them from opportunities to develop the academic registers they are deemed to be missing. We explore alternative frameworks that shift the focus from linguistic features of academic talk and texts as prerequisites for academic work to the broad range of linguistic resources that students employ for academic purposes in the classroom. Finally, we turn to a positive approach to youths’ language development and use: translanguaging by multilingual learners and their teachers. Translanguaging demonstrates the power of a resource-oriented perspective that values students’ rich communicative repertoires and actively seeks to disrupt language hierarchies. We argue that this approach, however, must be considered in relation to the broader social context to meet its transformative aims. Together, our analysis suggests counter-possibilities to dismantle deficit-oriented narratives and points to promising directions for research and practices to reduce inequity in education.

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