Joanna Lucio

Political and social incorporation of public housing residents: challenges in HOPE VI community development

The purpose of this paper is to examine the implementation process of Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) VI for two developments in the Southwest and to explore its impact on the rights of dispersed residents. Drawing on the concept, “right to the city,” this paper describes the participation of residents and their right to appropriate space and the role of Community and Supportive Services (CSS) in facilitating those rights. As a measure of residents’ right to participation, this paper examines whether the residents played a significant role during the redevelopment phases. Next, it looks at the residents’ potential for place making. This paper concludes that the residents’’ right to participation and place making were not inherent in HOPE VI implementation, but that CSS could enhance both rights in future programs.

Designing Hope: Rationales of Mixed-Income Housing Policy

ABSTRACT: Rationales used to legitimize forced dispersal and mixed-income housing policies are socially constructed based on assumptions about concentrated poverty. This study evaluates qualitative data on public housing residents who were in the process of being dispersed as part of a HOPE VI program in order to examine their thoughts about their original home and neighborhood. Residents’ thoughts about their neighborhood are compared to policy rationales. Results indicate that current policy rationales are mostly in line with the goals and motivation of the city but are largely incongruent with the perceptions residents have of their pre-relocation home and neighborhood. The article concludes with policy recommendations for increasing and incorporating residents’ views into policy design.

An Empirical Examination of Validity in Evaluation

This study addresses validity issues in evaluation that stem from Ernest R. House’s book, Evaluating With Validity. The authors examine American Journal of Evaluation articles from 1980 to 2010 that report the results of policy and program evaluations. The authors classify these evaluations according to House’s “major approaches” typology (Systems Analysis, Behavioral Objectives, Decision making, Goal-free, Professional Review, Art Criticism, Quasi-legal, and Case Study) and the types of validity (measurement, design, interpretation, use) the evaluations consider. Analyzing the intersection of evaluation type and validity type, the authors explore the status of House’s standards of Truth, Beauty, and Justice in evaluation practice.

Customers, citizens, and residents: The semantics of public service recipients

This article illustrates how customer and citizen can be exclusive in the current context in which governance exists and proposes a shift in public administration’s conception of citizenship. An examination of the impact of public administration vernacular on society is used to provide insight into how to make public service more inclusive in an increasingly dynamic and diverse world. Global citizenship, one based in residency, is explored as a useful concept for public administration at the local level. Finally, the article discusses how local public administrators and public administration scholars can reinforce residency‐based citizenship to promote collaborative governance.

An unexpected geography of opportunity in the wake of the foreclosure crisis: low-income renters in investor-purchased foreclosures in Phoenix, Arizona

During the recent United States foreclosure crisis, investors purchased and leased thousands of homes nationwide, opening up formerly owner-occupied neighborhoods to renters. Yet, little is known about how this process affected regional patterns of residential segregation and inequality. In this study, we combine property-level data on real estate transactions and subsidized housing vouchers from 2004 to 2014 to assess whether the conversion of foreclosures to rentals enabled low-income renters to live in more advantaged neighborhoods in Phoenix, Arizona. Renters with vouchers living in investor-purchased foreclosures were in lower-poverty neighborhoods compared with those not living in investor-purchased foreclosures. This suggests that foreclosure sales may have widened the geography of opportunity for low-income renters with subsidized housing.

Aging in (Privatized) Places: Subsidized Housing Policy and Seniors

The market-based approach of delivering affordable housing has led to a net loss of traditional public housing and an increase in alternative subsidized housing options. For poor, physically frail older adult residents, subsidized housing and its associated services and support provide an important safety net. This article explores the implications and consequences of this movement for low-income seniors. Specifically, we look at the past and current housing policies, the focus on public-private partnerships, and the transition toward mixed-income communities. The article ends with suggestions for protecting vulnerable older adult populations in a market-driven arena.

Affordable housing networks: a case study in the Phoenix metropolitan region

The lack of regional housing coordination in metropolitan areas has led to a disparity in the distribution of affordable housing. In its place is a haphazard, ad hoc system for developing and supplying affordable housing. Through a descriptive analysis of the greater Phoenix metropolitan regional housing arena, this study explores the positions of public, nonprofit, and private agencies in a network of participants producing affordable housing and the implications of the structure of this network for the successful implementation of affordable housing policies. Results show that the number of contacts actors had in the network are on average low, that private organizations are few and yet becoming more involved through partnerships with NPOs, and that government agencies have the potential to be brokers in the affordable housing network but currently do not take or are unwilling to take advantage of that position.

Leveraging Resilience: Evidence From the Management of Senior Low-Income Housing

Although public and private management approaches have been frequently analyzed for their outcomes along the lines of efficiency and equity, their relationship to fostering community resilience has been understudied. Public housing has undergone a market-based transition, devolving management and operations of its sites or tenants to private management companies. This multi-site case study evaluates different management contexts to understand how management processes encourage or discourage community resilience. Findings include that management can play an integral role in developing community resilience by providing spaces and opportunities for community engagement and resident empowerment. To better navigate in an era of austerity measures, this article recommends practitioners actively leverage and invest in citizen strengths to build more resilient programs.

Happy in the Hood? The Impact of Residential Segregation on Self‐Reported Happiness

Previous research consistently finds that racially-based residential segregation is associated with poor economic, health, and social outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between residential segregation and self-reported happiness. Using panel data from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we begin by estimating ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions of happiness on a measure of MSA-level segregation, controlling for a rich set of individual, neighborhood, and state characteristics. The OLS results suggest that increased segregation is associated with a reduction in happiness among blacks. To deal more appropriately with the potential endogeneity of location choice, we extend the methodology to fully exploit the panel structure of the NSFH and incorporate individual fixed effects into the happiness equation. Contrary to the OLS results, our fixed effects estimates imply that blacks are happier in more segregated metropolitan areas. The paper discusses the implications of these results within the context of current integration policies.

Dreaming the Impossible Dream: Low-Income Families and Their Hopes for the Future

ABSTRACT This article considers how some individuals and families who are low income think and dream about their futures and compares their thoughts with classic notions of the American Dream. Drawing on intensive interviews with individuals and families, the authors analyzed interviewees’ observations about their hopes and thoughts for the future. Five main themes emerge: stability, agency, and control; ideal home life; values about the home; aspirations for children; and obstacles to achieving dreams. In brief, the authors find that the low-income participants in our research have dreams that individuals and families who are more affluent might take for granted and that they appear to adopt neoliberal assumptions about achieving those dreams. These are dreams of getting by and have important implications for the expanding category of individuals and families who find themselves in similar economic situations.