The Potential for Coproducing Food Security in Public Housing Communities

Joanna Lucio,Meg Bruening,Laura C Hand

doi:10.20899/jpna.6.2.119-137

Abstract

The coproduction literature has long acknowledged that citizens are active consumers and producers of public goods. Coproduction tends to be successful when citizens are already engaging in activities that can be enhanced through collaboration with activities of public managers, programs, and agencies. In this article, we investigate the strategies and activities public housing residents engage in to produce consistent access to sufficient nutritious food needed to support a healthy life. That is, we investigate residents’ food security. Focus group responses from adults and adolescents in six public housing communities in the Phoenix metropolitan area reveal barriers and opportunities for leveraging communities to attenuate place-based disadvantages associated with low food security. These responses also demonstrate a potential missed opportunity to engage in place-based solutions that use principles of coproduction to produce and maintain residents’ food security.

Highlights

Decades of research on neighborhoods has concluded that low income neighborhoods are detrimental to residents’ lives when considering a number of quality of life dimensions (Dreir, Mollenkopf, & Swanstrom, 2004; Ellen & Turner, 1997)
The results indicate that residents tend to engage in behaviors that research suggests improves the success of coproduction and outcomes related to food security
There are stereotypes and assumptions about low income residents’ preference for unhealthy food. These assumptions and stereotypes focus on a belief that residents are not aware of what they should be eating; and, they are unable to contribute to food security

Summary

Introduction

Decades of research on neighborhoods has concluded that low income neighborhoods are detrimental to residents’ lives when considering a number of quality of life dimensions (Dreir, Mollenkopf, & Swanstrom, 2004; Ellen & Turner, 1997). Social capital and a general sense of community in low income communities is thought to mediate some of the negative outcomes associated with living in these neighborhoods (Greenbaum, Hathaway, Rodriguez, Spalding, & Ward, 2008). This suggests, that low income communities contain both barriers and opportunities for residents; and, this leads to a situation ripe for coproduction—that is, a situation where both citizens and government contribute to producing a public good or service (Bovaird & Loeffler, 2012; Pestoff, 2012).

Methods

Results

Conclusion