Urban Welfare Regimes, Organizational Cultures, and Client-Staff Tie Activation: A Comparison of Transitional Housing Programs in Los Angeles and Tokyo

Abstract

ABSTRACT:With state safety nets failing to keep up with expanding urban poverty, ties to community organizations can provide crucial resources. But what explains variation in such tie activation at urban, organizational, and individual levels? I advance a multilevel framework of organizational client–staff tie activation that centralizes the role of trust and specifies effects of multiple social contexts. I apply the framework to an exploratory comparison of transitional housing programs in Los Angeles and Tokyo, including analysis of qualitative data collected among clients, staff, and administrators. I argue that urban welfare regimes and organizational cultures are key contexts shaping how macro-level forces like neoliberalism intersect with micro-level processes of social capital building in differentiated ways. Urban scholars can inform theory and practice by further analyzing how organizational-level trust building practices of holism and flexibility can be affected by urban-level regulations on scope of aid and inter-organizational ties.