“What is Our City Doing for Us?”: Placing Collective Care into Atlanta’s Post‐Public Housing Movements

Abstract

AbstractThroughout the 20th century, housing movements in Atlanta were anchored by public housing tenant associations and a politics that materially and spatially addressed intersectional issues of discrimination in employment, welfare, education, and housing. I argue the strategies and outcomes of these movements collectivised, embedded, and placed Anneli Anttonen and Jorma Sipilä’s “care capital”—or an expansion of resources for care—in bell hooks’ “homeplaces”, for those marginalised both in social welfare policies and urban politics. Following the loss of over 7,000 public housing units in Atlanta, tenant associations’ care politics and the residents served were displaced and disembedded from the revitalised city. Using archival data, semi‐structured individual and group interviews, and observation of tenant organising meetings, this work examines how care politics are materially and spatially situated across housing movement geographies through Black resistance strategies to collectivise and embed care capital for a broader public.