Chicago Public Housing Research Articles

Strategies of Resistance in the Everyday: The Political Approaches of Black Women Living in a Public Housing Development in Chicago

ABSTRACT Black women living in poverty in the United States have been shown to develop non-traditional, or what I call extra-systemic, political engagement to combat their vulnerability to government power. With that in mind, I ask the following question: what conceptual framework of “politics” is best suited to fully understanding the politics of poor Black women living in the US? To answer this question, I examined an ethnographic case study of the politics of 31 Black women living in Chicago public housing, over the course of one year (2011 through 2012). The evidence suggests some marginalized Black women incorporate an oft-hidden resistance strategy against forces exerting a disproportionate amount of power over their lives. The political strategies used by the marginalized Black women I observed, were best understood using an expanded extra-systemic conceptualization of politics, informed by Black feminist political theory.

Lathrop Preservation Campaign: social mobilisation to save public housing in Chicago

This article provides an ethnographic account of the Lathrop Preservation Campaign, a grassroots effort to prevent the demolition of Lathrop Homes, one of the most diverse public housing developments in Chicago, Illinois. In 2000, the Chicago Housing Association implemented a Plan for Transformation to redevelop public housing throughout the city, based on a nationwide effort to deconcentrate poverty in subsidised housing and create mixed-income communities. The Lathrop Preservation Campaign, which consisted of residents, organisers and allies, worked to stop the demolition of Lathrop Homes, minimise the loss of public housing units and to prevent the displacement of residents. Through participant observation and interviews, the authors trace how the community came together to challenge the use of poverty deconcentration programmes and to mobilise around issues of historic preservation and racial discrimination.

“What's Wrong with the Elevators”: From Breakdown to Policing in Chicago Public Housing

AbstractIn this paper, I argue that the high‐rise elevator comprises a particularly important and yet heretofore undertheorised space for understanding narratives about failure and breakdown in public housing in the US and beyond. Using Chicago as a case study, I draw upon historical newspaper articles and interviews with former public housing tenants, as well as interviews with former police officers who worked in public housing developments, to show how broken and vandalised elevators became a metonym in public discourse for the widely perceived “brokenness” of high‐rise public housing writ large. Insofar as malfunctioning elevators symbolised social immobility, were seen as a locus of crime, and drained the housing authority's finances, they also became a site of intensive policing. When that intensive policing failed to solve structural problems in Chicago's public housing high rises, policymakers demolished them.

Urban Renewal and Inequality: Evidence from Chicago's Public Housing Demolitions

Urban Renewal and Inequality: Evidence from Chicago's Public Housing Demolitions

The Women of Chicago Public Housing. Architects of their Own ‘Homeplace’

The story of public housing in Chicago, and the rest of the United States for that matter, tends to fixate on negative images of housing projects built between c. 1940-1960, like Cabrini-Green or Wentworth Gardens. Now that so many of the buildings have been demolished (or “redeveloped”) and scholars, institutions, and the general public have begun to untangle the complexity of the history of public housing in the U.S., it is time to move beyond the damaging narratives and negative imagery to better understand how women persevered and adapted to ensure they and their families not only had basic needs met, but also had access to safe spaces, key facilities, and opportunities for community-building, joy, and pride in their home. This paper explores connections between issues of architecture and the impact of women on the design and reform of Cabrini-Green, Wentworth Gardens, and other key examples, to demonstrate how women residents helped shape the built environment of public housing in Chicago through organizing, activism, and the appropriation of space based on everyday needs and use. Through an analysis of photographs documenting the interiors of Cabrini-Green and using a theoretical framework that combines feminist theorist bell hooks’ notion of the ‘homeplace’ as a ‘site of resistance’ (1990) with architectural historian Dell Upton’s concept of the ‘cultural landscape’ (1991), this paper proposes that we modify our current definition of an “Architect” and in fact consider these public housing residents ‘architects of their own homeplace’.

Childhood Protective Factors and Future Adult Health Outcomes in an Urban Environment.

To evaluate protective factors that help individuals overcome adverse health outcomes associated with childhood trauma in an urban environment. This retrospective cohort study included adults born between 1970 and 1995 who grew up in the former Cabrini-Green Homes, a low-income, Chicago public housing development. Participants completed surveys asking about general health, smoking, and mental health status. Surveys included questions related to neighborhood and family support, community safety, and childhood youth program participation. Simple regression models were performed to compare childhood exposure of adverse and protective factors to adult health outcomes. Multivariable logistic regression models were constructed to adjust for age, sex, and educational attainment. 334 former residents completed the survey, and only those that reported an adversity score ≥ 2 were included in the analysis (n = 248). For those individuals who reported that their families cared for them as children, they described feeling hopeful about the future (OR 2.77, 95% CI, 1.28-6.00, aOR 2.63, 95% CI, 1.21-5.75) and reported decreased smoking rates as adults (OR 0.30, 95% CI, 0.14-0.66, aOR 0.35, 95% CI, 0.16-0.78). Better self-reported adult health status was associated with residents who believed the neighborhood looked out for one another (OR 2.31, 95% CI, 1.21-4.42, aOR 2.01, 95% CI, 1.02-3.95). These findings suggest that a caring family and neighborhood connectedness are protective in mitigating childhood adversity. Devoting resources to strengthen families and communities is a promising strategy to promote healthier adult behaviors.

Urban Renewal and Inequality: Evidence from Chicago's Public Housing Demolitions

Urban Renewal and Inequality: Evidence from Chicago's Public Housing Demolitions

Empowered collective: Formulating a black feminist information community model through archival analysis

AbstractThis poster presents a critical‐qualitative evidence inquiry approach to examine the information dynamics of African American mothers in an historic (1955–1970) Chicago public housing community. This research builds upon initial interest in their activism for the construction of a neighborhood library, to exploring the information rich system emanating from the community they inhabit (Gray In a collective voice: Uncovering the black feminist information community of activist‐mothers in Chicago Public Housing, 1955‐1970). The three phase eight step qualitative evidence approach includes descriptive and complex theoretical analysis contributing to the formulation of a Black Feminist Information Community (BFIC) model.

Second chances in the second city: Public housing and prisoner reentry in Chicago

In November 2014, the Chicago Housing Authority approved a pilot program to allow a limited number of individuals with criminal records to live in their housing programs. In this article, I contend that the pilot provides an important opportunity to institutionally recognize and extend material benefits to formerly incarcerated individuals for whom housing is both especially difficult to secure and especially important to find. Drawing on Wacquant, I argue that the pilot also offers an opening for key institutions of urban governance, such as housing authorities, to acknowledge their own role in perpetuating a pervasive “carceral continuum” that disciplines the urban poor and feeds mass incarceration. However, drawing on interviews with pilot organizers and participants, I show how the pilot responds to and replicates pervasive fears of crime that link poverty and criminality in particular. As a result, its cautious experimental design relegates participants to the status of test cases and exceptions, rather than normalizing their presence in public housing. The pilot further relies on a problematic and paradoxical understanding of “return” that obscures public housing’s historical role in the carceral continuum. In all of these ways, the logics of this pilot and others like it remain limited, thus undermining their potential to disrupt such carceral continuities.

“I Didn’t Really Want to Leave”

With the United States’ welfare state coming to rely on market-based policies, the notion of choice has come to the forefront of public housing policy. This study investigated choice within a Chicago public housing community slated for redevelopment. In theory, the utilization of the private market creates broader options, empowering citizens to exercise greater autonomy in major life decisions. The housing authority emphasized the choices available to tenants, including the choice to remain on-site during redevelopment. Yet relocatees reported experiencing pressure to relocate, through either explicit actions from housing authority officials or nuanced channels including steering and coercion tactics. The incongruence between the narratives presented by the housing authority and those presented by the public housing residents demonstrates that the distinction between “voluntary” and “involuntary” relocation is not always clear. We offer several areas for consideration moving forward, including substantive inclusion of residents in planning processes, development of a more effective incentive structure to reward public housing agencies for relocating residents into higher quality neighborhoods, and shifting the overall framing of subsidized housing residents from consumers to civic agents who hold the potential to shape the future directions of their communities.

No Simple Solutions: Transforming Public Housing in Chicago

No Simple Solutions: Transforming Public Housing in Chicago

"It Was Love in All the Buildings They Tore Down": How Caregiving Grandmothers Create and Experience a Sense of Community in Chicago Public Housing.

About 16,000 families residing in Chicago's public housing have been relocated over the last two decades through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) redevelopment initiative. We situate this paper within a larger conversation about the presence and utilization of community ties within public housing despite the territorial stigmatization of traditional public housing. Utilizing in-depth interviews with 20 Black caregiving grandmothers relocated from Chicago public housing we explore how women charged with performing the lion's share of the kinwork needed to ensure family stability experienced and created a sense of community while living in public housing. We show that by providing (1) safety nets for multiple generations, (2) social support and connections to neighborhood institutions, as well as (3) opportunities for Black activist mothering, these women, often at the heart of vertical lineages, created a sense of community amidst the problems in their communities.

Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change. By John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016. 270p. $95.00 cloth, $28.00 paper. - No Simple Solutions: Transforming Public Housing in Chicago. By Susan J. Popkin. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 160p. $40.00 cloth. - Building the City of Spectacle: Mayor Richard M. Daley and

Claiming Neighborhood: New Ways of Understanding Urban Change. By John J. Betancur and Janet L. Smith. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016. 270p. 28.00 paper. - No Simple Solutions: Transforming Public Housing in Chicago. By Susan J. Popkin. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 160p. $40.00 cloth. - Building the City of Spectacle: Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Remaking of Chicago. By Costas Spirou and Dennis R. Judd. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016. 264p. $27.95 cloth. - Volume 15 Issue 4

Susan J. Popkin: No simple solutions: transforming public housing in Chicago

Susan J. Popkin: No simple solutions: transforming public housing in Chicago

Externalities of public housing: The effect of public housing demolitions on local crime

This paper evaluates the potential for negative externalities from public housing by examining crime rates before and after demolition of public housing projects in Chicago between 1995 and 2010. Using data on block-level crimes by type of crime merged to detailed geographic data on individual public housing demolitions, I find evidence that Chicago's public housing imposed significant externalities on the surrounding neighborhood. Using a difference in difference approach comparing neighborhoods around public housing projects to nearby neighborhoods I find that crime decreases by 8.8% after a demolition. This decrease is concentrated in violent crime. I use an event study to show that the decrease occurs at the approximate date of the eviction of the residents and persists for at least 5 years after the demolition. Neighborhoods with large demolitions and demolitions of public housing that had been poorly maintained display the largest crime decreases.

Public Housing in New York City and Chicago

Public Housing in New York City and Chicago

Externalities of Public Housing: The Effect of Public Housing Demolitions on Local Crime

This paper evaluates the potential for negative externalities from public housing by examining crime rates before and after demolition of public housing projects in Chicago between 1995 and 2010. Using data on block-level crimes by type of crime merged to detailed geographic data on individual public housing demolitions, I find evidence that Chicago's public housing imposed significant externalities on the surrounding neighborhood. Using a difference in difference approach comparing neighborhoods around public housing projects to nearby neighborhoods I find that crime decreases by 8.8% after a demolition. This decrease is concentrated in violent crime. I use an event study to show that the decrease occurs at the approximate date of the eviction of the residents and persists for at least 5 years after the demolition. Neighborhoods with large demolitions and demolitions of public housing that had been poorly maintained display the largest crime decreases.

The Family Toxic: Triaging Obligation in Post-Welfare Chicago

This essay examines anxieties concerning interpersonal obligations that gathered within and around low-income households of a redeveloping Chicago public housing project in the years following comprehensive public housing and welfare reform. These households navigated competing demands. Leaseholders continued to feel beholden to expectations that they distribute any resources to which they had access, such as shelter. At the same time, increased monitoring of dwindling resources resulted in gossip and suspicion that made such expectations difficult to manage. Drawing on anthropological studies of witchcraft, I argue that what was at stake in the expression and management of resource anxieties was not households' “dysfunction” or “cooperation,” but something far more explosive: the constant triaging of obligations in relation to the risks they could pose at any moment.

What the Demolition of Public Housing Teaches Us about the Impact of Racial Threat on Political Behavior

How does the context in which a person lives affect his or her political behavior? I exploit an event in which demographic context was exogenously changed, leading to a significant change in voters' behavior and demonstrating that voters react strongly to changes in an outgroup population. Between 2000 and 2004, the reconstruction of public housing in Chicago caused the displacement of over 25,000 African Americans, many of whom had previously lived in close proximity to white voters. After the removal of their African American neighbors, the white voters' turnout dropped by over 10 percentage points. Consistent with psychological theories of racial threat, their change in behavior was a function of the size and proximity of the outgroup population. Proximity was also related to increased voting for conservative candidates. These findings strongly suggest that racial threat occurs because of attitude change rather than selection.

Youth in mixed-income communities replacing public housing complexes: Context, dynamics and response

Several of the theories that drive the rationale for mixed-income development as a response to urban poverty and the problems of traditional public housing are directly concerned with children and youth. These include assumptions about the possible “role modeling” effects of living among working and middle class people as well as social capital arguments, in which children may act as a kind of “bridge” to foster relationships among adults with children. In spite of these assumptions, young people—particularly older adolescents and young adults—are often at the contentious core of how problems of social control and organization play out on the ground. This paper draws on research on the Chicago public housing transformation in the United States to investigate how young people are viewed by those working on and living in mixed-income developments being built to replace public housing complexes, and how young people themselves contribute to the dynamics of these new communities.We find that while there have been improvements in the lives of young people who have been able to move into these new mixed-income developments in terms of living in safer, more orderly environments, their overall experiences are not altogether positive and are proving to be problematic for the broader community. Residents of different income levels employ different parental management strategies that serve as a barrier to engagement and a sense of commonality among families with children. An overriding dynamic in these new communities is the perception among (mainly) higher-income residents that unsupervised youth are having a negative influence on the broader community. Our research raises concerns about the future viability and sustainability of these mixed-income environments in the absence of more intentional and effective investments in structured supports and activities for young people.