Low-income Housing Project Research Articles

Condominium management in a low-income housing project: the case of the Conjunto Rubens Lara in Cubatão/São Paulo

Condominium management in a low-income housing project: the case of the Conjunto Rubens Lara in Cubatão/São Paulo

“Pruitt-Igoe in the Suburbs”: Connecting White Flight, Sprawl, and Climate Change in Metropolitan America

This article explores the connections between racial inequality and fossil fuel-intensive sprawl in the post-civil rights metropolitan landscape, through a case study of the Black Jack housing controversy. In 1970, a local religious group tried to build a low-income housing project in Black Jack, Missouri, a bedroom community four miles northwest of the city of St. Louis. Local residents opposed to the project argued that public housing would bring the crime, poverty, and social disorder of the city to the suburbs. Although they were forced to strip their opposition of overtly racist language, these White suburbanites were part of a nationwide project to racialize, and thus delegitimize, the extension of urban form into American suburbs, including public housing and public transportation. When these efforts failed, as they did in Black Jack, inner-ring suburbs began to desegregate, and in response, Whites again fled, further out, to second-ring suburbs and exurbs. This process, which has played out across American cities from the 1960s until the present day, has had devastating consequences for racial and economic inequality, but also on the global climate. Millions of White Americans, driven by their desire to maintain metropolitan racial segregation, have become hostile to the forms of urban infrastructure that would create less carbon-intensive cities, recreating racist, auto-intensive sprawl farther out into the countryside.

A model for implementing product modularity in buildings design

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the fundamental underpinnings of product modularity and how these can be adapted to construction and its specificities (e.g. one-off products delivered by temporary supply chains) to create a model to design modular buildings. Design/methodology/approach This research adopts a design science research approach. Explanation I (substantive theory devising based on the analysis of an artefact ‒ a low-income housing project) is used, followed by Solution Incubation (a model to implement product modularity in buildings design). Findings The model allows product modularity to be implemented at distinct levels (i.e. building, systems and components) at a single stage (building design), different from manufacturing where each level is considered at a distinct stage. This is in line with the project investigated: modularity was considered for house layouts, roof types and gable formats. Practical implications The model provides a hands-on tool for practitioners to design modular buildings. The low-income project is also extensively detailed: three-dimensional models, floor plans and conceptual diagrams (outlining how fundamental underpinnings were applied at each level) are presented. There is a lack of comprehensive accounts such as the one presented here to demonstrate the application of product modularity in real-world projects. Originality/value This paper identifies and adapts the fundamental underpinnings of product modularity to construction, and it details how these were applied to a low-income housing design at distinct levels. Based on these two endeavours, a model to implement product modularity in buildings design is proposed.

Rethinking the Historical Significance of Modern Architecture: Lessons from the Local Landmarking of Shoreline Apartments, a Low-Income Housing Project in Buffalo

The designation of Modern architecture has been a contested process for several decades, particularly for low-income housing. Preservationists have often argued against any changes to, or demolition of, these kinds of sites because in most cases the buildings are associated with a well-known Modern architect or are emblematic of a particularly novel or groundbreaking use of form and/or material. That association often overrides history and public sentiment, particularly when the building or site has failed its primary function. This paper uses the case of Paul Rudolph's Shoreline Apartments in Buffalo, New York, to argue that landmark designation of Modern architecture, particularly for in-use housing projects, needs to take a holistic look at the project in its entirety, not just its architectural merit, design intent, or associations with a master architect. Ignoring all aspects of such properties can have huge implications for the field of historic preservation and how it is perceived among and within urban communities.

Arlington Heights Won in the Supreme Court but the Fair Housing Act’s Goal of Promoting Racial Integration Saved the Low Income Housing

In the early 1970’s, a developer sought a zoning change to a parcel of land in Arlington Heights, Illinois that would allow for the construction of government-subsidized low income housing. Arlington Heights denied the zoning change and the developer and several potential residents of the housing sued Arlington Heights arguing that this denial violated both equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA). In Vil. Of Arlington Heights v. Metro. Housing Dev., 429 U.S. 252 (1977), the case reached the United States Supreme Court on the equal protection issue and the Court held that the plaintiffs did not establish an equal protection violation because they failed to prove that a racially discriminatory purpose had motivated the denial of the zoning change by Arlington Heights officials. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower courts to consider plaintiffs’ claims under the FHA. On remand, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that the denial of the zoning change that the developer sought from Arlington Heights had the racially discriminatory effect of perpetuating residential racial segregation and unless another low income housing project could feasibly be built there, the denial of the zoning change constituted a violation of the FHA. After this decision by the Seventh Circuit, the parties entered into a consent decree in which Arlington Heights agreed to annex another parcel of property and allow the construction of the developer’s low income housing project on it. The developer’s project was eventually built on the land that Arlington Heights annexed and the low income housing project opened to residents in 1983. The construction of the developer’s low income housing project in Arlington Heights was facilitated by the Seventh Circuit’s decision that a denial of housing that has a racially discriminatory effect may violate the FHA even if a racially discriminatory purpose is not established. In 2013, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a regulation that indicated that the FHA could be violated by housing decisions that had a discriminatory effect. In 2015, the United States Supreme Court definitively determined in Texas Dept. of Housing and Community v. ICP, 135 S.Ct. 2507 (2015) that a housing practice that has a disproportionately adverse effect on minorities and otherwise lacks a legitimate rationale is actionable under the FHA. The purpose of this article is to analyze how the Seventh Circuit’s decision in the Arlington Heights case represents an important judicial precedent for using the FHA to challenge housing decisions that perpetuate housing segregation. The article also seeks to explain how the Seventh Circuit’s decision that Arlington Heights must accommodate this construction of government-subsidized low income housing in order to comply with the FHA presages interpretations of the FHA by both HUD and the Supreme Court that occurred more 35 years later. These broad interpretations of the FHA create valuable tools to achieve one of the primary goals of the FHA-the residential integration of the races in the United States. Finally, this article will address 2018 efforts by HUD to review its 2013 regulation in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in 2015. This article will examine how HUD’s regulatory review process might alter how the discriminatory effects standard is applied to determine whether the FHA has been violated.

Reconciling competing claims to justice in urban South Africa: Cato Manor and District Six

ABSTRACTThis article examines two sharply divergent cases of urban land justice. Cato Manor is a massive, low-income housing project in central Durban that largely excluded land restitution claims to redress apartheid- and colonial-era forced removals from the area, and Cape Town’s District Six is currently being developed for resettlement by land restitution claimants, thus far without incorporating potential housing beneficiaries. The article critically appropriates Nancy Fraser’s work to conceptualise land restitution as a demand for ‘recognition’ and housing as a form of ‘redistribution’, and considers how these programmes might be reconciled in an integrated framework of justice. A more fundamental problem, however, is that these official programmes of justice administration fail to adequately deal with the basic demands for shelter and land in South Africa’s vast, informal settlements, and the article concludes that the primary imperative of justice is for far-reaching urban land reform.

Framework for Sustainable Low-Income Housing Projects using Building Information Modeling

Governments in developing countries serve low income people by constructing low income housing projects. Most of total life cycle cost (LCC) of these projects is incurred during the operational phase, making these projects lose their economic aspect of sustainability. Decreasing the cost of low income housing projects and taking into consideration the available resources are two crucial facets that should be taken into consideration. Therefore, this paper focuses on two aspects of the sustainability of building through its life cycle, which are environmental and economic aspects using environmentally friendly materials in construction. To accomplish this aim, a framework is developed that integrates Building Information Modeling (BIM) with computer simulation, optimization and system dynamics in Low Income Housing (LIH) projects. The developed framework helps in determining LIH project duration and selecting the optimum alternative with to material systems. The sustainability aspects of building are achieved by considering a LCC of these buildings and the number of points that can be awarded under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. It aids government and/or contractors in adopting BIM technology to minimize life cycle cost while achieving maximum LEED materials credits points for LIH projects. Social Housing project in Badr City-Egypt is considered as a case study to demonstrate the use of the developed prototype and to illustrate its essential features. The results have shown that selection of sustainable building materials for the construction has a crucial role in the formation of a sustainable building as they affect the performance of building. Therefore, the Egyptian government should consider building materials with sustainable properties and a low LCC in the design phase to mitigate the negative impacts of LIH projects.

‘Sahaspura’: the first high-rise housing project for low-income people in Colombo, Sri Lanka

‘Sahaspura’, the first high-rise low-income housing project in Sri Lanka, was completed in 2001, and the project was a new experience both for low-income people and for housing professionals in the country. Consisting of 671 housing units over 14 floors, the construction of Sahaspura was not just a housing project, but it was one outcome of an entire city development under the Sustainable Township Development Programme (STP). The mission of STP was to help Sri Lanka meet the shelter requirements of the urban poor by creating socially acceptable, economically viable and environmentally friendly housing and urban and spatial developments to ensure sustainable living in Colombo. The Sahaspura high-rise low-income housing project was the pilot project under the STP, and this paper discusses to what extent Sahaspura has achieved the STP mission to ensure sustainable living, 12 years after its construction.

Home Owning Democracy for the Urban Poor: A Case Study of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Home ownership for the urban poor poses a major challenge to metropolitan management and urban governance. The key aim of this study is to determine the role of the state in providing the opportunity for the urban poor to become home owners. Secondly, it also seeks to examine the level of sustainable owner-occupation amongst the urban poor given the opportunity to enter into homeownership. Drawing upon a case study of low-income housing in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur the study establishes that for many decades the governance of Kuala Lumpur has played an active role in designing and implementing a wide range of housing policies to house the low-income groups. The study argued that the establishment of strong institutional capacity is vital towards successful implementation of urban poor housing programs. Further insights into the level of sustainable owner-occupation amongst the households of low-income housing project confirm that the state has been successful in providing decent and affordable housing to its urban poor.

Chutes & Ladders: Middle Class in Motion

Chutes & Ladders: Middle Class in Motion

Promoting Artistic and Cultural Development Through Service Learning and Critical Pedagogy in a Low-Income Community Art Program

Abstract In this article, I describe how art instruction in a community art program was made more meaningful by relating pedagogy to real-life events in the community. The article discusses programming activities in the Children of the Future (COTF) art program at Sawyer Recreation Center, located in a low-income housing project historically known as Poindexter Village in Columbus, Ohio. The observations discussed here were made in my longitudinal study of COTF at Sawyer between 1996 and 2006. The program’s activities included studio art production, community service, and participation in local cultural events.

Promoting Artistic and Cultural Development Through Service Learning and Critical Pedagogy in a Low-Income Community Art Program

In this article, I describe how art instruction in a community art program was made more meaningful by relating pedagogy to real-life events in the community. The article discusses programming activities in the Children of the Future (COTF) art program at Sawyer Recreation Center, located in a low-income housing project historically known as Poindexter Village in Columbus, Ohio. The observations discussed here were made in my longitudinal study of COTF at Sawyer between 1996 and 2006. The program's activities included studio art production, community service, and participation in local cultural events.

The Family Face Laughter and Joy, Anguish and Despair

The Family Face Laughter and Joy, Anguish and Despair Nancy Revelle Johnson (bio) Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir. Free Press, 2007. 304 pages. $15 pb Jane Satterfield, Daughters of Empire: A Memoir of a Year in Britain and Beyond. Demeter Press, 2009. 180 pages. $24.95 pb A writer of crime fiction, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith here looks back at her childhood in a blue-collar ethnic neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut, with justifiable nostalgia. Nostalgia gives way to flashes of anger as she examines the background, trial, and execution of Robert Malm, who raped and murdered Irene, her fifth-grade classmate. Descended from French- Canadian and Italian immigrants, Smith grew up surrounded by a large extended family in a time of turbulent social change. Her immediate family was defined not only by its ethnic blue-collar background but also by the presence of an autistic child at a time when there was little understanding of autism. Intertwined with the chronicle of Smith’s own family is the story of Robert Malm. The world of Smith’s family was changing in the fifties as African Americans from the South and Puerto Ricans moved into low-income neighborhoods [End Page 460] and blue-collar workers moved out. The two groups—first the French Canadians, Italians, and Poles and then the southern blacks and the Puerto Ricans—crossed paths in public schools and the workplace. Smith provides an interesting perspective on the efforts of school administrators and teachers to help with the assimilation of the newer immigrants. Mary-Ann and two of her classmates were assigned to tutor Magdalena, a recently arrived Puerto Rican student; in turn they learned new techniques of jump-rope from Magdalena. Glimpses of workplace assimilation were seen in the hiring and later promotion of Freddie Ravenel at Abbott Ball Company by Smith’s father. Ravenel was the first African American to be hired by Abbott, a company that produces ball bearings. In the expanding economy of the fifties Smith’s family became upwardly mobile. When she was a small child, her family lived in the D section of Charter Oak Terrace, the first low-income housing project constructed in the United States. Her family was described by her father as “working stiffs” as distinguished from the “truly impoverished,” but like many people in that era they were moving on an upward trajectory. The father was promoted to foreman at Abbott. With the added income from the mother’s new job at Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, the family no longer qualified for low-income housing. They then moved to a larger house and summered at the beach. The mother took up golf and colored her hair. Some people thought that she was putting on airs. The church was a dominant force in the lives of Smith’s family members who were God-fearing, but irreverent, Catholics. The church was often a target for the derisive and bawdy humor of the family. Smith’s account of her confusion as she struggled to understand concepts of church doctrines regarding death, heaven, and hell is familiar to those who have encountered religious dogma at an early age. Smith casts an amused eye on the shenanigans of her large boisterous family. The ebullience of her family spills over into her writing as she limns the characters of family eccentrics and recounts their antics. Family rituals are fondly recalled: her father and Uncle Guido making bagna cauda and trippa; times spent with her grandfather Pippi at the beach, crabbing and eeling; and summer visits by uncles and aunts. Smith stresses loyalty when she portrays her family. At a time when there was little support for families such as Smith’s as they dealt with an autistic child, it was the family that helped with her brother Tyler; and, when her father developed Alzheimer’s, Auntie Palma and Uncle Guido checked on him in the evenings, got him into bed, and made sure he was safe before they left. Uncle Guido went to the nursing home to help him learn to walk when he had forgotten how. Smith’s account of life with Tyler is heartrending, but there is...

Reflecting respect

This article explores how ideologies derived from North African culture are transformed in local expressions of identity among Muslim French adolescents. Naturally-occurring interactional data were collected among adolescents of primarily Algerian descent living in a cité (a low-income housing project) outside Paris. The study shows that the local identity practices of Muslim French teens articulate with transcultural ideologies of identity, but in contradictory rather than wholly consistent ways. Specifically, teens in the study circulate seemingly static cultural ideologies pertaining to generation, gender, and sexuality, but also routinely challenge these ideologies in interactions with their peers. Through the innovative interactional genre of “parental name calling,” adolescents articulate their ambivalent relationship to the North African-derived cultural value they call le respect (‘respect’). In the process, they negotiate their own beliefs and practices regarding generation, gender, and sexuality in accommodation and opposition to their parents’ values.

Framing Regent Park: the National Film Board of Canada and the construction of ‘outcast spaces’ in the inner city, 1953 and 1994

In 1953 and 1994, the National Film Board (NFB) of Canada produced two documentary films about Toronto’s Regent Park, the country’s first and largest low-income housing project. Farewell to Oak Street charted the dramatic ‘before’ and ‘after’ effects of public housing on the family, social and cultural life of the innercity dwellers whose ‘slum housing’ was demolished in the 1940s and early 1950s to make way for the pioneering housing scheme. In 1994 the NFB made Return to Regent Park. This time round, the film centred on the abject failure of Toronto’s steamrolling urban renewal plans and the efforts of activists to combat drugs, crime and the physical/social stigma of the project. This article argues that both NFB portrayals of the project contributed to the powerful moral and territorial stigmatization of inner-city workers and public housing tenants in the city.

Strategies to prevent HIV transmission among heterosexual African-American men

BackgroundAs part of qualitative research for developing a culturally sensitive and developmentally appropriate videotape-based HIV prevention intervention for heterosexual African- American men, six focus groups were conducted with thirty African-American men to determine their perceptions of AIDS as a threat to the African-American community, characteristics of past situations that have placed African Americans at risk for HIV infection, their personal high risk behaviors, and suggestions on how HIV intervention videotapes could be produced to achieve maximum levels of interest among African-American men in HIV training programs.MethodsThe groups took place at a low-income housing project in Houston, Texas, a major epicenter for HIV/AIDS. Each group was audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed using theme and domain analysis.ResultsThe results revealed that low-income African-American men perceive HIV/AIDS as a threat to their community and they have placed themselves at risk of HIV infection based on unsafe sex practices, substance abuse, and lack of knowledge. They also cite lack of income to purchase condoms as a barrier to safe sex practice. They believe that HIV training programs should address these risk factors and that videotapes developed for prevention should offer a sensationalized look at the effects of HIV/AIDS on affected persons. They further believe that programs should be held in African-American communities and should include condoms to facilitate reduction of risk behaviors.ConclusionsThe results indicate that the respondents taking part in this study believe that HIV and AIDS are continued threats to the African-American community because of sexual risk taking behavior, that is, failure to use condoms. Further, African-American men are having sex without condoms when having sex with women often when they are under the influence of alcohol or other mind-altering substances and they are having sex with men while incarcerated and become infected and once released resume unprotected sexual relations with women. According to the men, substance abuse is an important part of the problem of HIV in the African-American community. This is in keeping with research that shows that drug use, especially crack cocaine, is linked to sexual risk taking among African Americans and to increased likelihood of becoming infected with other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) including HIV. Thus, interventions for men should address condom use, condom availability, skills for using condoms, eroticizing condoms and substance abuse prevention. Men in the present study also strongly recommended that HIV/AIDS videotaped messages should include footage of the sensational effects of the disease.

Seven Years of Litigation: Could theBuckeyeLawsuits Have Been Avoided?

Abstract You can do a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking on the outcome of City of Cuyahoga Falls v. Buckeye Community Hope Foundation, but none of it would be especially complimentary. Here the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that subjecting a site plan approval of a federally assisted low-income housing project to a referendum did not constitute per se arbitrary government conduct in violation of due process. Five years prior to the U.S. Supreme Court decision, the Ohio Supreme Court had found that the referendum itself was unconstitutional as a matter of state law. Present in the federal case was the contention that the referendum petitions were motivated by racial animus, which seems perfectly clear to me from the record before the U. S. Supreme Court.

The humor group: more than a joke.

The humor group: more than a joke.

The Avalon Gardens Men’s Association: A Community Health Psychology Case Study

This article follows the development and progress of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's 'Healthy and Safe Communities' initiative as it was implemented by a community empowerment organization during a four-year community revitalization project in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots. The author explores practical aspects of Community Health Psychology through assessing the ways in which its organizing principles were manifest in community-wide processes of individual and community change in one low-income housing project in South Central Los Angeles called Avalon Gardens. Specifically highlighted is how a group of African American and Latino men in the community created a group forum that helped foster, support and sustain an empowerment process that supported health promotion, health consciousness and significant health improvement in the community.

Coordinating Sustainable Landscapes for a Low-income Community

The City of Clemson, along with the National Wildlife Federation, Habitat for Humanity, and Clemson Univ., recently formed a strategic alliance to incorporate ideas for the landscaping of low-income homes. Their goal was to create an aesthetically pleasing, environmentally responsible design that catered to the future development of the families involved. The low-income housing project was selected as an independent study for Spring 1998. As student project manager I coordinated and documented the project. Objectives of the project were: 1) to promote knowledge and research on environmental issues and culturally diverse populations; 2) to create backyard wildlife habitats and sustainable community environments for low income families; 3) to provide students with the opportunity to learn and mature by participating in a long-term project involving a measurable impact. Project steps included analysis, research, design, planning, scheduling, implementation, and reflection on the impact made by those involved. The City of Clemson, along with the others involved, was delighted to be the first to address the issue of enhancing open space around low-income buildings in addition to landscaping the properties surrounding the homes.