Doctoral Dissertation Research: Post-public Housing Spatial Concentration

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

SES-1303585 Mary Waters Eva Rosen Harvard University In the past fifteen years there has been an important transformation in housing policy. The dissolution of large-scale public housing in many cities has resulted in social turmoil and the displacement of poor and vulnerable populations. The vertical ghetto -- the high-rise public housing development -- has remade itself into the horizontal ghetto -- the concentration of housing voucher holders in moderately poor neighborhoods. If the transformation of public housing has placed more of the nation's needy households in neighborhoods that are characterized not by the stable, concentrated poverty that urban sociologists long studied, but by moderate poverty, and high rates of residential churning and social disorder, it might mean that the mechanisms by which neighborhoods transmit various advantages and disadvantages have been fundamentally transformed. How does this context shape and constrain residents' expectations and orientations toward their neighborhood? Why and how do residents end up in these new post-public housing neighborhoods? These questions are addressed through a case study neighborhood in Baltimore. The dissertation relies on a combination of ethnographic observations and 120 in-depth interviews with residents and community members, including voucher holders, homeowners, unassisted renters, community members, and landlords. Broader Impacts With the dismantling of the public housing high-rises, and the important increase in the number of housing vouchers, many have moved to new areas, concentrating disproportionately in moderately poor neighborhoods with high residential instability. This dramatic change provides an impetus for researchers and policymakers to learn more about what kinds of social organization these neighborhoods facilitate and how new social relations shape cultural schema pertaining to mobility, which play a crucial role in the social reproduction of poverty. This research contributes to knowledge about these patterns that can be used to promote, rather than compromise the wellbeing and future prospects of the recipients of housing assistance. This research suggests that although housing vouchers may be a valuable and effective tool for solving housing affordability problems, a market-based solution is inherently limited for solving America?s ghetto poverty problem.