Abstract
Much contemporary policy seeking to address the problems of urban poverty and the failures of public housing focuses on deconcentrating poverty through the relocation of public housing residents to less-poor neighborhoods or by replacing large public housing complexes with mixed-income developments. Lying behind these efforts is a set of generally integrationist goals, aiming to remove public housing residents from contexts of isolation and concentrated disadvantage and settle them in safer, healthier, and more supportive environments that better connect them to resources, relationships, and opportunities. Although some of the goals of these efforts are being met, the broader integrationist goals are proving elusive. Focusing on the mixed-income component of Chicago’s Plan for Transformation—the most ambitious effort to remake public housing in the country—this article argues that a range of institutional actors (including developers, property management, community-based organizations, and the housing authority) and organizational behaviors (around design, service provision, intervention, deliberation, and representation) shape dynamics that reproduce exclusion and work against the integrationist goals of these policies.
Public housing has come to exemplify concentrated urban poverty in the United States, and much current policy concerned with addressing the problems associated with public housing and poverty seeks to support the deconcentration of poverty in urban centers. Such policies focus either on dispersal (moving public housing residents to less poor, less segregated neighborhoods, generally using housing vouchers) or on development (through the demolition and replacement of public housing complexes with mixed-income developments).
Lying behind these efforts is a set of generally integrationist goals. Both sets of policies are meant to counteract the effects of concentrated poverty on individuals by removing them from contexts of disadvantage; settling them in safer, healthier, and more supportive environments; and better connecting them to resources and opportunity, such as better schools, more responsive services, better access to the workforce, and the opportunity to forge new and positive social relations (Arthurson 2002; Joseph, Chaskin, and Webber 2007; Kearns and Mason 2007; Kleit 2001). The “development option” also seeks to foster neighborhood revitalization more broadly, by leveraging private investment and attracting higher-income residents to neighborhoods formerly dominated by public housing and concentrated poverty (Goetz 2003b, 2010; Popkin et al. 2004). Chicago’s Plan for Transformation exemplifies these efforts, seeking to fundamentally remake public housing in the city, guided by these central goals and using both dispersal and development strategies.
While some of these aims—relocation to generally safer and less-poor neighborhoods, improvements to housing units and the built environment, and revitalization of public housing neighborhoods—are being met, the broader integrationist goals of public housing reform, in Chicago and elsewhere, are proving elusive. Although many residents relocated through mobility and voucher programs have moved to “better” neighborhoods (Briggs, Popkin, and Goering 2010; Kling et al. 2004; Ludwig et al. 2008; Orr et al. 2003; Feins and Shroder 2005), most end up in neighborhoods that are still quite poor and almost invariably racially segregated (Briggs, Popkin, and Goering 2010; Oakley and Burchfield 2009; Sampson 2008; Rosenbaum and Zuberi 2010; Varady and Walker 2003). Mixed-income developments are more effective at changing the physical infrastructure and demographic mix in which relocated public housing residents live, but at the same time they generate complex social dynamics that work against achieving effective integration.
This article argues that a range of institutional mechanisms and organizational behaviors shape dynamics that (re)produce exclusion and work against the integrationist goals of these policies. Although mixed-income developments have been effective at changing the built environment and promoting economic (and sometimes, to some extent, racial) diversity in the neighborhoods to which relocated public housing residents move, the interplay among institutional mechanisms, organizational actions, and individual responses within these contexts foster community dynamics that place poor people in circumstances of different kinds of disadvantage and generate new forms of exclusion.
In shaping this argument, I draw on theories of social capital and social exclusion. Social capital arguments explicitly provide a core rationale for the likely benefits of mixed-income development. Social exclusion arguments call attention to the broader social processes and mechanisms beyond informal social relations that lie at the core of social capital arguments—especially the role of institutions and organizational actors—in the creation and reproduction of marginality. Drawing on extensive qualitative interviews and field research, I focus in particular on the influence of institutional influences and organizations, including developers, property management, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), and community organizations operating in three mixed-income developments being built to replace public housing and revitalize neighborhoods of concentrated poverty in Chicago. 1
Although but one component of the policy, the mixed-income aspect is arguably its most central manifestation, providing “the most visible expression of the Plan for Transformation” (Vale and Graves 2010, 40). While only a portion of CHA residents relocated by the transformation will return to the redeveloped sites (about 30 percent of the 25,000 planned replacement units will be in mixed-income developments), demolition and mixed-income redevelopment plans have affected the majority of the CHA population living in public housing at the time the transformation was announced. They have driven the process of relocation more broadly, consume the lion’s share of the CHA budget related to the transformation, and provide the clearest instantiation of the plan’s integrationist goals. Far more than public housing residents who move into subsidized private housing using vouchers (who are largely left, beyond receipt of their housing subsidy, to manage in the market), or those who are part of the treatment group in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration program (who receive additional assistance to facilitate their move), the experience of public housing residents who move to mixed-income communities continues to be substantially conditioned by a set of institutional choices and organizational behaviors among a specific set of actors at both the city and local levels. Given the essentially “contrived” nature of these communities—demolished, centrally designed, rebuilt from the ground, and managed (at least initially) by a set of key organizations (developers, property management, the CHA)—this set of organizational actors substantially sets the stage for residents’ integration into these new communities, has significant influence on the tenor of the resident’s day-to-day lives, and frames the nature of the residents’ broader integration into the life and “fabric” of the city.
In this article, I first outline the basic parameters—impetus, rationale, and dimensions—of Chicago’s Plan for Transformation, the blueprint that guides the massive policy effort to reform public housing in the city, with a particular focus on the mixed-income component. Next, I frame this policy in the context of arguments about urban poverty and marginalization, drawing in particular on concepts of social capital and social exclusion as related but different lenses through which to understand the integrationist goals of and emerging dynamics generated by poverty deconcentration policies such as the Plan for Transformation. Finally, I explore the ways in which organizational actors (including developers, property management, community-based organizations, and the housing authority) and actions (around design, service provision, intervention, deliberation, and representation) shape conditions and community dynamics in which integrationist aims can produce new forms of exclusion for poor residents within these contexts.
Public Housing Reform and Chicago’s Plan for Transformation
Chicago’s Plan for Transformation is the largest and most ambitious effort to remake public housing in the United States. However, it does reflect a larger trend in housing policy toward poverty deconcentration that is exemplified by both dispersal polices (such as the MTO Demonstration Program) and redevelopment policies (such as those supported through HOPE VI grants) being implemented across a number of cities. The plan seeks to fundamentally reshape the nature of public housing in Chicago. In addition to improving some of the existing public housing stock through renovation of (mainly low-rise, peripherally located) family, scattered-site, and senior housing developments, it includes the wholesale demolition of the most “distressed” and problematic public housing complexes, including all the major high-rise developments that have contributed to the reputation of Chicago’s public housing experience as a dramatic policy “disaster” (Hunt 2009). Overall, approximately 22,000 units will be demolished, a portion of which will be replaced by new construction in more than a dozen mixed-income developments. These will ultimately include more than 16,000 units—some rental, some for sale—intended to house residents with a broad range of household incomes. About 7,700 of these units are to be set aside for public housing residents (CHA 2008).
The impetus for this effort stems from the widely recognized failure of public housing in Chicago. Initially intended to provide safe, transitional housing to families unable to afford housing in the private market, early public housing developments in Chicago were in high demand. The tower blocks built in the 1950s and 1960s initially had long waiting lists to move into the new, modern, spacious apartments they provided and that represented a promising alternative to life in the city’s extensive slums (Bowly 1978; Fuerst 2005; Hunt 2009). The promise of this new housing, however, was short-lived. Over the course of only a few decades, public housing in Chicago had become both emblematic of and a contributor to the creation of some of the worst examples of concentrated urban poverty in the country, characterized by severe physical deterioration, high levels of violence and crime, racial segregation, and social isolation (Hunt 2009; Kotlowitz 1991; Venkatesh 2002; Massey and Kanaiaupuni 1993). These outcomes were driven by a complex set of factors—including discriminatory site selection (informed in part by virulent resistance to racial integration), political conflicts and policy changes at the local and federal levels, limitations of design, financial pressures, poor maintenance and management, and demographic pressures (long-term tenancy, poverty concentration, youth-to-adult ratios)—and efforts to address these issues over time failed to have substantial impact (Hunt 2009; Popkin et al. 2000).
In response to these failed efforts, the Plan for Transformation was launched in 1999 as a comprehensive effort to rethink and reshape public housing in Chicago. It draws on the broader policy framework of the federal HOPE VI program (focusing on redevelopment, poverty deconcentration, and sustainable neighborhood change); the arguments of New Urbanist planners (focusing on low-density design, mixed-use land allocation, “defensible” space, and spatial integration); and the “conventional wisdom” of the benefits of devolution, privatization, and income diversity (Bennett, Smith, and Wright 2006, 9; Hunt 2009).
The plan includes several components. At its center is physical redevelopment— demolition of about 60 percent of CHA housing stock, renovating the remaining 40 percent, and new construction of mixed-income communities to incorporate a portion of lease-compliant public housing residents relocated by the transformation. In addition, it entails the privatization of property management, moving the CHA to a facilitative rather than a management role; the provision of both housing choice vouchers (given to tenants to subsidize the costs of housing in the private market) and project-based vouchers (given to property owners to subsidize the rents of eligible tenants); and a range of social services and support programs. These services and programs focus primarily on case management (particularly concerning housing stability and employment), human capital and workforce development (job training and education, transitional jobs), and youth programs (summer employment, youth development). Many of these services are provided in partnership with nonprofit organizations and city agencies; the CHA works with for-profit organizations, as well (including developers of the mixed-income sites), toward the promotion of commercial business ventures and of housing (Hunt 2009; Smith 2006; CHA 2010). In addition, the plan includes changes to the regulatory framework that had guided public housing eligibility and governance, including new work requirements and the replacement, in mixed-income developments, of Local Advisory Councils (which had represented public housing residents in the family developments prior to demolition) with a centrally staffed ombudsman’s office.
Although the problems that the Plan for Transformation responds to are widely acknowledged, the plan and the implications of its implementation have been controversial, to say the least. Critics decry the massive dislocation of residents and the hardships visited on public housing families by the processes of demolition and involuntary relocation. Relocation processes have been complicated both by personal challenges, including health problems, lease compliance issues, and family structure (such as large families that limit housing options), and by implementation challenges. These have included shortcomings in the relocation counseling process, incomplete or confusing information provided to residents, lack of interorganizational coordination, failure to track residents over time, changes in and confusion about eligibility requirements, limits regarding the availability of voucher housing, new construction delays, and the disruption of social networks (Popkin et al. 2004; Venkatesh 2002; Venkatesh and Çelimli 2004; Vale and Graves 2010). Criticism has also been leveled at the overall reduction in the city’s stock of affordable housing due to the plan, particularly problematic in the context of a tight rental market in general and an insufficient supply of affordable rental housing in particular. 2 And there have been more fundamental critiques regarding basic assumptions about the likely benefits of deconcentration, privatization, and mixed-income development (Bennett, Smith, and Wright 2006; Joseph, Chaskin, and Webber 2007; Kleit 2001; Pattillo 2007), as well as about the intended beneficiaries, including claims that such schemes are essentially “revanchist” efforts at appropriating poor neighborhoods for the benefit of the affluent and middle classes (Bennett 2006; Fraser and Kick 2007; Lees 2008; Smith and Stovall 2008).
These critiques notwithstanding, proponents of the plan focus on its potential to improve the quality of housing and housing choices for public housing residents, improve the neighborhoods in which they live and the quality of life the residents can support, promote the development of skills and opportunities that lead to self-sufficiency, and end the “economic and social isolation” of public housing residents (CHA 2000, 2004, 2010). In particular, mixed-income development in these contexts is extolled, in the most positive light, as a way to reshape both blighted urban neighborhoods and the opportunities and quality of life of low-income people living there—building both human capital and social capital; providing safe, healthy environments; and connecting poor people to supports, relationships, and opportunities (Epp 1996; Naparstek et al. 2000; von Hoffman 2003).
The CHA counts fifteen mixed-income properties, ranging substantially in size, and some representing parts of broader redevelopments of former large public housing complexes. The developments are being built and managed through public/private partnerships between the CHA and a range of private developers who are responsible for securing private financing, overseeing design and construction, marketing to subsidized and unsubsidized residents, and contracting for property management and social service provision (Joseph 2010). Although general guidelines suggest buildings be a mix—about one-third of the units set aside for public housing residents, one-third for “affordably priced” units, and one-third market-rate units—developments differ somewhat along these lines, including the number of “affordable” and market-rate units built as rental units versus those slated for home ownership. They also differ in aspects of design (although generally grounded in New Urbanist ideas about defensive space and “traditional neighborhood” design) and the spatial integration of units by income and housing tenure.
Poverty, Integration, Social Capital, and Social Exclusion
Beyond the bricks-and-mortar redevelopment of public housing properties, the emphasis on integration is central to the plan’s identity. As the CHA website proclaims, The Plan for Transformation goes far beyond the physical structure of public housing. It aims to build and strengthen communities by integrating public housing and its leaseholders into the larger social, economic and physical fabric of Chicago.
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As a response to concentrated urban poverty, these integrationist goals are grounded in assumptions about what incorporation into well-functioning, well-connected, and diverse (particularly with regard to income mix) communities might provide poor people in terms of the development of social networks, the establishment and maintenance of social control, the reshaping of normative expectations (toward work and self-sufficiency), and the availability of quality goods and services (Joseph, Chaskin, and Webber 2007). These assumptions, in turn, reflect a shift in orientation from thinking about poverty narrowly in terms of income deprivation and lack of access to material resources (whether measured absolutely or relatively) toward thinking more broadly about the relationship of poverty to other aspects of marginalization; the dimensions, processes, and mechanisms that shape it; and its consequences at both the individual level and collectively (Sen 1999, 2000). Today, in the context of globalization, economic restructuring, and the political dominance of neoliberalism, the broader focus on marginalization responds to trends, in the United States and elsewhere, of increasing levels of (income) poverty despite economic growth (or, more recently, the disproportionate impact of the Great Recession on the most disadvantaged) as well as significant growing inequality reflected in increasingly stark disparities in income, wealth, and access to opportunity.
Two concepts in particular—social capital and social exclusion—have been influential in shaping policy responses to poverty and marginalization. Both are multifaceted, fundamentally relational constructs, concerned with social structure and processes of integration and connection and with the nature of agency in engaging in and benefiting from social interaction. However, the ways in which personal agency, state responsibility, and third-sector roles are treated in discussions of social exclusion and social capital differ somewhat, with implications for how they are differentially applied to the public policymaking process in different states (Daly and Silver 2008). For example, policies informed by social capital often emphasize the importance of activating local, interpersonal networks, with corresponding attention to reciprocal network exchanges, the types of benefits that are derived from substantively different interactions, and the significance of face-to-face interactions for productive civic engagement. In contrast, from the perspective of policies oriented toward addressing social exclusion, there is often considerable attention paid to social relations vis-à-vis their connection to macro-societal structures—political, economic, and cultural institutions—that enable inclusion within the broader society. 4
In the United States, social capital arguments are ascendant, underlying, for example, current discourse about the nature of community and the importance and role of civil society, and providing the foundation for a range of economic development and “community building” policies and interventions that seek to address poverty (e.g., Saegert, Thompson, and Warren 2001). Along with social capital’s rise in popularity has come a proliferation of meanings and uses, 5 but the central role of relational networks is held in common. Bourdieu (1986), for example, defines social capital as the aggregate of resources linked to networks of relationships. Membership in relational groups can provide group members with significant advantages, depending on the particularities of the resources and the social position of group members. Coleman (1988) defines three “forms” of social capital—norms, information channels, and collective obligations and expectations—that operate through and are facilitated by relational networks. Again, individuals within the structure of these relations have the ability, by virtue of their connections, to achieve ends not otherwise possible (Coleman 1988). Putnam (1993, 2000) also focuses on the importance of interpersonal trust, norms, and networks but emphasizes the central role of civic engagement in a broad range of associations—particularly social and civic associations—that he believes are essential engines of collective action, and individual and societal well-being. Burt (2000) discusses social capital as a broadly accepted “metaphor about advantage” that explains how people who are better connected can benefit from those connections and explores the ways in which strategic engagement in networks can leverage positional advantage within network structures (Burt 1992).
In the context of poverty deconcentration arguments and mixed-income development, social capital arguments embrace several dimensions. Perhaps most central is the argument that people living in concentrated poverty may suffer from the limitations of relatively closed, dense social networks, which, while potentially useful for providing social support and mutual assistance, lack “weak ties” or “bridging” relationships that connect them to the networks of others, and that may provide access to information and opportunity not available to them through their own relational networks (Granovetter 1973, 1983; Gittell and Vidal 1998; Lin and Dumin 1986; Briggs 1998; Kleit 2001, 2002). Living in mixed-income communities, the argument goes, may provide the opportunity for interaction with people who have more diverse relational networks and the potential, through such interaction, to benefit from them.
Although social capital arguments in this context focus largely on the promise of access to information, resources, and opportunity that might foster connection of poor residents to economic betterment, there are other presumed benefits as well. One such benefit concerns the ways in which social networks in mixed-income communities can foster the establishment and maintenance of “mainstream” social norms and expectations, contributing to the modification of aspirations and behavior toward more prosocial engagement in community and society and the possibility of upward mobility (e.g., Wilson 1987; Anderson 1990; Kasarda 1990). Relatedly, living in more stable communities with higher levels of homeownership is argued to have potential benefits for neighborhood safety and social control, since higher-income people may be more likely to exert pressure to maintain order and enforce rules (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997; Logan and Molotch 1987; Rosenbaum, Stroh, and Flynn 1998). Thus, the level of “collective efficacy” in these contexts—the ways in which social ties are activated to act on shared norms, trust, and the perceived willingness of neighbors to intervene in response to neighborhood problems (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997; Sampson, Morenoff, and Gannon-Rowley 2002)—may promote a context of greater safety and a foundation for more harmonious community dynamics. Finally, living in communities with higher levels of social capital (as well as just more capital) is theorized to provide increased responsiveness of political and market actors, leading to access to improved services, amenities, and organizations—from schools to commercial outlets to parks to employment opportunities (Freeman 2006; Logan and Molotch 1987; Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997; Khadduri 2001). 6
Social exclusion arguments are quite influential outside the United States, particularly in Western Europe, but the rhetoric of exclusion finds its place in the United States as well, particularly with reference to concentrated poverty and debates about the “underclass” (Silver 1994) that are very much at the center of poverty deconcentration policies in general and mixed-income development orientations in particular. The rhetoric characterizing the mixed-income component of Chicago’s Plan for Transformation is emblematic: “Mixed-income communities,” the CHA website proclaims, “break down the social barriers that formerly segregated public housing residents from the larger city of Chicago.” 7 Moving beyond the instrumentalizing of social relations that lies at the center of social capital arguments (Daly and Silver 2008), social exclusion suggests a broader focus on integration and inclusion, and on the actors and institutional processes that lie behind its creation and reproduction.
Although grounded in sociological theory—drawing variously on Durkheimian ideas about social cohesion, Weberian notions of exclusionary closure, and Marxian orientations toward class division—social exclusion has gained ascendance largely as a policy framework. It was catalyzed initially in France in the 1970s, where it was invoked to call attention to a portion of the population (les exclu) disconnected from mainstream society and outside the protection of social insurance schemes due to a broad range of factors, including, but moving well beyond, poverty—from disability to delinquency to drug addiction to discrimination—and exacerbated by challenges to social cohesion in the wake of civil unrest and in the context of growing unemployment and inequality (Silver 1994; Mathieson et al. 2008; Davies 2005). Social exclusion soon came to focus more particularly on those embedded in extreme and persistent poverty and its associated ills, including withdrawal from civic life and from connection to the advantages of citizenship—institutional participation, political enfranchisement, social protection, and equitable treatment before the law (Silver 1994; Room 1995; Burchardt, LeGrand, and Piachaud 1999; Davies 2005). Social exclusion arguments thus focus on the broader, multiple social consequences of economic deprivation, but they also attend to the multiple causes—processes, actors, institutional frameworks, policy and organizational choices—that contribute to the creation and reproduction of marginalization (Mathieson et al. 2008; Bowring 2000; Sen 2000; Silver 1994) and that are at the heart of the empirical analysis to follow.
Beyond this broad conceptual foundation, however, the discourse on social exclusion has been rangy; like social capital, it has many meanings and is invoked in different ways by actors grounded in different theoretical perspectives or adhering to different political ideologies (Silver 1994; Mathieson et al. 2008). Hillary Silver, in a seminal effort to unpack some of this complexity, suggests three different “paradigms” that frame the meaning and use of social exclusion in different contexts. The solidarity paradigm, grounded in French Republicanism and Durkheimian notions of the social order, sees social exclusion as a breakdown of social cohesion that requires normative and cultural integration of the excluded. The specialization paradigm, more common in English-speaking liberal democracies, sees exclusion as a consequence of social stratification based in the economic division of labor, in which certain individuals engaged in voluntary exchanges across social spheres may encounter discrimination or other “barriers to free movement between spheres” (Silver 1994, 543). Finally, the monopoly paradigm, more common among the European Left, draws on Marxian and (especially) Weberian notions of class, status, and the workings of power relations within a coercive social order; it sees exclusion as the product of exclusionary closure driven by monopoly interests, particularly in the market (Silver 1994).
Although common in policy discourse in Europe and other parts of the world, social exclusion remains a contested idea in many contexts. There is contestation about its meaning—both given the multiple definitions proposed (Mathieson et al. 2008) and, more fundamentally, whether it provides much useful conceptual leverage. 8 There are also debates about whether its focus unhelpfully distracts attention away from more fundamental issues of material deprivation and income inequality (Levitas 1998; Beall 2002; Davies 2005), potentially undermining support for welfare state provisions (Silver 1994). On the other hand, some argue, the concept has helped to drive a more refined understanding of poverty, deprivation, and marginality. Furthermore, by emphasizing the centrality of social relations and the crucial role of the state and other institutional actors implicated in the production (and potential remediation) of deprivation, the discourse on social exclusion provides a goad to shape policies that engage a range of stakeholders and focus on the multidimensionality of the problem, such as the “joined-up” solutions invoked in the (now old) New Labor terminology (Daly and Silver 2008). 9 This emphasis on process, relations, and actors provides the “investigative advantage” (Sen 2000, 8) that lies behind the major contribution of social exclusion as a concept. Although causal agency remains unclear in much of the literature on social exclusion to date (Daly and Silver 2008), the construct directs our focus to agentive causes and potential responses, beyond the individual and interpersonal, to include institutional and organizational dynamics at both the micro and macro level.
The social capital arguments outlined above clearly lie behind the policy rationales that undergird U.S. housing policy geared toward poverty deconcentration and mixed-income development (Goetz 2003a; Joseph, Chaskin, and Webber 2007; Briggs, Popkin, and Goering 2010). Although not generally invoked explicitly in the United States in these contexts, social exclusion is arguably equally relevant, given both the population that is the focus of deconcentration policies and the centrality of the rhetoric about integration that characterizes them—particularly with regard to mixed-income development schemes. Public housing communities are emblematic of the kinds of places and populations central to policies targeting social exclusion—they are the “communities left behind” (Bowring 2000, 312) by post-Fordist economic transformation, population mobility, and neoliberal policies. They are the spatial instantiation of “advanced marginality,” in Loïc Wacquant’s (2008) term, characterized by “expulsion to the margins and crevices of social and physical space” by the history and institutionalization of racial segregation, the generation and reproduction of economic inequality, and both governmental action and inaction (Wacquant 2008, 232). Indeed, the violence in the banlieus in France led to embracing and expanding the notion of social exclusion in the policy discourse there (Silver 1994), just as current policy regarding public housing transformation in the United States invokes the need for integration to reverse the effects of isolation and concentrated poverty in the inner city.
Integration and Exclusion in Mixed-Income Public Housing Communities
How are the integrationist aims of public housing reform playing out in the mixed-income communities that most exemplify the effort to “break down social barriers” and integrate public housing residents “into the larger social, economic and physical fabric” of the city? In the remainder of this article, I focus on three dimensions of organizational action that, in seeking to manage integration, sometimes shape new forms of exclusion within the context of mixed-income communities. The first is development or “community-building” inputs—through programmatic efforts, design choices, and services—implemented by developers, property management, and service-providing organizations; and how they are responded to by residents. The second is orientations and responses to issues of social control through rules and rule enforcement in these contexts. The third concerns mechanisms of participation, deliberation, and decision-making that are institutionalized as part of the redevelopment process or operate through existing associations and community organizations.
Development inputs and “community building”
The intent to “build and strengthen communities” invoked by the plan can be read more or less broadly. The notion of “community” is both evocative and ambiguous, meaning different things to different people in different circumstances. It may focus more or less on affective notions of belonging and solidarity versus instrumental ties and on intimate versus casual relations among neighbors. In fact, most of those engaged in building and managing mixed-income communities (developers, property managers, service providers, CHA personnel) and those now living in them have relatively modest expectations for the nature and degree of connection among neighbors within these contexts. As one development team member put it, “It’s not a question of expecting people to sing Kumbaya around the fire. . . . I don’t think you’re going see that. But then if you look at some of your other communities, you don’t have that either.” 10 Seen more as community of limited liability (Janowitz 1967) than urban village (Park 1925), expectations for community interaction focus largely on the existence of casual, unproblematic, informal relations within a context of mutual respect and acceptance—“having people understand and acknowledge and just be considerate to one another,” the owner of an affordable unit stated (Chaskin and Joseph 2010).
Although intimate ties and affective connection are not anticipated, open, casual exchanges are still seen as important—both as a conduit for information and (potential) support and as a mechanism to influence aspirations and behavior. Indeed, many of the development inputs to create “community” in these contexts have focused on efforts to intentionally promote interaction through several different strategies. They have also included efforts focused on shaping the environment in ways meant to provide a foundation for the establishment of neighborhood norms and the “organic” evolution of neighborhood processes, and on provision of a set of services and supports to facilitate relocated public housing residents’ transition from the isolation and institutionally dominated public housing context from which they came to living in communities intended to operate according to “normal” market principles and assumptions regarding neighborly behavior and civic engagement. 11
Organizational actors involved in these developments engage a range of strategies to promote interaction. These include sponsoring and facilitating resident involvement in community events, projects, and forums for discussion, planning, and information exchange. For example, development teams organize recreational events, such as block parties and neighborhood festivals, in the hope of providing low-key opportunities for neighbors from different backgrounds to meet and interact informally. They also include, in some cases, specific community projects—a newsletter, a neighborhood cleanup, a community garden, a tenant patrol—that seek to organize residents around pursuit of a common goal. And they include the establishment of some forums and mechanisms, such as town hall and community meetings, resident associations, and block clubs, that provide opportunities for information exchange and, to an extent, influence development inputs and management.
The organizations (developers and property management organizations in particular) also engage in a set of strategies focused on the environment that are meant to shape the kinds of neighborhoods seen to provide a foundation for longer-term, normative community functioning. These strategies center on physical design, community norms, and community institutions. Design choices are concerned primarily with coherence, spatial mix, and the creation of defended space that, together, seek to reduce division, promote cohesion, and foster community safety. They do so through unitary design (in which it is not possible from the outside to distinguish between units set aside for public housing residents from market-rate units), through the spatial integration of residents across income and housing tenure (which is meant to enhance opportunities for interaction and reduce potential clusters of antisocial activity), and through the prevalence of individual entrances and controlled common space (to facilitate informal surveillance and control). Efforts to establish community norms center largely on the establishment, monitoring, and enforcement of rules, with a particular orientation toward instilling “mainstream” norms—a work ethic, respect for property, adherence to public decorum—among relocated public housing residents (a theme to which I return). A focus on local institutions centers on facilitating connections between residents and key public institutions (schools, parks, police) as well as seeking to attract, establish, or strengthen new organizational resources and amenities, such as arts and recreation centers and commercial businesses that might draw broad participation from residents and offer contexts for informal interaction. In one site, for example, a development team member describes the opening of a new charter school in the neighborhood as having the potential to promote integration and build community:
The fact that we have homebuyers who have kids who are going to that school, those homebuyers are going to have to interact and are interacting with renters from that neighborhood. So that’s a natural way for them to evolve hopefully into friendships and relationships.
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Finally, strategies focused on services and supports, although commonly framed in terms of broader community supports, most often center on the specific needs of relocated public housing residents to help them work toward self-sufficiency within a private market context. Facilitating such adaptation includes both instrumental supports (e.g., case management, counseling, financial literacy, home maintenance instruction, job training, and employment support) and a focus on changing residents’ perceptions (for example, their aspirations toward work) and behavior that are seen as preconditions for success. The focus on behavioral changes reflects the orientations toward community norms discussed above. As a member of one development team framed the problem, When you really get a chance to go inside of these people’s homes and you sit down and talk with them and you take 5 or 10 minutes, you realize that . . . even though [the public housing residents] switched housing overnight, their mentality is not switching like their housing has and so, like they say, you can take the person out of the projects but you can’t take the project out of the person . . . and if you don’t have enough services to try and transition them mentally, regardless of what community you put them in, it’s not going to work.
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These strategies are oriented differently toward promoting the integration of relocated public housing residents into safe, well-functioning, mixed-income neighborhoods and, from this base, providing access to broader opportunity in and connection to the city as a whole. Social capital arguments about the importance of “weak ties” and the benefits of collective efficacy are reflected here, though with modest expectations with regard to impact on social mobility, at least in the short term. With reference to the theoretical orientations toward social exclusion described above, these strategies primarily reflect the solidarity and specialization paradigms that Silver (1994) described, concerned with both social cohesion and normative integration and with addressing barriers to economic integration and voluntary civic engagement.
But the dynamics of integration have proven complex, and for many relocated public housing residents the move to mixed-income developments has entailed new forms of exclusion. In many cases, organizational action, individual responses, and institutionalized ways of constructing and maintaining group boundaries work together to shape and reproduce marginalization rather than facilitate interaction and promote inclusion. In the context of the community-building efforts outlined above, these exclusionary dynamics are grounded primarily in two factors: organizational compartmentalization and perceptions of difference grounded in institutionalized notions of “underclass” behavior and a “culture of poverty.”
Regarding the first, participation in the kinds of events, projects, and organized forums described above is uneven, and to a large extent residents are sorted—or sort themselves—to participate in some and avoid others. In some cases, this is a function of governance rules; condominium boards, for example, are by definition associations of and for homeowners. In other cases, residents’ perceptions, different interests, and personal proclivities lead to selective participation in certain things and not others. Specific forums and events are seen by residents as being primarily “for” certain subpopulations and not others—regardless of the organizers’ intent. Most programs and social events sponsored by the development, for example, have tended to attract far more relocated public housing residents than higher-income residents, in part because of a kind of “social service stigma” attached to them, as one provider suggested. This kind of social compartmentalization by class (and, sometimes, race)
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occurs informally as well. A number of relocated public housing residents, for example, describe their own tendency to “keep to myself” and note the tendency of homeowners to do the same, or to connect primarily with one another. As one put it, The owners, they had their own little get-together as far as, like, meeting each other when they first moved in. And it’s like they all met over there in the little courtyard area between those two buildings right there in the middle, and I’ve seen—like, one day I was coming from the store or something, and they were all there, and they had their dogs, and they were all mingling and having a little get-together and everything. It was like, just for them.
15
More than just serving to maintain separation among residents of substantially different economic backgrounds, this compartmentalization can promote tension and conflict between higher- and lower-income residents. As a member of a development team suggested, Like when the market-rate [residents] get together, they don’t blatantly say it but it’s little comments like, you know, something happened in the building: “what’s the process for evicting public housing people?” It’s like, how’d you get from like there was trash in the elevator to what’s the process for—you know? Then when you get all the public housing people together it’s “they don’t want us here. They’re trying to take over our neighborhood.” So just to crush a lot of that, if everyone was in the same room and then people could see that a lot of your concerns are my concerns.
16
As this quote suggests, organizing participation around particular issues of common concern might provide an opportunity to serve as a potential bridge across these divides. Indeed, some community forums—most notably CAPS meetings, which provide an opportunity to voice concerns and interact with neighbors and police around issues of crime and safety—have attracted broader participation. CAPS meetings, established by the city of Chicago beginning in 1993 as part of its Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, provide residents with direct access to police and other city agencies in public forums meant to support collaborative, participatory problem-solving around concerns about crime and safety issues, security strategies, and police and community responses (see Skogan and Hartnett 1997; Fung 2006). Although providing a venue for wider participation around issues of general concern, CAPs meetings often exacerbate rather than address divisive dynamics between public housing residents and higher-income residents since the stated concerns of the latter (especially homeowners) about safety and general public order, for example, tend to lay blame at the feet of relocated public housing residents and their visitors. Thus, rather than promote integration, these community discussions often reinforce contention and division. As the director of a community organization put it, “The target becomes people in public housing; it’s just easier to lump them in as a group.” 17
The second, more general, factor contributing to social exclusion in these contexts concerns how residents view one another’s values, culture, behavior, accessibility, and desirability as neighbors. As noted above, these perspectives reflect, at least on one side, the continued resonance of notions of “underclass” behavior. They are grounded to some extent in the experience of new residents in these contexts—observations of activities on the street, interactions (or avoidances) with certain neighbors—in ways that lead to the extrapolation and institutionalization of a social construction of who the “other” is and what they value. hanging out, public gathering, and socializing on the street are seen as indications of fundamental differences in culture and lifestyle that come to characterize relocated public housing residents as a group. Thus, some residents stereotype (often self-consciously) one another, and shape their behavior accordingly. An affordable owner puts it this way:
I guess in theory you’re not supposed to be able to tell who’s low-income, who’s middle-income, who’s high-income. But even in this mixed-income neighborhood, you can tell. Do you know what I mean? Renters for example—I mean I’m sorry I’m assuming a lot of them, or you can assume a lot because you see a bunch of kids on bikes and so forth. . . . I mean that the park’s dirty here and clean here, it’s not so much safety but it’s like they still treat the area like it’s the old area—we ain’t got to keep the streets clean. We don’t have to pick up the trash—like it’s still the projects.
18
These perceptions of difference become institutionalized and acted on in particular ways through organizational choices and behaviors of developers, property managers, and CHA officials, particularly around concerns about and responses to issues of safety, social control, and the definition and use of public space, as the next section explores.
Safety, social control, and public space
To a large extent, these perceptions of difference—and tensions around them—become most concretely manifest with reference to competing expectations regarding public behavior. 19 Such tensions have been clearly documented in recent ethnographic accounts of gentrifying neighborhoods, in which the preferences of and pressures from incoming, higher-income residents lead to the “progressive criminalization of ‘quality of life issues’” (Pattillo 2007, 264) and the censure of legal behaviors these newcomers find distasteful, such as barbequing in public, fixing cars on the street, and playing loud music (Pattillo 2007; Freeman 2006). Questions about these dynamics as documented in gentrifying neighborhoods are logically extended to mixed-income developments, which are sometimes framed as examples of “positive gentrification” (Cameron 2003) that seek to leverage market forces to foster neighborhood revitalization by attracting investment and higher-income residents while protecting the ability of low-income residents to remain.
Although in some ways mixed-income developments are similar to other gentrifying contexts in this regard, they differ from them in several important respects. Unlike most gentrifying neighborhoods, for example, promoting income mix and integration is an explicit and central goal of mixed-income developments, supported by the kinds of development inputs described above. These include setting aside about one-third of the units for public housing and other low-income renters, interspersing subsidized and market-rate units throughout the development, ensuring that subsidized units are not identifiable by design features, providing support services for public housing residents, and promoting neighborhood events and programs that seek to connect residents across housing tenure and income levels. In addition, because of the comprehensive demolition and redevelopment of these sites, all residents (both returning public housing residents and middle-class newcomers) are in some ways “new” to the community. Public housing residents often spend an extended period of time in another neighborhood, between initial relocation while demolition occurs and their return later, and their return itself is to a fundamentally different built environment peopled by a significantly different population. In addition, higher-income residents have different degrees of awareness that these neighborhoods are redeveloped public housing sites, in part due to different marketing strategies on the part of developers. This complicates, to some extent, questions of “turf” claims and rights. Finally, the determination of rules, monitoring processes, and enforcement is more centrally controlled by developers and property managers than is the case in most gentrifying neighborhoods, and aspects of development roll out and governance (such as resident eligibility, lease-up processes, and eviction procedures) are conditioned in part by constraints provided by the broader policy context of and advocacy in response to the transformation in a highly politicized and litigious environment, and under much public interest and scrutiny (Chaskin and Joseph 2012). Litigation, for example, led to the adoption of a relocation rights contract for public housing residents that constrains to some extent the selection and lease up process at each mixed-income development. This set of circumstances, and the particular roles played and decisions made by the central organizational actors involved, thus have a significant influence on how dynamics around such tensions condition the nature of integration of relocated public housing residents into these new communities.
Most arguments for attendance to issues regarding these kinds of public behavior are grounded in concerns about crime and safety. Adherents of the “broken windows” thesis (Kelling and Wilson 1982), for example, argue that outward signs of disorder and expressions of incivility indicate more fundamental security problems. They also provide “cues” to youth and others that crime and antisocial behavior is tolerated. Given these assumptions, policing disorderly behavior—including “taking informal or extralegal steps to help protect what the neighborhood had decided was the appropriate level of public order” (Kelling and Wilson 1982)—is seen as an effective way of preventing or reducing crime.
In the context of the mixed-income communities examined here, issues of crime and safety are certainly relevant for residents, but they have, for most people, not been dominant. Lower-income renters, in fact, experience these environments as significantly safer than the neighborhoods from which they moved (Joseph and Chaskin 2010), and the complaints of higher-income residents in these contexts most often are concerned less with actual crime than with a broad range of “incivilities” centered on public behavior and the use of public space. In most cases, these incidences are discussed more as annoyances than threats, though several residents interpret them as incipient dangers and take them as cues to stay away. As an owner of an affordable unit puts it, Like the loitering that takes place. It’s kind of like they’re bouncers. It’s like if you walk in, sometimes they look at you funny. . . . That’s the reason why we don’t use those places.
20
But for most, the concern is more about order and propriety than about threat. As a market-rate renter argues, “I should not have to not want to go outside because . . . there’s a bunch of other people out there loitering, hanging out, and doing whatever.” 21
In response to these concerns, developers, property managers, and homeowner associations hold wide discretion and responsibility for setting rules by which residents must abide. Although most rules are applicable to all residents (with the exception of some from which owners are exempt), most of the concern about them, and the primary attention paid to preventing and responding to infractions of them, is focused on relocated-public-housing and other low-income renters, who are often seen as more likely both to engage in illegal activities than their higher-income neighbors and to exhibit “unacceptable” public behavior. As a development team member commented, There’s a huge distinction between owners and renters. So in this building, what the owners do that is annoying to other owners are things that you’d expect in a condo building. You know, they’re leaving their trash in the trash room instead of throwing it down the trash shoot. . . . The renters on the other hand . . . you can get a tax-credit renter that’s selling drugs out of their unit.
22
Concerns about crime and safety, thus, get linked to general concerns about incivility, such that the boundaries are blurred between one kind of behavior and another, and policing the range of such behaviors becomes institutionalized by development teams and property management. A market-rate owner makes this link seamlessly:
I think the message that [property management] is sending is: We care. We want you to live in decent housing but . . . we don’t want people living in the housing who are going to, you know, mess it up. And that’s drug dealing. That’s prostitution. That’s, you know, selling cigarettes out of the back of your place. That’s loitering at, you know, at 2 a.m. That’s people swinging by in the car with the loud music. You know that the whole kind of attitude.
23
Or, in the words of a market-rate renter, The security is very, very important to them. They take that very seriously. Just—you can’t do this. You can’t hang clothes outside. You can’t barbeque in those common areas and then things like that.
24
Responses to concerns about safety and standards of behavior have led to some fairly fundamental limitations on the use of space. Part of this limitation is a function of design, which for the most part privileges private—and privately controlled—space (private entrances, private balconies) over common areas. Another part is a function of rules that are meant to limit resident access to and use of common areas not explicitly designated for social uses. This entails restrictions on the use of common outdoor spaces that might otherwise be seen as public—streets, playgrounds, the area in front of buildings, alleyways, the areas behind buildings—and those that might more readily be understood as private—front steps, parking lots—but available for the use of development residents and their guests. These restrictions are targeted, in many cases, to the very presence of people in the public view, congregating openly for leisure or without clear purpose—behavior associated with “ghetto” culture that gets labeled by those opposed to it as loitering. As a development team member put it, They’re used to being able to stand outside in the hallway or in front of the building and cuss each other out and all that. You can’t do that here. That’s a violation of your lease. In the projects, you could do that.
25
The sense that these rules are differentially applied is shared both by low-income renters and some of their higher-income neighbors. As the owner of an affordable unit suggested, Well, if you’re low income, I think that they look at you differently. . . . Like if I was to wait in the waiting room for like two hours, I don’t think anybody would say anything. But some low-income person waiting two hours in the waiting room, they’re not waiting in the waiting room—they’re hanging out.
26
Relocated public housing residents and renters of affordable units across sites frequently note these prohibitions with particular resentment. As a relocated public housing resident recounted, They must have been sitting out on their porch or sitting outside on the crate or something but they put notices in all their mailboxes telling them that was very ghetto. You know: You’re not allowed to congregate in front of the property. Well, where do you want me to go? Where do you want me to go?
27
Or, in the words of a renter of an affordable unit, You can’t go onto the front. They don’t want you on the front. They don’t want you on the back. You can’t barbeque. I ain’t never lived nowhere where you can’t go out to the back of your house and barbeque. You a prisoner in your own house.
28
These rules have been partially effective at curtailing some of the behaviors that developers, property management, and higher-income residents wish to limit. They are enforced through the vigilance of property management, which sends out letters, calls residents in violation into the office for warnings and counseling, and holds meetings to hear residents’ concerns and mediate disputes. They are supported to some extent through the actions of residents, who report transgressions to management, call the police, and sometimes (though less frequently) intervene informally with their neighbors. They also largely privilege the rights of private property over public access and public order over specific kinds of individual freedom. These preferences reflect a neighborhood vision shared by development team members and most owners and market-rate renters in these contexts. In terms of the inclusion that mixed-income developments promise, however, they have generated a somewhat different daily experience for many low-income residents, who feel constrained, observed, and at risk (“walking on eggshells” as one described it) of losing their housing if they fail to toe a particular, imposed line defining their behavior—even as they recognize and appreciate that their overall quality of and satisfaction with their living arrangements has improved (Joseph and Chaskin 2010). Thus, integrationist efforts aimed at normative and cultural integration (apropos of the solidarity paradigm) are experienced by many low-income and relocated public housing residents as mechanisms of exclusion, control, and stigmatization that, rather than promoting their positive social integration, lead them to withdraw to avoid negative sanctions and protect their eligibility to continue to live in the development (Joseph and Chaskin 2010; McCormick, Joseph, and Chaskin 2012).
Participation, deliberation, and decision-making
Another aspect of inclusion concerns participation in the deliberative and decision-making processes that inform policies and choices that affect community members and shape the nature of community life. Participation in this context includes contributing to policy planning and implementation oversight that inform the transformation and the particular choices that shape the mixed-income communities into which public housing residents are to be integrated. Expectations for citizen participation as a necessary component of redevelopment efforts have become normative (and are often codified in legislation) in the United States since the 1960s, largely in response to contention generated by the slum clearance and urban restructuring efforts under urban renewal (Rubin 1969; Arnstein 1969; Marris and Rein 1982; Mollenkopf 1983; Poindexter 2000). More broadly, though, participation includes engagement in the ongoing civic and associational life of the redeveloped communities. 29
In mixed-income developments replacing concentrated public housing complexes, participatory mechanisms to incorporate the representation of a range of stakeholders (public housing residents among them) were put in place during both planning and implementation stages as mandated by HOPE IV funding guidelines or negotiated through mobilization and litigation (Wright 2006; Hunt 2009; Poindexter 2000). In Chicago, the most central mechanism incorporating public housing residents into the formal planning process to inform the development of the mixed-income communities is a set of working groups associated with each development. Each working group includes representatives from the housing authority, property management, and city council; and public housing advocates, developers, and service providers. In addition, public housing residents are directly represented in the working groups by two leaders of the relevant Local Advisory Council (LAC), the tenant organizations whose elected leadership had represented public housing residents to the CHA prior to the transformation. Although the nature of LAC influence and the degree to which they have effectively represented the interests of their public housing constituency is an issue of some contention (Hunt 2009; Venkatesh 2002), LACs (and the umbrella Central Advisory Council, which draws its members from the leadership of each LAC) have been the principal formal mechanism for tenant representation in the context of public housing in Chicago since the mid-1970s, and have at least in some cases contributed to successful claims-making. This includes spearheading litigation leading to policy changes and institutional concessions (such as the crafting of a relocation rights contract) as a result of public housing residents’ complaints about CHA mismanagement and concerns about dislocation and other impending changes under the terms of the Plan for Transformation (Hunt 2009; Wright 2006; Bennett 2006).
Recently, however, the CHA established the Office of the Ombudsman in the mixed-income communities as an alternative to LACs. Rather than relying on elected tenant leadership, the Ombudsman is a centralized office with professional staff who acts as a liaison between relocated public housing residents in the mixed-income communities and the CHA, hosting periodic forums for residents to provide input and raise concerns, for the dissemination of information, and to offer assistance in response to specific issues (CHA 2010). In light of this, the link between tenant representation (drawn from former LAC leadership) in the working groups and the relocated public housing residents in mixed-income communities is somewhat tenuous, and there is no formal (elected or otherwise) participatory body that is primarily structured to represent the interests of relocated public housing residents in the mixed-income communities.
Beyond these formal mechanisms, there are a number of organizations, associations, and forums for participation that are part of the broader civic and associational life of these emerging communities. In part, this broader ecology of associations and organizations is reflective of the kinds of entities that are active in less “contrived” community settings—such as block clubs, tenant groups, homeowner associations, and neighborhood organizations—that in different ways “speak for and act on behalf of” residents around different community issues (Chaskin 2003). But because mixed-income communities that replace public housing developments are more contrived, deliberation and decision-making in them are also substantially influenced by development teams and property management, who have a direct role both in “creating” these new communities and in shaping key inputs that will fundamentally condition neighborhood life (Chaskin and Joseph 2010; Graves 2010).
Some of the associational mechanisms for deliberation that most directly concern residents of the developments have been formally established by developers or property management, including a range of periodic meetings (town hall meetings, community forums, renters’ meetings), tenant-led committees (organized around particular community issues, such as security), and condominium associations. Others have emerged as residents move in and organize themselves based on shared interests or concerns—often in response to tensions around the kinds of issues of safety and incivilities described above. In one site, for example, a neighborhood organization was launched by a group of owners who united around concerns about safety and public behavior, though it evolved to focus on fostering participation of youths and families in activities, too, such as a running club, community gardens, and a farmers market. In another, an effort to create an inclusive neighborhood association has become, in essence, a de facto forum for relocated public housing residents. In most cases, and despite some explicit efforts to create more inclusive associations that engage a cross-section of the population, participation in these emerging associations is compartmentalized (with either homeowners and higher-income renters or low-income renters most engaged), and the most active (and influential) associations tend to represent the interests of homeowners. Those organized primarily around renters’ concerns, such as renters’ meetings organized by development staff, tend largely to focus on information exchange rather than deliberation. Finally, there is a range of established associations and local organizations in each neighborhood that preceded the transformation and provides additional opportunities for resident engagement and the expression of collective interests. These include homeowner and neighborhood associations, citizen action groups, block clubs, and community-based nonprofits, but for the most part they have not incorporated participation of residents in the mixed-income developments within their area and are largely oriented toward the interests of long-term residents, homeowners, and local businesses.
The transformation’s institutional actors’ driving orientation toward participation as a mechanism for promoting integration in these contexts has been one that privileges “mainstreaming” public housing residents into the associations and interactions of the market and civil society. Within this framework, more specialized spaces that support deliberation about and advocacy for the particular needs of relocated public housing residents through mechanisms such as the LACs are not supported, and indeed are seen by some as counterproductive. As a development team member suggested, In these communities, we’re either going to set them up in and of themselves or we’re gonna continue to create factions. And I think that having someone who stands only for the CHA residents and having resources that are only CHA residents really separates and really continues to reinforce the separation between CHA families in these mixed-income sites and the rest of the people on the sites.
30
However, the “voice” of relocated public housing residents within the broader participatory forums is relatively weak. In the working groups—the one formal mechanism established specifically to incorporate relocated public housing residents into deliberations that have a meaningful impact on policy implementation and on emerging community dynamics—relocated public housing residents are a minority voice at best, filtered through representatives that are no longer selected by, and in some cases are increasingly removed from, their constituency. And relocated public housing residents and other low-income renters express caution about the vitality of (and the wisdom of participating in) other forums that might offer opportunities for more direct participation, such as the periodic renters’ meetings—particularly in light of some of the dynamics around rules and monitoring of behavior discussed above. As a relocated public housing resident put it, All I can say about over here is . . . we all have a voice, but the authority [is] new and they’re trying to get everything together. . . . I’m just holding back. . . . I’m holding back till I’m ready to say what I want to say.
31
Or, in the words of another, I know they asked for our opinions in the meeting, but I don’t think they really take it to heart or whatever. . . . I think they gonna do what they want to do anyway. You know they might say, well, we want to know your ideas and everything, but . . . they’re not really paying attention. I think they just saying it just to say it. And they still have the last decision.
32
Thus, in the context of the varied and influential mechanisms that more effectively represent the concerns of higher-income residents and the interests of major institutional players than those of lower-income residents, the opportunities for deliberation and influence for relocated public housing residents are relatively limited. As a development team member suggested, I think [relocated public housing residents] don’t feel like they really have an outlet. There’s nothing really in place. . . . [T]he only place they would have to go and complain to would be the site manager. That’s it. There is no renters association. Like, there’s a condo association but there is no renter’s association so they don’t meet. . . . If you had a renter’s association that would speak for them and those groups talked then they could share information back to their groups. But with the [relocated] people, you don’t have that. They don’t have anybody, they’re just out.
33
Thus, arguments that supporting separate representational mechanisms for relocated public housing residents and other low-income residents would further marginalize them by highlighting their exceptionalism have so far tended to further exclude them by undermining their ability to advocate effectively for their priorities and concerns, to the extent these differ from those of other community members (Chaskin, Khare, and Joseph 2012).
Conclusion
The mixed-income development component of Chicago’s Plan for Transformation has generated remarkable change in neighborhoods that had been dominated by large concentrations of public housing. The high-rise developments are gone, and the neighborhoods emerging on their footprint are dramatically different environments—cleaner, more orderly, better maintained, safer, and more peaceful—than the public housing complexes they have replaced. Relocated public housing residents moving to these contexts thus benefit from their return in some important ways, enjoying better housing in attractive neighborhoods; reduced stress in light of the increased safety and security of their new surroundings; and—for some—positive changes in their aspirations, motivation, and sense of possibility to improve their lives (Joseph and Chaskin 2010). For most, however, these benefits have not included effective integration, entailed the breaking down of “social barriers,” or led to the broader benefits that are meant to come from such integration. Within the context of the new communities to which they have returned, many relocated public housing residents experience increased scrutiny and intrusion that generates new kinds of stigma, exclusion, and isolation (cf. McCormick, Joseph, and Chaskin 2012). The dynamics that shape these experiences are informed in large part by institutionalized assumptions about the “underclass” and the activities of organizational actors around design, service provision, intervention, and opportunities for participation and representation that, in seeking to promote integration and the establishment of new, well-functioning neighborhoods, produce new forms of exclusion for the poorest residents in them.
These dynamics are difficult to navigate, particularly given that the effort to meet the core social goals of the policy (lifting families out of poverty and revitalizing neighborhoods) takes place within the context of a market strategy, requiring the ability to attract and retain higher-income residents to these communities and to turn a profit. The analysis above, however, suggests several possible dimensions of action that might begin to address these dynamics of exclusion.
One such action concerns design, the allocation of public space, and the orientation of developers and potential residents toward the kind of community being built and the nature of living in urban, mixed-income communities. Despite the invocation of New Urbanist principles, the emerging communities are in some ways not very urban. Rather than integrated, mixed-use communities, the sites are essentially residential. Civic space is limited in favor of private spaces, commercial development has for the most part been left to later phases, and most park space is either located on the periphery of these developments or associated with condominium governance, raising issues of access. But more than simply a question of allocation or integration of public space, promoting integration may require cultivating a different orientation toward the city among residents of these communities—or seeking to attract residents who hold this orientation—in which there is both a greater tolerance in general and a willingness to embrace in particular the notion of city life as a “normative ideal,” as Iris Marion Young (1999, 236 ff.) put it, finding pleasure in diversity, embracing inclusion, and celebrating the public sphere and public space accessible to all (Chaskin and Joseph 2012).
There is also a need to find ways to foster more inclusive deliberation and decision-making about issues of shared concern in the new developments. In light of the compartmentalization they reproduce and the differential access and influence they represent, the mechanisms emerging so far are less well suited for negotiating these tensions across groups than for providing forums for their expression within groups, and management responses to the outcomes of these deliberations often target particular groups (especially relocated public housing residents and other low-income renters) over others (Chaskin and Joseph 2010, 2012).
Third, there is the need for greater intentionality around and investment in opportunities for inclusion through organizational infrastructure and institutional strength. Cultivating and strengthening organizational spaces that provide opportunities for both provision and shared use, such as stores, coffee shops, recreational facilities, and schools, may provide a better chance for residents to integrate their activities into the broader community and encounter one another on “neutral” ground (Chaskin and Joseph 2012).
Last, efforts to provide services and supports such as training, job-placement assistance, and case-management services to move relocated public housing residents (and other low-income residents) to self-sufficiency so they can participate more fully and effectively in these new communities and gain broader access to economic and social opportunities in the city are clearly important, but they are also limited in the broader context of shifting economic opportunity and other structural constraints that low-income people face. The recent economic downturn and foreclosure crisis throws this into sharp relief. Local efforts focusing on human capital need to be promoted along with a broader policy focus on structural barriers and inequality and on economic development; infrastructure; and institutional investment in education, technology access, and other foundational resources that are often either of inferior quality or out of reach for many low-income people (Chaskin and Joseph 2010).
Footnotes
NOTE:
Notes
Robert J. Chaskin is an associate professor and deputy dean for strategic initiatives at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. His work focuses on conceptual foundations and principal strategies of contemporary community intervention in the context of urban poverty. He has written widely on the topics of neighborhood intervention, community capacity building, and the dynamics of participatory planning and neighborhood governance.