How Chicago's Public Housing Transformation Can Inform Federal Policy

Chicago has long dominated the national discourse about urban poverty in general and public housing in particular, and the policy changes that affect Chicago tend to have repercussions for national policy. The Chicago Housing Authority's1999 Plan for Transformation sought to undo the mistakes of decades of federal policy that had left Chicago and too many other cities blighted by large, decaying public housing properties. Although other cities like Atlanta and San Francisco followed suit, the CHA's Plan was the first -- and largest -- citywide public housing transformation initiative, representing an enormous investment of public and private resources.In many respects, the CHA's story shows the potential of public housing transformation: attractive new developments, better quality of life for most residents, and a better-functioning housing authority. However, the CHA's story also raises cautions about the limitations and the potential risks of this bold -- and costly -- approach and about what else it will take to help address the problems of deep poverty that keep too many public housing families from moving toward self-sufficiency

The CHA's Plan for Transformation: How Have Residents Fared?

Summarizes findings from studies on how relocation from distressed public housing changed former residents' quality of life, including living conditions, safety, poverty, employment, health, well-being of children, and satisfaction. Outlines implications

Escaping the Hidden War: Safety Is the Biggest Gain for CHA Families

Examines changes in residents' sense of safety and exposure to drugs, gangs, and violence after moving from distressed public housing to mixed-income or rehabilitated developments or the private market. Makes recommendations for sustaining gains

Affordable and quality housing through the low cost housing provision in Malaysia

Housing is a major concern for all people in every corner of the world as the wellbeing of a country is reflected in its people enjoying a certain standard of living. Residential and neighbourhood satisfaction is an important indicator of housing quality and condition, which affects individuals quality of life. The factors, which determine their satisfaction, are essential inputs in monitoring the success of housing policies. Housing provision for all in any country is very crucial in order to ensure socialeconomic stability and to promote national development. Therefore the Malaysian government under its 5 year National Plan has introduced the low, medium and high cost housing categories. The housing policy in Malaysia is to provide Malaysians of all income levels, particularly the low-income groups, accessibility to adequate, affordable and quality shelter. It provides direction to housing development in the country which should emphasis human settlement of better quality of life, national integration and unity. This paper will discuss the general scenario of housing in Malaysia particularly the low cost housing

The Oak Park Redevelopment Plan: Housing Policy Implications for a Community Undergoing Early Stage Gentrification

Abstract: With the reemerging discussion of gentrification in the urban landscape, an exploratory case study of the Oak Park Redevelopment Plan in Sacramento, CA, was conducted in order to better understand the community’s gentrifying characteristics and the implications once the redevelopment goals are met. In addition, a Conceptual Framework [CF] was formulated in order to unpack the components and processes of gentrification. The findings suggest that the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency’s redevelopment polices act as a catalyst for gentrification that exclusively favors the in-migration of middle- and upper-income residents into the area at the expense of lower-income residents. These implications include the displacement of low-income renter-residents, changes to a neighborhood’s socio-economic and cultural characteristics, and the defacto exclusion of low-income residents as they will never be able to afford to live in the gentrified Oak Park neighborhood

Service provision and barriers to care for homeless people with mental health problems across 14 European capital cities

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Neither Shoreditch nor Manhattan: Post-politics, 'soft austerity urbanism' and real abstraction in Glasgow North

Speirs Locks is being re-constructed as a new cultural quarter in Glasgow North, with urban boosters envisioning the unlikely, rundown and de-populated light industrial estate as a key site in the city's ongoing cultural regeneration strategy. Yet this creative place-making initiative, I argue, masks a post-political conjuncture based on urban speculation, displacement and the foreclosure of dissent. Post-politics at Speirs Locks is characterised by what I term ‘soft austerity urbanism’: seemingly progressive, instrumental small-scale urban catalyst initiatives that in reality complement rather than counter punitive hard austerity urbanism. Relating such processes of soft austerity urbanism to a wider context of state-led gentrification, this study contributes to post-political debates in several ways. Firstly, it questions demands for participation as a proper politics when it has become practically compulsory in contemporary biopolitical capitalism. Secondly, it demonstrates how an extreme economy of austerity urbanism remains the hard underside of post-political, soft austerity urbanism approaches. Thirdly, it illustrates how these approaches relate to wider processes of ‘real abstraction’ – which is no mere flattery of the mind, but instead is rooted in actually existing processes of commodity exchange. Such abstraction, epitomised in the financialisation and privatisation of land and housing, buttresses the same ongoing property dynamics that were so integral to the global financial crisis and ensuing austerity policies in the first place. If we aim to generate a proper politics that creates a genuine rupture with the destructive play of capital in the built environment, the secret of real abstraction must be critically addressed

Sceptical, disorderly and paradoxical subjects : problematizing the ‘will to empower’ in social housing governance

Research for this work was funded by the British Academy (SG-50318)Drawing on focus group research with social housing tenants this paper illustrates that despite the existence of a political “will to empower” within housing stock transfer policy in Scotland, the effects of governmental strategies are only ever partial and uneven, and may be subject to challenge and contestation from below. Through a focus on “lay” perspectives and the contested nature of contemporary governing practices, the paper argues for more attention to the messy realities of governing within specific local contexts, especially the way in which governable subjects can think and act otherwise, and forge their own alternative govern-mentalities.Peer reviewe

Building Healthy Places with People and for People: Community Engagement for Healthy and Sustainable Communities

Over a 25 year period, residents of the El Sereno  community in Los Angeles have opposed efforts of  investors seeking to build luxury homes on the area  known as Elephant Hill.  After years of community  organizing—canvassing door to door, developing a  broad-based coalition and mobilizing supporters to  attend public hearings—residents declared victory after  the City Council agreed to settle a lawsuit with the  developers by buying the 20-acre site for $6 million to  create a future park.  Residents are glad that a chunk of one of Los Angeles' last undeveloped hillsides  will remain open space in this park poor, working-class Latino community.  Opposition efforts reignited  in 2004 not only to preserve open space, but also to encourage public safety and counter threats to  gentrification.  Elva Yañez, the El Sereno resident who led the most recent efforts to preserve Elephant  Hill, hailed the settlement as a victory for environmental justice: "After a long and hard fought struggle,  the residents of this community have been afforded the environmental protections that are rightfully theirs.   We are pleased that this poorly planned project is not moving forward and environmental justice has  prevailed." [Contreras & Sanchez, 2009; Yañez, personal communication, 2010

Home Ownership Risk Beyond a Subprime Crisis: The Role of Delinquency Management

A surge in delinquency among risky subprime home mortgages has produced calls for front-end regulatory fixes as well as emergency foreclosure avoidance interventions. Whatever the merit of those interventions, this Essay calls for home mortgage delinquency management to be conceptualized as an enduring component of housing policy. The Essay identifies and evaluates a framework for the management of delinquency that is not limited to formal foreclosure law and includes other debtor-creditor laws such as bankruptcy, industry loss mitigation efforts, and third-party interventions such as delinquency housing counseling. The Essay also proposes that delinquency management be evaluated through the lens of objectives commonly used to justify public investment in home ownership and home mortgage markets: to build household wealth and economic self-sufficiency, to generate positive social-psychological states, and to develop stable neighborhoods and communities. Because those ends are not inexorably linked to ownership generally or owning a particular home, a system of delinquency management that honors these objectives should strive to provide fair, transparent, humane, and predictable strategies for home exit as well as for home retention