"We Need to Have a Meeting": Public Housing Demolition and Civic Engagement among Rent-Assisted Families (Danya Keene)

THE DEMOLITION OF PUBLIC HOUSING across the country is part of a broader shift in assisted housing policy which, according to some has reduced access to stable and affordable housing. Federally owned and operated public housing developments have been replaced by voucher-based assistance where poor residents must compete for an often limited number of vouchers that can be applied to an often limited number of private market rental units. Under this system, shelter is not a guaranteed social right, but a contingently available market good that is available, only to a subset of “deserving” poor who play by the rules of a market-based system.

In this study, Professor Keene draws on in-depth interviews with former residents of public housing projects in Atlanta, Georgia who have been displaced by recent public housing demolition. In these conversations many participants, particularly those who had lived in public housing for many years, described a strong sense of rootedness in their public housing communities that were “like families”. Several participants also described high levels of engagement with collective life in their former public housing developments as both informal and formal leaders in their communities, or as participants in residents’ councils and other organizations. They also describe the challenges to reestablishing these sources of collective power in their new, private market rental communities where formal opportunities for civic engagement were limited, where their claims to space were fragile and where they experienced high levels of residential instability.