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Moving Out: Section 8 and Public Housing Relocation in Chicago Author: Mathew Z. Reed Dissertation School: Northwestern University Pages: 284 Publication Date: December 2006 Availability: Access Number: 10818 Abstract: This dissertation is a multi-method study of the relocation process under the Chicago Housing Authority's (CHA's) implementation of federal redevelopment policies intended to decrease the racial and economic isolation of public housing tenants. It combines quantitative and spatial analysis of program administrative data, interviews with "expert respondents," and qualitative semi-structured interviews with public housing relocation households to explore the settlement patterns and housing-choice decisions of very-low-income African-American households as they move out of public housing and into the private market using tenant-based Section 8 rent subsidies. The dissertation shows that the rent voucher portion of the relocation program, which was designed as a means of enhancing racial and economic integration of former public housing tenants, is limited in its effects by the very market forces (social and economic) it was designed to leverage. Settlement patterns of former public housing tenants conform to the existing social geography of segregation and stratification in the city. The inherent limits of the policy assumption are further highlighted by the findings that the most disadvantaged households, those whose experiences are of greatest concern to policymakers, move to the poorest and most homogenously Black census tracts. Despite the general replication of patterns of racial and economic segregation in Chicago, it argues that the mechanisms behind these patterns do not fit neatly into the dominant race-centered models of discriminatory constraint or group homophilly. While acknowledging persistent discrimination, and without apologizing for segregation, it describes a complex dynamic of structural and administrative constraint and personal decisions at the intersection of the CHA's redevelopment and relocation programs; the specific dynamics of Chicago's housing market; and the differences in the households' composition, needs, and preferences. In the process, the dissertation moves beyond standard policy evaluation to engage the relocation process as an empirical opportunity to explore a broader range of classic policy-relevant sociological questions and literatures including: the complex social segmentation of residential submarkets; patterns and mechanisms of racial and economic segregation; and the roles the neighborhood attachment and the social-support networks of low-income families play in shaping the push and pull that characterizes low-income housing search and mobility patterns. |
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