Building on two years of ethnographic research with the homeless community in Santa Barbara, California, this dissertation examines the newest addition to this transient population: RV and vehicle dwellers. (More)

The focus of this study is Concentrated Urban Poverty (CUP) neighborhoods and the emerging responses to this phenomenon. CUP neighborhoods are frequently described as a social problem in that they are seen as undesirable and yet have potential for change. Residents of these neighborhoods require public subsidies to provide housing and food, as well as public problem solving and resource investment within the housing, educational, criminal and health systems in order to meet the basic social needs and overcome barriers to self-sufficiency. There are a range of interventions to address urban neighborhoods with a concentration of poverty; the two that are the focus of this study are Transit-Oriented Mixed Income Redevelopments and Community Organizing, both of which have been found to improve neighborhood and individual outcomes (Berube, 2006; Foster-Fishrnan, Cantillon, Pierce, & Van Egeren, 2007; Joseph, 2006; Joseph, 2008; Ohmer & Beck, 2006; Popkin et al, 2004). (More)

When first introduced, disorder was considered a "slippery concept" (Skogan 1990, p. 4), where lines between order and disorder were definitionally blurred. Unfortunately, little has been done to systematically arrive at a cohesive definition of disorder (Kubrin 2008). Critiques of disorder have questioned both the definitions of order and disorder (Harcourt 2001) and the causal relationship between disorder and crime (Sampson and Raudenbush 1999), though no critique has yet addressed a core assumption of disorder theory - individuals cohesively perceive and interpret disorder. Most conceptualizations of disorder assume that: 1) individuals within the same neighborhood have similar levels of perceptions of disorder; and 2) the meanings individuals attach to disorder are homogenous within neighborhoods. (More)

This dissertation studies the relationship between a coalition member's financial or service commitment before and after the designations were announced. (More)

With the continuing influx of a large number of immigrants in the United States, the urban labor market segmentation along the lines of race/ethnicity, class, and gender has been drawing considerable attention in recent years. This dissertation focused on the phenomenon of "ethnic niches," that is, industries and occupations dominated by a particular race/ethnic group. (More)

This dissertation explores the applicability of the Political Process Model (a social movement framework) to community building initiatives. I hope to identify participant characteristics (including faith-based organization affiliation) and explain their relationship to the level and quality of individual participation in community development programs (More)

This study shows how kin networks, parental monitoring, and housing mobility structure low-income adolescents’ engagement in risky and delinquent behavior. I use ethnographic data from a mixed-method study of a randomized housing experiment: The Three-City Study of Moving to Opportunity. The ethnography was conducted over 8 months in 2004-05 with 39 families, including 52 male and female adolescents (ages 11-23) in greater Boston, Los Angeles, and New York. (More)

This dissertation examines the economic impact of casino gambling. The dissertation proceeds in three main parts. First, the impact of casinos on housing prices is estimated using data from the 2000 U.S. Census of Population and Housing. Second, the casino location decision is formally modeled. Finally, a matching estimator is constructed to generate a randomized experiment for assessing the impact of casinos on key economic variables. (More)

The dissertation research that I propose will attempt to generate knowledge within social work and related disciplines that will help identify local institutions that can serve as facilitators of community collective efficacy. The purpose of my dissertation research is to examine whether church and civic participation among urban, predominantly poor African Americans is related to strong perceptions of neighborhood mutual trust and a shared willingness to engage in efforts to resolve the problems affecting their communities. (More)

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between neighborhood context, parolee reintegration and success, and local neighborhood changes in social and economic characteristics. More than 800,000 inmates were released onto parole in 2007 alone, and parolees and the communities to which they return must navigate through the many challenges associated with offender reintegration. The process of parolees returning to communities raises critical questions about public safety, proper supervision of parolees, and the ability of communities to incorporate re-entrants into the neighborhoods to which they return. Underlying these challenges are questions regarding which parolees are likely to recidivate, what community factors might contribute the most to their re-offending, and the impact that parolees might have on the neighborhoods to which they return. (More)

The decades-long expansion of law and order prison policies across the United States has led to historically high rates of incarceration and has had repercussions far beyond the prison walls. With more than 600,000 inmates returning back to their home communities each year, prisoner reentry reform has recently become as an important strand of penal policy innovation intended to address the barriers that former offenders face when returning home. Consequently, community organizations and corrections have been unified in an effort to assist former inmates. In the reorganization of the relationship between community and prisons that reentry requires, housing plays a central role. The success of reentry programs hinges on the establishment of workable housing scenarios that meet the needs of former inmates and of the surrounding residents who are asked to incorporate them into their communities. My study examines this process and the challenges and opportunities that are created by new reentry dynamics, specifically the challenges posed for these new rehabilitative programs by the lack of affordable housing. (More)

How did Northwest One become a ghetto? (More)

The purpose of this dissertation is to illustrate the effect that corporate political strategies have on a community's shift from extractive industry (coal mining) to a more sustainable economic base. My hypothesis is that the strategies that extractive labor communities evolve for coping with the decline of extractive industry and its consequences parallel the closed corporate community features elaborated by Eric Wolf (1956, 1957, 1986), including features such as shared power, economic egalitarianism, and a pronounced social integration of the community. (More)

This dissertation examines New York City's efforts to establish a racially integrated public housing program from 1945 to 1975. It focuses on the struggle against the city's 1966 plan to construct a low-income project (housing mostly poor African-American and Puerto Rican families) in Forest Hills, Queens (a Jewish, middle-income neighborhood). I argue that the protests and political compromises that punctuated the Forest Hills controversy symbolized the failure of the city's integration policies and contributed to the decline and fall of its public housing program. (More)

A major community development challenge of the new millennium is to build and strengthen career paths for low-income workers in growing occupations, especially the technology-intensive jobs that increasingly predominate in cities. In the past, skill training, career ladders, and advancement opportunities for entry-level workers often existed within large, vertically integrated firms. (More)

Despite the failures associated with the modern housing movement initiated during the inter-war period of the 20th century, the past 15 years have shown that government involvement in the production of affordable housing can be stimulating and beneficial. This study examines different aspects related to one such beneficial program, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) initiated in the United States as a result of the 1986 Tax Reform Act. In particular, this research focuses on lease-purchase, single-family housing projects developed from 1987 to 2000 in Louisville, Kentucky, as part of the LIHTC program. (More)