Hope VI, public houisng, urban poverty, gentrification
I picked this topic because I have a passionate interest in public housing. I became very interested in how residents have transitioned after much of public housing was demolished in the mid 1990s. I am especially interested in how public policy is conveyed to, and between, different segments of society. I am interested in analyzing the discourse surrounding Hope VI and understanding how it has been interpreted.
Cisneros, Henry G., Lora Engdahl, and Foreword by Kurt Schmoke. From Despair to Hope: Hope VI and the New Promise of Public Housing in America’s Cities. Brookings Institution Press, 2009.
Jennifer Comey, “HOPE VI’d and On the Move,” Text, June 26, 2007, http://www.urban.org/publications/311485.html.
Debi McInnis. “Are HOPE VI Families at Greater Risk for Homelessness?.” Text, June 26, 2007. http://www.urban.org/publications/311490.html.
Galster, George, and Anne Zobel. “Will Dispersed Housing Programmes Reduce Social Problems in the US?.” Housing Studies 13, no. 5 (1998): 605.
Goetz, Edward G. Clearing the Way: Deconcentrating the Poor in Urban America. Urban Institute Press, 2003.
Goetz, Edward G. “The Politics of Poverty Deconcentration and Housing Demolition.” Journal of Urban Affairs 22, no. 2 (4, 2000): 157-173.
http://www.hud.gov/offices/pih/programs/ph/hope6/
Implemented in the 1990s the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (Hope VI), plan administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, sought to revitalize the country’s worst public housing projects. This was achieved by demolishing housing projects in major American cities, replacing them with mixed-income developments, and re-locating former residents. Debate has flourished over the legitimacy and continued outcomes of Hope VI, in think tank, governmental, and media spheres. The purpose of this study is to cross-analyze the coverage of Hope VI in these different arenas. Archival research of Urban Institute reports, governmental hearings, and newspaper coverage reveal fundamentally different understandings of Hope VI’s progress. Through the use of content analysis, and focusing on the topic of resident relocation within the Chicago area, this report analyzes how Hope VI’s outcomes are measured, interpreted and communicated across different spheres. This kind of analysis has implications for how urban policy outcomes are reported and perceived across different segments of society.
Implemented in the 1990s the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (Hope VI), plan administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, sought to revitalize the country’s worst public housing projects. This was achieved by demolishing housing projects in major American cities, replacing them with mixed-income developments, and re-locating former residents. Debate has flourished over the legitimacy and continued outcomes of Hope VI, in think tank, governmental, and media spheres. The purpose of this study is to cross-analyze the coverage of Hope VI in these different arenas. Content analysis of Urban Institute reports, governmental hearings, and New York Times coverage reveal how differently Hope VI’s outcomes are measured, interpreted, and communicated across different spheres. This kind of analysis has implications for understanding the varying ways in which urban policy is understood and reported on in American society.
In my project I analyzed the discourse surrounding the Hope VI program. Implemented in the early nineties, Hope VI revitalized distressed public housing by demolishing existing structures and replacing them with mixed income developments. I analyzed the discourse surrounding this program across newspaper, think tank, and governmental arenas. I identified key issues pertaining to Hope VI including resident resistance and gentrification. I found that these issues were interpreted, and conveyed, very differently across the varying institutions. My most critical finding was the in the congressional record, gentrification was rarely discussed and when it was it was viewed as a positive outcome of the program. My analysis led me to believe that this represents a major deficiency in discourse on Hope VI in the governmental arena. I found the disparities between the varying institutions to be fascinating and I believe that this research model could be extended for the purpose of analyzing other urban policy issues.
The evidence used for this project are publications that were published across newspaper, think tank, and governmental arenas. The first outlet from which publications were drawn from was The New York Times . The second institution that data was aggregated from was the Urban Institute. The last source from which to collect publications was the United States Government.
Once the publications were aggregated from the three different institutions, they were numbered and entered into an SPSS data set. After careful consideration, and rigorous analysis of the literature on Hope VI, key variables were selected to evaluate the collected content by. Race was deemed an important factor, and was therefore selected for analysis within the context of the collected publications on Hope VI. The methods for reporting on the progress of Hope VI, be they statistical anecdotal, was also determined to be an important aspect of the coverage. Key issues such as resident resistance to Hope VI, suburban exclusion, and gentrification were also outlined as important variables in analyzing the various publications. Codes were created to measure the occurrence of the variables within the documents from The New York Times, Urban Institute, and United States Government. Each publication was read closely and coded to account for the variables.
After the coding process was complete, sets of data were cross tabulated, so that the collected content could be analyzed in meaningful ways. Tables and graphs were created in order to display the information in a simple format. At this point analysis was extrapolated from the collected data, and implications are suggested.
Though my project does not use specific spatial analysis, there is a spatial dimension. My project hinges on analyzing the discourse surrounding the Hope VI program. This includes analyzing varying aspects of resident migration after the public housing projects were demolished. One of the variables that I chose to analyze was whether suburban residents resisted incoming ex-public housing residents. This reflects a spatial dimension of the migration pattern that occurred across varying American cities and was reflected in the newspaper, think tank, and governmental publications that were analyzed in my project.
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