published_or_final_version / Urban Design / Master / Master of Urban Design

published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning; and, (M. Arch. in Advanced Studies)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1977. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 156-158). / by Deborah Walne Poodry. / M.Arch.in Advanced Studies / M.C.P.

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 353-427) / xii, 427 leaves : ill. (some col.) ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / "The Parks" and its constituent labour force was established by the state to underpin the profitability of industrial capital. It is now to be dismantled, its residents dispersed in order to recreate the conditions for renewed profitability. Focusses on a study of "The Parks" community to give a better understanding under Australian conditions of: the special, socially constituted nature of place; the interplay of the global-local and the impacts of economic restructuring; the inseparability of labour and housing markets; and, how the agency of private markets and the state interpenetrate each other. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Adelaide University, Dept. of Geographical and Environmental Studies, 2001

published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Master / Master of Social Sciences

This dissertation offers a study of everyday relations between residents and the state on a post-industrial council estate in England. Drawing upon historical and ethnographic data, it analyses how, often under conditions of sustained exclusion, residents rely upon the state in their daily struggles for security and survival. My central ethnographic finding is that residents personalise the state alongside informal networks of support and care into a local sociality of reciprocity. This finding can be broken into three interconnected points. First, I argue that the reciprocal contract between citizens and the state emerged in the post-war years when the residents on the newly built estates negotiated their dependence upon the state by integrating it into their on-going social relations. A climate of relative material affluence, selective housing policies, and a paternalistic regime of housing management all created conditions which were conducive for this temporary union between residents and the state. Second, however, I argue that with the decline of industry and shifts towards neoliberal policies, residents increasingly struggle to hold the state accountable to its reciprocal obligations towards local people. This becomes manifest today both in the material neglect of council estates as well as in state officials' reluctance to become implicated in social relations with and between residents. Third, I argue that this failure on the part of the state to attend to residents' demands often has onerous effects on people's lives. It not only exacerbates residents' exposure to insecurity and threat, but is also experienced as a moral affront which generates larger narratives of abandonment and betrayal. Theoretically, this dissertation critically discusses and challenges contrasting portrayals of the state, and of state-citizen relations, in two bodies of literature. On the one hand, in much of the sociological and anthropological literature on working class communities, authors have adopted a community-centred approach which has depicted working class communities as self-contained entities against which the state emerges as a distant or hostile entity. I argue that such a portrayal is premised upon a romanticised view of working class communities which neglects the intimate presence of the state in everyday life. On the other hand, the theoretical literature on the British state has adopted a state-centred perspective which has seen the state as a renewed source of order and authority in disintegrating communities today. My suggestion is that this portrayal rests upon a pathologising view of social decline which fails to account for the persistence of informal social relations and the challenges that these pose to the state's authority from below. Finally, moving beyond the community-centred and state-centred perspectives, I argue for the need to adopt a middle ground which combines an understanding of the nature and workings of informal relations with an acknowledgement of the ubiquity of the state. Such an approach allows us to recognise that, far from being a hostile entity or, alternatively, an uncontested source of order, the state occupies shifting positions within an overarching sociality of reciprocity and its associated demands for alliances and divisions. I refer to such an approach as the personalisation of the state.

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) randomized housing experiment was designed to evaluate the causal effects of random voucher assignment on the economic outcomes of adults and the educational outcomes of their children. MTO recruited predominantly non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic families living in public housing in neighborhoods with over 40% poverty and, in most cases, racial/ethnic minority concentration of 80% or more. Post hoc, MTO also examined the effect of voucher receipt on the long-term mental health outcomes among adolescents and, generally, found harmful effects among boys, but protective effects among girls. On average, voucher receipt led to residing in more affluent, and slightly less racially and ethnically segregated neighborhoods. These neighborhood differences could have led to greater exposure to perceived racial/ethnic and class discrimination among non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic adolescents from high-poverty neighborhoods, which, in turn, may have affected their mental health, with a stronger harmful effect among boys than girls. A prior qualitative study found that compared to no voucher, boys whose families moved with a voucher reported more instances of racial and class discrimination in the new neighborhoods. However, girls whose families moved with a voucher did not report more instances of discrimination than girls whose families did not receive a voucher. In addition, Black and Hispanic boys have been shown to be more sensitive to differences in affluence between themselves and their neighbors than girls. For example, low-income boys, but not girls, living alongside more affluent neighbors exhibited more antisocial behavior compared to their peers who lived alongside low-income neighbors. Examining whether aspects of neighborhood poverty and racial/ethnic composition, which may be associated with class and racial/ethnic discrimination, are mechanisms behind the unintended consequences of Section 8 housing voucher receipt may inform more nuanced housing policy decisions. Identifying the pathways for the unintended harmful effects on the mental health of boys may help policymakers distribute housing subsidies in a way that is beneficial to all family members. To examine the potential pathway for the surprising findings in the MTO, I completed three specific aims in this dissertation: a systematic literature review and two empirical aims. First, I conducted a systematic literature review to examine the evidence that sex moderates the established association between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and mental health outcomes in Black and Hispanic preadolescents to young adults. Second, I estimated the effect of Section 8 voucher receipt on perceived individual-level racial/ethnic discrimination, stratifying analyses by the selected effect modifiers (e.g., voucher type, sex, and/or city). Third, I estimated the indirect effects of voucher receipt on the risk of long-term mental health outcomes among adolescents through neighborhood affluence and racial/ethnic composition, stratifying by sex. The results of the systematic literature review suggest that, among pre-adolescents to young adults, there was no strong evidence to support the moderating effect of sex on the association between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and depressive symptoms or behavioral problems. However, the review found support for the moderating role of sex on the association between perceived discrimination and the outcomes of anxiety and PTSD. In the first empirical study, I found that Low Poverty Voucher (LPV) receipt reduced the risk of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination by police among boys only. In Los Angeles, receipt of LPV and, separately, Traditional Voucher (TRV) receipt reduced the risk of perceived school and neighborhood discrimination, respectively. In contrast, in Chicago, TRV receipt increased the risk of perceived discrimination at a store or at a restaurant. Voucher receipt did not have an estimated effect on the risk of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination in Boston or New York. In the second empirical study, among boys, part of the estimated harmful effect of voucher receipt (LPV and TRV combined) on the risk of externalizing disorders was mitigated by a bundle of mediators, which included residing in neighborhoods with less than 20% poverty, more college graduates, and slightly less racial/ethnic segregation over the duration of follow-up. However, the same bundle of mediators explained part of the harmful effect of voucher receipt on the risk of mood disorders among boys. Among girls, part of the protective effect of voucher receipt on externalizing disorders and mood disorders operated through this bundle of mediators. I utilized causal inference methods (i.e., calculated average treatment effect) to estimate the effect of Section 8 housing vouchers on perceived racial/ethnic discrimination in Chapter 3, as well as their indirect effect, through neighborhood affluence and racial/ethnic composition, on long-term adolescent mental health outcomes in Chapter 4. Overall, the findings of this dissertation suggest that there is heterogeneity in the effect of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and Section 8 voucher receipt on adolescent mental health outcomes. Furthermore, such effects vary depending on the mental health outcome. For example, among boys, the harmful effect of voucher receipt partially operated through the bundle of mediators on mood disorders, but the same mediators had a protective effect on externalizing disorders. Additional research is needed into the causes of these heterogeneous indirect effects on mental health outcomes among boys. Future housing interventions should consider utilizing this information to avoid harming the subgroups they intend to aid.