Suchergebnisse

In considering the development and course of the American welfare state, there are some places which are better starting points than others. One such place is the State Street corridor, the series of high-rise Chicago Housing Authority public-housing projects which loom over Lake Michigan. Most Chicagoans, like their counterparts in other cities, have become inured to conditions there: a murder rate far in excess of that of the city as a whole, a society of unemployed single mothers, deferred maintenance that makes stairwells, plazas, and elevators places of danger. Author Alex Kotlowitz decribes the situation of a mother of two boys in Chicago's Henry Horner Homes: "She lived in daily fear that something might happen to her young ones.… Already that year, 57 children had been killed in the city, five in the Horner area, including two, aged eight and six, who died from smoke inhalation when firefighters had to climb the 14 stories to their apartment. Both of the building's elevators were broken."

The impact of state & federal policy on local housing regulations is explored. It is argued that federal housing subsidies have provided local communities with an incentive to maintain exclusionary rules. While subsidized housing may be an effective way to increase incomes & improve the accommodations of the poor, federal subsidies may unintentionally offer communities an incentive to overregulate housing standards to keep out government projects. The influence of profit in subsidizing less expensive multifamily housing & the ideological premise underlying public housing developments are discussed. Given concerns over fire safety, public health, & overcrowding, it is concluded that the inner-city poor will continue to require housing subsidies. S. Millett

A review essay on books by: Robert A. Slayton, New Homeless and Old: Community and the Skid Row Hotel (Philadelphia: Temple U Press, 1989); James D. Wright, Address Unknown: The Homeless in America (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1989); & William Tucker, The Excluded Americans: Homelessness and Housing Policies (Washington, DC: Regency Gateway & the Cato Instit, 1990 [see listings in IRPS No. 61]). These works explore the US homelessness problem from the perspective of its housing market origins, rather than any personal pathologies or maladies of the homeless themselves. It is contended that, although it has been widely asserted that homelessness is a result of inadequate government intervention for the poor in the private housing market, it may well be that inappropriate intervention is involved. Critiqued are the assumptions & effects of building & zoning codes, & the historical role of housing reform advocates in minimizing the variety of housing forms (particularly the single-room occupancy hotel) that evolved during a less regulated era (late nineteenth & early twentieth centuries) to serve the poor. Modified AA