Ep 37: Public Housing and Tenant Power in Atlanta with Akira Drake Rodriguez

11/02/22 • 64 min

1 Listener

In this episode we do a deep dive into the history of Atlanta’s public housing program, from its inception in 1934 to the eventual demolition and redevelopment of many sites in the 1990s and onward. But Professor Akira Drake Rodriguez’s focus isn’t the public housing developments themselves. Rather, it’s on the tenants — overwhelming Black, and disproportionately women-led — who called public housing communities home, organized and built political power within them, and used that power to make demands of the government. It’s a complex history without clear or consistent “good guys” and “bad guys,” and it complicates the narrative which argues that housing vouchers (or “Section 8”) are a complete substitute for the decline in public housing across the country. Whatever your connection to Atlanta or your knowledge of the US public housing program, there’s a lot to be learned from this case study on the politics of public housing in Atlanta.

Show notes:

Rodriguez, A. D. (2021). Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta's Public Housing. University of Georgia Press.
Pritchett, W. E. (2010). Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer. University of Chicago Press.
Parson, D. C. (2005). Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles. University of Minnesota Press.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (documentary).
Ingram, H., Schneider, A. L., & DeLeon, P. (2019). Social Construction and Policy Design. In Theories of the Policy Process (pp. 93-126). Routledge.
W. E. B. Du Bois: A Study of the Atlanta University Federal Housing Area, 1934.
Chaskin, R. J., & Joseph, M. L. (2015). Contested space: Design principles and regulatory regimes in mixed-income communities in Chicago. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 660(1), 136-154.
70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green (documentary).

Show notes:

Rodriguez, A. D. (2021). Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta's Public Housing. University of Georgia Press.
Pritchett, W. E. (2010). Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer. University of Chicago Press.
Parson, D. C. (2005). Making a Better World: Public Housing, the Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles. University of Minnesota Press.
The Pruitt-Igoe Myth (documentary).
Ingram, H., Schneider, A. L., & DeLeon, P. (2019). Social Construction and Policy Design. In Theories of the Policy Process (pp. 93-126). Routledge.
W. E. B. Du Bois: A Study of the Atlanta University Federal Housing Area, 1934.
Chaskin, R. J., & Joseph, M. L. (2015). Contested space: Design principles and regulatory regimes in mixed-income communities in Chicago. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 660(1), 136-154.
70 Acres in Chicago: Cabrini Green (documentary).

Previous Episode

Ep 36: Rent Control in India with Sahil Gandhi and Richard Green

Usually, cities with lots of vacant housing have slow rent growth (or low rents), while lower vacancy rates are associated with higher rents. But many Indian cities have an unusual, seemingly paradoxical problem: high vacancy rates and high rents. Why? According to research by Dr. Sahil Gandhi and Professor Richard Green, a major contributor is insecure property rights — specifically, very strict rent control regulations and an inadequate supply of judges to rule in tenant eviction cases. We discuss how policies that increase risk and reduce profits — beyond a certain point, anyway — can lead some landlords to keep their units vacant rather than rent them out, with negative consequences for the entire housing market. We also explore the differences between “first generation” and “second generation” rent controls, and the reasons many cities across the world have shifted from the former to the latter.

Show notes:

Gandhi, S., Green, R. K., & Patranabis, S. (2022). Insecure property rights and the housing market: Explaining India’s housing vacancy paradox. Journal of Urban Economics, 131, 103490.
Tandel, V., Patel, S., Gandhi, S., Pethe, A., & Agarwal, K. (2016). Decline of rental housing in India: The case of Mumbai. Environment and Urbanization, 28(1), 259-274.
Diamond, R., McQuade, T., & Qian, F. (2019). The effects of rent control expansion on tenants, landlords, and inequality: Evidence from San Francisco. American Economic Review, 109(9), 3365-94.
Phillips, S. (2020). Does the Los Angeles region have too many vacant homes? UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.
Arnott, R. (1995). Time for revisionism on rent control? Journal of economic perspectives, 9(1), 99-120.
Sims, D. P. (2007). Out of control: What can we learn from the end of Massachusetts rent control? Journal of Urban Economics, 61(1), 129-151.
Another conversation on video between Sahil Gandhi and Paavo Monkkonen on rent control in India (click the tab “India: Rent Control” on the left).

Next Episode

Ep 38: The Housing Supply-Migration-Income Relationship with Peter Ganong

Prior to 1980, per-capita income gaps between poor states and rich states were persistently shrinking, driven by the migration of lower-income, less skilled workers to higher-paying regions. Since then, this “regional income convergence” phenomenon has declined. What happened? As always, there’s a housing story to tell. Peter Ganong joins us to discuss his (and coauthor Daniel Shoag’s) research into the relationship between land use regulation, housing supply, household migration, and income. Their troubling finding: it no longer makes sense for many lower-income households to move to states with higher-paying jobs — after accounting for housing costs, some are actually worse off when they do so. This “skill sorting” of high-wage workers into expensive metro areas and low-wage workers into cheaper metros has worrying implications for accessing better opportunities, and much of it is driven by sharp restrictions on homebuilding in the highest-income states.

Show notes:

Ganong, P., & Shoag, D. (2017). Why has regional income convergence in the US declined? Journal of Urban Economics, 102, 76-90.
Hsieh, C. T., & Moretti, E. (2019). Housing constraints and spatial misallocation. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 11(2), 1-39.
Jackson, K. (2016). Do land use regulations stifle residential development? Evidence from California cities. Journal of Urban Economics, 91, 45-56.
Saiz, A. (2010). The geographic determinants of housing supply. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 125(3), 1253-1296.
Bazelon and Yglesias blog post on Secret Congress.

UCLA Housing Voice - Ep 37: Public Housing and Tenant Power in Atlanta with Akira Drake Rodriguez

Transcript

Shane Phillips 0:04
Hello, this is the UCLA Housing Voice podcast and I'm your host, Shane Phillips. Joining us this week is Professor Akira Drake Rodriguez from Penn to talk about her book 'Diverging Space for Deviance', which explores the political history of Atlanta's public housing program, from its inception in the 1930s to the eventual demolition and redevelopment of many of its sites in the 1990s. And later, I found that the conversations we have about the history of housing policie