Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine perceptions of institutional encroachment and community responses to it. Specifically, it focuses on residents’ perceived effects of hospital and university expansion and the role of place making on gentrification in core city neighborhoods. This study offers insights into the processes driving neighborhood displacement and the prospects for grassroots efforts to curb it.

Data were collected through focus groups with residents and other stakeholders in working class, minority neighborhoods which were identified as being in the early stages of gentrification. Nine focus groups were held across three neighborhoods experiencing institutional encroachment. The analysis was guided by standpoint theory, which focuses on amplifying the voices of groups traditionally disenfranchized from urban planning and policy processes.

The findings suggest that residents perceived institutional encroachment as relatively unabated and unresponsive to grassroots concerns. This led to heightened concerns about residential displacement and concomitant changes in the neighborhoods’ built and social environments. Experiences with encroachment also increased residents’ calls for greater grassroots control of development.

This analysis illuminates how gentrification and displacement results from both physical redevelopment activities of anchor institutions and their decisions related to place making. The conclusions highlight the importance of empowering disenfranchized groups in the place-making process to minimize negative externalities at the neighborhood level.

There is a dearth of basic analysis about how the demographics of residents living in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) subsidized properties relate to the quality of housing. This research vacuum is often filled by popular stereotypes. This study aims to address this gap by examining the relationship between the demographics of residents and inspection scores.

Two data sources are drawn from the analysis: the 2018 HUD Picture of Subsidized Households database and HUD’s 2018 REAC Public and Multi-Family Housing Inspection Scores. Linear and logistic regression analysis were conducted, and selected data were mapped using GIS software.

The analysis examines the demographics of site-based subsidized properties in relation to inspection scores. In 2018, HUD identified 31,225 traditional public housing and other site-based multi-family properties in its Picture of Subsidized Households database. Residents living in these properties are often stereotyped as a homogeneous group that is predominantly composed of single, minority women with children who are welfare dependent. Similarly, properties are often portrayed as dilapidated, high-rise projects in segregated urban communities. The results from the analysis do not support these stereotypes about HUD-subsidized multi-family properties. By contrast, the results indicate that a diverse group of households lives in HUD-subsidized multi-family properties.

There is a need for scholars, advocates and practitioners to more aggressively challenge the popular stereotypes about site-based subsidized housing. In particular, there is a need for enhanced public scholarship focused on the dissemination of evidence-based research.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how executive directors of nonprofit organizations perceive local government performance in affordable housing. It builds on a larger body of research concerning the affordable housing activities of government and community‐based nonprofit housing organizations at the local level.

This analysis is based on a national survey of neighborhood housing services (NHS) organizations funded by Neighborworks^® America. The survey included questions about local government performance in affordable housing and perceptions of factors influencing local government funding decisions. Survey data were supplemented with information gathered from the Neighborworks^® America website.

The findings of this paper indicate that NHS organizations are not completely satisfied with local government performance. Local government performance in affordable housing received lower grades than other levels of government, as well as intermediary organizations and private financial institutions. This dissatisfaction is expressed through nonprofit fields in which these organizations are embedded. These fields have witnessed declining governmental support for affordable housing and expanding influence from philanthropic organizations and the private sector.

This paper highlights the need for government to assume a broader and more activist role in affordable housing policy. In essence, government needs to assume a more activist stance and forge stronger partnerships with nonprofits in response to the growing influence of intermediary organizations and the private sector in nonprofit fields. This would temper some of the excesses brought on by the devolution and nonprofitization of affordable housing policy and neoliberal influences on public policy more generally.

This is a brief examination of this special issues contents with regard to the articles on social capital and community‐based organizations.

This paper seeks to examine executive directors' perceptions of the relationship between access to funding and an organization's programmatic and advocacy activities.

This study is based on data from a national survey of executive directors of non‐profit advocacy organizations in the USA. The organizations were selected because they served minority and disadvantaged groups, and were heavily reliant on public funding.

The findings indicate that several factors are associated with how organizations balance their programmatic and advocacy activities. They include dependence on public funding, constituencies served, and perception of funders. Despite evidence for institutional pressures to reduce advocacy activities, the results indicate that such activities are sustainable in organizations with a strong individual donor base. In essence, a stable source of grassroots resources can counter institutional pressures to reduce advocacy.

This study focuses on a specific subgroup of advocacy organizations. Although it offers insights into their perceptions, the findings do not necessarily reflect more general perceptions.

The findings enhance understanding of impediments to non‐profit advocacy that stem from trends in public funding and regulations related to non‐profit lobbying and advocacy activities. The findings also enhance understanding of the extent to which the influences of the emerging non‐profit industrial complex are offset by traditional grassroots support for non‐profit advocacy.

This paper adds to the body of research on non‐profit decision making in relation to the balance between programmatic and advocacy work. It adds to the understanding of how organizations interface with larger institutions in society and the constraints that institutional ties entail.

This article aims to examine the mechanisms used by municipalities to stimulate public participation and, in part, to argue that contrasts between the socio‐economic make‐up of central cities in the USA and Canada explain these divergent techniques.

The article is based on a survey of planning departments measuring the types of public participation strategies used by local governments.

The article's findings indicate that Canadian municipalities adopt a broader range of public participation techniques related to: voluntarism and public engagement, neighborhood and strategic planning, and e‐government. In contrast, the article's findings indicate that US municipalities are more likely to promote public participation through mechanisms such as annual community meetings and referendums on public issues.

The conclusion of the article offers recommendations for expanding the scope of public participation and developing strategies that maximize citizen input in community development activities in both countries.

The survey was conducted to identify the scope of public participation techniques used by local governments in the Niagara region. One limitation of this methodology is that it does not gauge the effectiveness of the participation techniques used by local governments or the intensity of public engagement. However, the results from this study provide future researchers with a mechanism for focusing future analysis.

The findings can assist in identifying new directions for enhancing public participation in the USA and Canada.

Methodological traditions are like any other social phenomena. They are made by people working together, criticizing one another, and borrowing from other traditions. They are living social things, not abstract categories in a single system.– Andrew Abbott (2004, p. 15)

The purpose of this paper is to explore what conversation analysis has to offer when analysing a series of life story interviews aiming to capture how reading and texts are used in a rural working-class man’s identity construction.

The conversation analysis methodology with its explicit focus on embodied social action, activity and conduct in interaction is integrated with a life story approach when analysing and describing the identity constructing processes that take place in life story interview settings.

Through a close and detailed analysis of the interaction between interviewer and interviewee, and by focusing and highlighting the phenomena and identities that are oriented to in the face-to-face interaction here and now (and in relation to there and then), descriptions of the complex and dynamic identity constructing processes that are set into play in the life story interview are possible.

It is argued that the approach has a lot to offer when approaching life story data, and thus is a method that can increase the transparency in life story interview research.

The paper explores the intersection of what is often seen as diametrically opposed forms of analysis: conversation analysis and narrative inquiry.