Legacy of the Housing Act of 1949: The Past,Present, and Future of Federal Housing and Urban Policy

Abstract

This article summarizes a special issue of Housing Policy Debate, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Housing Act of 1949. The act is best remembered for its declaration that every American deserves a “decent home and a suitable living environment.” The articles in this collection offer varying perspectives on how this act helped shape the postwar metropolis. The authors—urban planners, historians, and public officials—each consider a different part of the legacy.

The first three articles deal primarily with the act's creation and social and political ramifications, while the next three look at how Titles I, II, and III have influenced the past 50 years of housing and urban policy. The record of the Housing Act of 1949 is mixed, and so are its lessons. There remains an ongoing struggle to find the right mix of housing support to reach the goals first expressed in this landmark legislation.     

From seaside to Southside: New urbanism's quest to save the inner city

Abstract

In this article, we use a random sample of urban community development corporations (CDCs) to determine whether distinct types exist and, if so, to estimate their prevalence in the industry. The typical urban CDC has a diversified portfolio of economic and social development activities, including community organizing, and is likely to have a housing development program, although not necessarily a large one because relatively few are high producers.

Large‐scale housing producers, defined in the study as having produced at least 500 units during the previous 10 years, comprise 18 percent of CDCs. A large organizational capacity, an affiliation with national intermediaries, the training of staff and the adoption of computers, the length of executive directors’ tenure, and the share of funding devoted to housing programs are the most important factors increasing the odds that a CDC will belong to the group of high producers.     

Public Service Motivation: A Test of the Job Attraction–Selection–Attrition Model

ABSTRACT

Public service motivation (PSM) research suggests that PSM influences employee sector choice, yet relatively little research examines how time moderates this relationship. In this research we examine public service motivation among private and public sector lawyers. Using survey data that measure sector of employment at multiple time periods, we investigate the stability of the relationship between individual reward orientations and sector employment choice over time. Our findings suggest that while PSM may not clearly predict the employment sector of a respondent's first job, it does increase the likelihood that a respondent's subsequent job is in the public sector.     

Outsourcing: Uncovering the Complexity of the Decision

ABSTRACT

Outsourcing is a phenomenon that, on the surface, is used to reduce costs and enable an organization to focus on its core competencies. In researching into outsourcing and whether this assumption holds true, this article focuses on public health organizations where outsourcing has been applied to both clinical and non-clinical services. In the cases observed, public sector managers assumed contracting would lower production costs for peripheral services whose outcomes could be easily measured and monitored. Clinical services were not usually outsourced because these core services were more difficult to measure. In implementing contracts for non-core services, decision makers' political and ideological objectives overshadowed management imperatives that are necessary for effective contract design and implementation, leading to poor service outcomes and little cost savings. Choosing the “right” services to contract does guarantee good outcomes such as lower costs and improved labor flexibility, but it is necessary to understand that optimum outcomes are only achievable if the service is clearly non-core, has measurable outcomes, and has low transaction frequency. It is also clear that outsourcing will not remove management problems; it simply adds another layer of complexity on top of managing staff who still provide the service.     

Does the Likely Demographics of Affordable Housing Justify NIMBYism?

ABSTRACT

NIMBYism (not in my backyard) decreases the amount of affordable housing construction. A possible motivator for this is an existing homeowner’s fear that proximity to affordable housing depresses property value. Using a hedonic regression analysis of the sales prices of homes in Sacramento County, California, this study finds that increases in the demographic characteristics in a census tract that are likely to increase if more affordable housing is built there lower the sales price of a home. This finding holds even after controlling for the percentages of racial/ethnic groups more likely to face discrimination. Policymakers should recognize this economic element of NIMBYism as they consider instruments to increase the amount of affordable housing built. We conclude with a suggestion for a knowingly controversial policy mechanism based upon cap and trade with the hope it will spur further debate on this issue.     

Terrorism,anti-terrorism and the normative boundaries of the US polity: The spatiality of politics after 11 September 2001

Both terrorism and governmental anti-terrorist actions affect spatial structures and their boundaries, such as the state and the distinction between public and private spaces. Those spatial structures also articulate the normative dimensions of human life, which include the ethical principles and constitutional rights that orient behaviour and thought. By affecting the spaces, places and scales of life, (anti-)terrorism potentially can generate a new normativity. A new normativity would be manifested in changes to spatial structures and thereby would indicate that the content of political rights like personal freedom had been changed in practice. This paper addresses the possible emergence of a new normativity via an examination of how spatial structures are affected—specifically, their permeability and plasticity—by terrorist and anti-terrorist activities within a US context.     

Intersecting Religioscapes and Antagonistic Tolerance: Trajectories of Competition and Sharing of Religious Spaces in the Balkans

Abstract

This article analyses patterns of competition between religious groups in urban settings, and empirical indicators of the dominance of one religious community over another, utilising the theoretical model of ‘Antagonistic Tolerance’, or competitive sharing of space. The key analytical concept used is ‘religioscapes’: the distribution in spaces through time of the physical manifestations of specific religious traditions and of the populations that build them. These indicators include perceptibility (for example, height, mass, colour, audibility) and centrality in a settlement. The model is explained with reference to patterns of change of religioscapes in: Sarajevo, Bosnia; Sofia, Bulgaria; Belgrade, Serbia; and other examples from the post-Ottoman world. While the focus of the paper is mainly on cities, an analysis of specific sites in contemporary Cyprus reminds us that urban conflicts are inevitably tied to those in wider social spheres.     

The publication of Australian Press Council Adjudication 1468: a failure to meet ‘due prominence’ requirements

The Australian Press Council, the print media self‐regulation body in Australia that receives and adjudicates complaints by the public, states that upheld adjudications are to be published with ‘due prominence’. The Council defines ‘due prominence’ as publishing the adjudication such that it is ‘likely to be read by those who saw the offending material’. In 2010 the Council upheld a complaint about misleading material that occurred on the front page of a newspaper. The complaint included that the misleading front page material triggered a large number of insulting letters about the person in that story which the newspaper published the following day. The newspaper published the upheld adjudication (no. 1468) on the letters page even though the primary offending material occurred on the front page. Rather than seek re‐publication in a more prominent location, the Australian Press Council accepted the newspaper's placement as satisfying their ‘due prominence’ requirement. Given the apparent inconsistency between publication of the adjudication on the letters page and the ‘likely to be read by’ definition of due prominence, we provided 100 adult newspaper readers with brief details of the upheld complaint and the definition of due prominence and asked where in the paper the adjudication should be published. Contrary to the Council's acceptance of the location of the newspaper's publication of the adjudication, the vast majority of newspaper readers (88%) responded with the front page (62%) or the first three pages (26%). This discrepancy is discussed in the context of the efficacy of self‐regulation and the ethical standards of bodies charged with ethical governance. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Embedded regulation:” The migration of objects,scripts, and governance

This paper asks why an officially unregulated market in pharmaceuticals in a least developed country, Djibouti, behaves as if it were strictly regulated, with limited access to a small number of high‐cost drugs. We use Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) to show that the explanation is more complex than critics of the international pharmaceutical industry have supposed. Regulation and property rights generated in developed countries have become embedded in the drugs and “black boxed” to the point of invisibility. This has allowed them to travel to Djibouti with the drugs, while maintaining their effects in action. This case study develops our understanding of the way in which materials that are not designated as regulatory agents may still have regulatory impacts through their ability to enrol complex networks of actors, rules, values, and practices. Finally, it argues against the notion of law as a fixed and distinctive space for action, as opposed to the ANT vision of a fluid and contingent order, where law is part of a socio‐technico‐legal alliance that happens to achieve certain effects.