The HOPE VI Program: What about the residents?

Abstract

During the 1990s, the federal government dramatically changed its policy on housing the poor. Under the HOPE VI (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) Program, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development intended to address the concentration of troubled low‐income households in public housing by moving away from its reliance on project‐based assistance and promoting instead the construction of mixed‐income housing and the use of housing subsidies.

This article presents important evidence from two systematic, multicity studies on how the original residents of HOPE VI developments have been affected by this radical new approach to public housing. While many residents have clearly benefited, the findings raise critical questions about whether the transformation of public housing will achieve its potential as a powerful force for improving the lives of low‐income families.     

Collection of Delinquent Fines: An Adaptive Randomized Trial to Assess the Effectiveness of Alternative Text Messages

The collection of delinquent fines is a vast and ongoing public administration challenge. In the United Kingdom, unpaid fines amount to more than 500 million pounds. Managing noncompliant accounts and dispatching bailiffs to collect fines in person is costly. This paper reports the results of a large randomized controlled trial, led by the UK Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team, which was designed to test the effectiveness of mobile phone text messaging as an alternative method of inducing people to pay their outstanding fines. An adaptive trial design was used, first to test the effectiveness of text messaging against no treatment and then to test the relative effectiveness of alternative messages. Text messages, which are relatively inexpensive, are found to significantly increase average payment of delinquent fines. We found text messages to be especially effective when they address the recipient by name.     

A Post-Parsimonious Proposition

This article is at once a critique, a challenge, and a risk, first in the form of instructive parody, moving on to engage more seriously with the critique of “parsimonious” social science embedded within it, and finally suggesting ways to embrace and advance a legacy of new political science. Employing satire, the article begins by outlining the various methods within the field of mainstream political science currently being used to tackle the (impossible) empirical project of exploring an “ideal world.” Next, although protocol cautions emerging political scientists to tread lightly with critiques of entrenched methods, established scholarship, and renowned journals, it argues that substantive analyses of this less than “ideal world” are still urgently interwoven with provocative interrogation of this less than ideal discipline. Beyond critique however, the goal of this commentary is both to affirm the risk-taking trajectory of “new” political science that has beckoned many into the field and to insist upon the continuation of this forward move(ment): opening up space for, and claiming as political responsibility, a stake in methodological creativity and a more robust set of political associations.     

HUNTER‐GATHERER COLLABORATIVE PRACTICE

This article describes the development of a practice group based on a hunter‐gatherer model, with the mission of providing high quality collaborative divorce services, with an emphasis on protecting children and divorcing partners, and expanding access to middle‐ and lower‐income families. The practice group professional disciplines include law, mental health divorce coaching, co‐parent coaching, financial analysis, and case administration. These professionals have collectively associated their individual practices to address challenges facing their collaborative practices. With common purpose, the practice group builds skills, generates client base, nurtures trust, and lays a common knowledge base. Collaborative divorce teams formed from its members serve divorcing families with efficient, cost‐conscious, interest‐based negotiation processes that protect children and help parties productively move on with their lives.     

Genetic data of 4 X-chromosomal short tandem repeats in a North of Portugal population

POPULATION: One hundred unrelated females and 100 unrelated males, autochthonous, healthy, from the North of Portugal.     

EXCLUSIONARY PRICING AND CONSUMERS HARM: THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION'S PRACTICE IN THE DSL MARKET

The assessment of exclusionary abuses by dominant firms is byno means an easy task. This is particularly true for pricingabuses, as there is no clear-cut way of distinguishing a pricecut that is abusive from one that instead is pro-competitive.We argue that there are several shortcomings in the way theEuropean Commission as assessed exclusionary pricing abusesin two important decisions concerning Internet access servicemarkets: Deutsche Telekom AG and Wanadoo Interactive. Firstof all, in computing downstream costs to apply the price squeezetest the incumbent's economies of scale and unavoidable costsshould be factored in, as the test is only meant to establishwhether an as-efficient competitor has been unlawfully foreclosed.Secondly, since the price squeeze test provides only for a necessarycondition for predation to occur, it is also necessary to provethat the recoupment of initial losses is a plausible scenarioso that the conduct under examination may indeed turn out tobe harmful to consumers. This is all but a trivial task, asthere are some sources of endogeneity that may cause a radicalchange in the underlying market structure. Particularly, inmarkets at early stage of development, entry barriers that mayfacilitate the recoupment of initial losses ex-ante may causea change such that market structure no longer supports recoupmentex-post.     

The mediational role of values in linking personality traits to civic engagement in Italian youth

In recent decades, given new forms of political participation, the involvement of young people in the civic domain begins to be a focus of many studies. The present study examined the role of personality traits and personal values in the prediction of civic engagement (CE) in Italian youth ranging in age from 19 to 29 years old involved in an ongoing longitudinal study. The multidimensionality of a scale tapping CE has been demonstrated with the examination of confirmatory factor analysis. Structural equation modeling corroborated a mediational model in which benevolence fully mediated the relationship of the traits of agreeableness and openness with civic associationism, whereas power fully mediated the relationship of the traits of agreeableness and openness with political associationism. In this mediational model men reported higher levels of power than women, whereas women reported higher levels of agreeableness and openness traits. Since basic personal traits have been identified as the root of any behavioral tendency and values have been recognized as the more flexible and changeable variables, future interventions aimed to foster CE in youth could be designed considering the strength relationship between the examined dimensions in the present study.     

Bayesian adaptive approach to estimating sample sizes for seizures of illicit drugs

A considerable amount of discussion can be found in the forensics literature about the issue of using statistical sampling to obtain for chemical analyses an appropriate subset of units from a police seizure suspected to contain illicit material. Use of the Bayesian paradigm has been suggested as the most suitable statistical approach to solving the question of how large a sample needs to be to ensure legally and practically acceptable purposes. Here, we introduce a hypergeometric sampling model combined with a specific prior distribution for the homogeneity of the seizure, where a parameter for the analyst's expectation of homogeneity (α) is included. Our results show how an adaptive approach to sampling can minimize the practical efforts needed in the laboratory analyses, as the model allows the scientist to decide sequentially how to proceed, while maintaining a sufficiently high confidence in the conclusions.     

Disrobing associated with epileptic seizures and forensic implications

Little is known about the clinical aspects and medico-legal consequences of disrobing in the context of epileptic seizures. Seizure-related disrobing may occur either as an ictal automatism or during the postictal period. Some patients may experience a seizure while already in the unclothed state, engage in ictal wandering, and thereby appear in public in the nude. Two cases involving disrobing associated with seizures captured via video-monitored electroencephalography are offered. An additional case reveals the legal consequences endured by one patient who experienced a nocturnal seizure and began wandering in an unclothed state. Collectively, these cases illustrate the medical reality of seizure-related disrobing and the related adverse effects on patients' quality of life. Disrobing associated with epileptic seizures carries the potential for serious legal consequences if not properly identified as an ictal phenomenon.