HOPE VI, Colonization, and the Production of Difference

Abstract

Between 1993 and 2010, the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) Program sought to transform public housing by demolishing large spatially concentrated developments and replacing them with mixed-income housing. Drawing on postcolonial geographical thought, this article interrogates HOPE VI as a colonial project. Through the displacement of public housing residents, the razing of the development in which they lived, and the rebuilding of mixed-income housing, including new public housing units, HOPE VI projects seek to revitalize neighborhoods by attracting higher-income homeowners to relocate in these areas. Proponents of HOPE VI and other mixed-income housing strategies contend that socioeconomic mixing will provide a range of benefits for low-income residents in these environments. Yet, there is a growing body of research suggesting that income mixing itself can be a problem for public housing residents because the neighborhood social relations operate to marginalize them. Using a case study conducted in a midsized southern city, we build on this prior work by examining the sociospatial narratives that neighbors surrounding the HOPE VI site use to identify themselves. The article focuses on how new homeowners, residing at VANDERBILT UNIV LIBRARY on November 29, 2012 uar.sagepub.com Downloaded from 2 Urban Affairs Review XX(X) in a self-contained development right across the street from a HOPE VI site, construct themselves as a community by situating public housing residents as their other. We conclude that these sociospatial distinctions are integral to the broader, state-led effort to colonize and transform this low-income neighborhood situated next to the downtown business district.

Is there diversity in the New Urbanism? Analyzing the demographic characteristics of New Urbanist neighborhoods in the United States

“…Some NU developments do attract a mix of racialized groups (Grant & Perrot, 2009;Kleit, 2005), although scholars remain skeptical about whether such arrangements will endure over time (Day, 2003) or foster 4 D. Trudeau and J. Kaplan interaction across different groups (Cabrera & Najarian, 2013;Clarke, 2005;Larsen, 2005). Such skepticism is especially acute among observers of HOPE VI projects who see these as places that host a great deal of income diversity, but have failed to generate positive interaction across class and racial divisions (Chaskin & Joseph, 2011Fraser et al, 2013;Khare, Joseph, & Chaskin, 2015;Kim, in press;Kleit, 2005). In sum, existing research suggests that NU fails to create diverse places.…”

“…the urban core (Fraser, Burns, Bazuin, & Oakley, 2013;Kenny & Zimmerman, 2004;Pyatok, 2000). In this paper, we take the position that such findings are far from conclusive, principally because they are often based on a limited sample that does not reflect variations in the movement.…”

U.S. Public–Housing Transformations and the Housing Publics Lost in Transition

“…Mixed‐income redevelopment initiatives hold the promise of social mixing to produce an environment that regulates low‐income and public‐housing residents, hailing them to enter a new moral community (Fraser et al. ; Kipfer and Petrunia ).…”

“…Fraser et al. () suggest:

This other place—inhabited by those who “have either refused the bonds of civility and self‐responsibility or aspire to them but have not been given the skills, capacities, and means” (Rose , p. 347)—draws on the persistent purchase of classed and raced cultural signifiers evoking images of the slum, hood, ghetto, or project. (p. 532)

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“…Redevelopment does not erase this sociospatial subjectivity because urban policy has already constructed public‐housing residents as potentially threatening, unless they willingly accept the bonds of society through their own initiative to secure the economic resources to transform themselves into normal citizens by entering the private‐housing market (Fraser et al. ). Public‐housing residents often endure the suspicion of their more affluent neighbors, as they have already been constructed as victims or perpetrators of the conditions in which they previously lived (Chaskin and Joseph , ; Chaskin et al.…”