Urban Welfare Regimes, Organizational Cultures, and Client-Staff Tie Activation: A Comparison of Transitional Housing Programs in Los Angeles and Tokyo

Abstract

With state safety nets failing to keep up with expanding urban poverty, ties to community organizations can provide crucial resources. But what explains variation in such tie activation at urban, organizational, and individual levels? I advance a multilevel framework of organizational client-staff tie activation that centralizes the role of trust and specifies effects of multiple social contexts. I apply the framework to an exploratory comparison of transitional housing programs in Los Angeles and Tokyo, including analysis of qualitative data collected among clients, staff, and administrators. I argue that urban welfare regimes and organizational cultures are key contexts shaping how macro-level forces like neoliberalism intersect with micro-level processes of social capital building in differentiated ways. Urban scholars can inform theory and practice by further analyzing how organizational-level trust building practices of holism and flexibility can be affected by urban-level regulations on scope of aid and inter-organizational ties.

Public Service Values and Disparate Performance: The Case of Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program

“…This stage attempts to identify: 1. Public administrators' discursive devices towards citizens in terms of values and attitudes, specially their capitalization of technical expertise as source of discretion (Foucault, 1980), the rationales behind their attitudes (Alexander & Stivers, 2010;Alkadry & Blessett, 2010;Marr, 2016) and their utilized set of values, 2. The perceived scope of public administrators' actions during the implementation process, including those possible constrictions posed by structural factors (Marr, 2016: 225), and, 3.…”

“…4 below). First, I address public administrators' discursive devices towards citizens in terms of values and attitudes, especially their capitalization of technical expertise as a source of discretion (Foucault, 1980), the rationale behind their attitudes (Alexander & Stivers, 2010;Alkadry & Blessett, 2010;Marr, 2016),…”

“…I pay special attention to neutrality and their capitalization of their technical expertise as a source of discretion (Foucault, 1980). I also examine the rationale behind their attitudes (Alexander & Stivers, 2010;Alkadry & Blessett, 2010;Marr, 2016), and the particular set of public service values utilized by Section 8 workers while implementing the Program. Second, I study public administrators' perceived scope of their actions during the implementation process.…”

“…Finally, I include administrators' perception on the constrictions posed by hardly controllable structural factors that affect the program (Marr, 2016: 225). Hereafter, the questionnaire explores Section 8 workers' neutrality and uses of expertise as a source of discretion (Foucault, 1980), and questions the rationale behind public administrators' attitudes towards citizens (Alexander & Stivers, 2010;Alkadry & Blessett, 2010;Marr, 2016).…”

“…I expected to find matches between public administrators' individual responses to in-depth interviews about public service values and attitudes used by them when addressing citizens, and the results of the general quantitative analysis. I also expected to find that a more democratic set of values and 'holistic' attitudes (Marr, 2016) towards recipients would coincide with PHAs and Section 8 HCV program's higher levels of performance.…”