In this book, Sue Popkin tells the story of how an ambitious—and risky—social experiment affected the lives of the people it was ultimately intended to benefit: the residents who had suffered through the worst days of crime, decay, and rampant mismanagement of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), and now had to face losing the only home many of them had known. The stories Popkin tells in this book offer important lessons not only for Chicago, but for the many other American cities still grappling with the legacy of racial segregation and failed federal housing policies, making this book a vital resource for city planners and managers, urban development professionals, and anti-poverty activists.
For the past two decades the United States has been transforming distressed public housing communities, with three ambitious goals: replace distressed developments with healthy mixed-income communities; help residents relocate to affordable housing, often in the private market; and empower former public housing families toward economic self-sufficiency. The transformation has focused on deconcentrating poverty, but not on the underlying role of racial segregation in creating these distressed communities. In Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation, scholars and public housing officials assess whether--and how--public housing policies can simultaneously address the problems of poverty and race.
Describes what it is like to live in some of the worst neighborhoods in the United States and discusses what government officials can do to improve the safety and quality of public housing developments.
Moving to Opportunity provides a unique account of one of the largest housing experiments in history and its effects on lives of the children and families who participated. As the authors make clear, MTO is a uniquely American experiment, and this book brings home its lessons for advocates, scholars, students, journalists, and all who share a deep concern for opportunity and inequality in a changing nation.
Recent research on inequality and poverty has shown that those born into low-income families, especially African Americans, still have difficulty entering the middle class, in part because of the disadvantages they experience living in more dangerous neighborhoods, going to inferior public schools, and persistent racial inequality. Coming of Age in the Other America shows that despite overwhelming odds, some disadvantaged urban youth do achieve upward mobility. Drawing from ten years of fieldwork with parents and children who resided in Baltimore public housing, sociologists Stefanie DeLuca, Susan Clampet-Lundquist, and Kathryn Edin highlight the remarkable resiliency of some of the youth who hailed from the nation’s poorest neighborhoods and show how the right public policies might help break the cycle of disadvantage. Coming of Age in the Other America illuminates the profound effects of neighborhoods on impoverished families. The authors conducted in-depth interviews and fieldwork with 150 young adults, and found that those who had been able to move to better neighborhoods—either as part of the Moving to Opportunity program or by other means—achieved much higher rates of high school completion and college enrollment than their parents. About half the youth surveyed reported being motivated by an “identity project”—or a strong passion such as music, art, or a dream job—to finish school and build a career. Yet the authors also found troubling evidence that some of the most promising young adults often fell short of their goals and remained mired in poverty. Factors such as neighborhood violence and family trauma put these youth on expedited paths to adulthood, forcing them to shorten or end their schooling and find jobs much earlier than their middle-class counterparts. Weak labor markets and subpar postsecondary educational institutions, including exploitative for-profit trade schools and under-funded community colleges, saddle some young adults with debt and trap them in low-wage jobs. A third of the youth surveyed—particularly those who had not developed identity projects—were neither employed nor in school. To address these barriers to success, the authors recommend initiatives that help transform poor neighborhoods and provide institutional support for the identity projects that motivate youth to stay in school. They propose increased regulation of for-profit schools and increased college resources for low-income high school students. Coming of Age in the Other America presents a sensitive, nuanced account of how a generation of ambitious but underprivileged young Baltimoreans has struggled to succeed. It both challenges long-held myths about inner-city youth and shows how the process of “social reproduction”—where children end up stuck in the same place as their parents—is far from inevitable.
Prevention is the ultimate approach to reducing the burden of all kinds of disease, and the greatest potential for success lies in early life. What happens during early critical periods of life can determine our longevity and our risk of disease decades later. In other words: how well we start life will determine how well we finish it. Dr. Susan Prescott, a pediatrician internationally recognised for her work in disease prevention through healthier lifestyles, takes us on a journey of health, beginning from the first moments of life, revealing how adverse conditions during the important stages of our development can have a far more profound effect on our body structures, functions and even our developing behaviours. She draws on the latest research to explain how early life conditions determine our biological reserve, our capacity to deal with life's challenges, and how many of the consequences may not appear until much later in life. Covering a broad range of topics including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, allergy, arthritis and mental health, she shows how improving conditions in early life is critical for long-term health and longevity, and in prevention of adverse conditions"--Page 4 of cover.
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