Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-2008
Journal Title
Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development
ISSN
1084-2268
Abstract
This essay summarizes and compares Alexander Polikoff's Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing, and the Black Ghetto and Mary Pattillo's Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City to convey the contributions and limitations of each book. Both works provide a rich sociolegal history of public housing reform in Chicago and illustrate the challenges Chicago has faced in implementing recent HOPE VI public housing reforms. I compare Polikoff's forty-year battle to desegregate public housing in Chicago with Pattillo's insightful observations of class dynamics between the new middle-class African-American power brokers of housing reform and public housing residents. Through this comparison, I seek to show that Polikoff's long-term prescriptions for public housing reform are based upon a conception of the inner city that may no longer be entirely accurate. This comparison also conveys the social complexity inherent in HOPE VI reform efforts, a complexity often overlooked in the prevailing policy and academic debates.
First Page
155
Last Page
175
Volume Number
17
Issue Number
2020-01-02
Publisher
American Bar Association
Recommended Citation
Lisa T. Alexander,
A Sociolegal History of Public Housing Reform in Chicago,
17
J. Affordable Hous. & Cmty. Dev. L.
155
(2008).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/773