Session: Examining Individual and Community Impacts of Federal, State, and City-Level Housing and Community Development Policies: Lessons Learned and Emerging Approaches (Society for Social Work and Research 27th Annual Conference - Social Work Science and Complex Problems: Battling Inequities + Building Solutions)

Community development and housing-related policies require more than just attention to "bricks and sticks." Housing is a key context for human development and has far-reaching social implications, making it ripe for attention and innovation from disciplines like social work. Housing policies that aim to make housing affordable, stable, and safe are an important social safety net and can be a pathway to broader community improvements. Federal housing policies like the HOPE VI and Choice Neighborhoods Initiative policies focus on income mixing as a strategy for desegregation, deconcentration of poverty, and community improvement. They are presented as a "win-win" because they leverage private real estate developers' interests in capitalizing on a renewed interest in city living and simultaneously allow for the provision of affordable, high quality housing to former public housing residents. However, the policies have been limited by a lack of true integration between public housing residents and new market-rate neighbors and frequent displacement of poor residents who are then unable to benefit from community-level improvements. One key challenge for housing and redevelopment policies is to improve conditions like blight, crime, and disinvestment without displacing current residents. There is a need for creative approaches to housing and community development that can improve neighborhood challenges without reaching a tipping point at which existing community residents are at risk for displacement. Khare (2015) describes how current housing and community redevelopment approaches should be revisited with attention to "putting people back into place-based public policies"; a role that social workers are well-suited to lead. Creating housing policy that provides for both individual social welfare and neighborhood development will take solutions that are attentive to equity, redressing racist housing and neighborhood renewal policies of the past. This symposium includes studies related to two federal efforts to do so (and associated successes and challenges) as well as city and state-level efforts that take a more critical approach to ensuring safe and stable housing and communities.

This symposium includes 5 papers that reveal the social work implications of city, state, and federal housing and community development policies. The first examines the federal HOPE VI program and its longitudinal effects on redeveloped neighborhoods. The second looks at housing relocation, neighborhood change, and family well-being outcomes of a Memphis, Tennessee Choice Neighborhoods Initiative site. The third reports on a Portland, Oregon-based housing policy that builds new affordable rental housing with placement priority for families with intergenerational ties to the area. The fourth analyzes federal and state eviction moratoria, looking at the interplay between federal and state policies and their impact on housing stability. The fifth uses an analytical framework centered on racial capitalism to examine the tensions and tradeoffs of transforming public housing in the context of hypergentrification in city-led, multi-site initiatives in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco.

The discussant will engage the audience and presenters in a discussion of the key ingredients for success identified in each presentation and takeaways for housing and community development policy and social work research and practice.