Welfare Reform and Housing Assistance: A National Policy Debate

1978 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Khadduri ◽  
Katharine Lyall ◽  
Raymond Struyk
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Housing Assistance

The impacts of welfare reform on recipients of housing assistance

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 433-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wang S. Lee ◽  
Erik Beecroft ◽  
Mark Shroder
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Housing Assistance

Working for social justice: community, activism and academia

Housing Shock ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 87-106
Author(s):  
Rory Hearne
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Rental Housing ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Housing System ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Human Right ◽  
The Right

This chapter explores the author’s housing journey, from living in private rental housing, to working with disadvantaged communities on housing and human rights, campaigning on homelessness and the right to housing, to being a publically engaged academic researching and engaging in the national policy debate on housing. It details the everyday impact of austerity on disadvantaged social housing communities and their response through a successful ‘Rights-in-action’ human right to housing campaign. It also details participatory action research with homeless families, the Participatory Action Human Rights and Capability Approach. In then discusses the role of academics, policy makers and researchers in social change, empowerment and participation in relation to social justice and housing issues. It interrogates the concept of knowledge production – who’s interest does it serve? Drawing on Freire and Gramsci the Chapter outlines five areas, for the academic researcher (and this can be applied to policy analysts and researchers, NGOs, human rights organisations, trade unions and community activists) to contribute to achieving an egalitarian, socially and environmentally just, and rights-based housing system.

scholarly journals Diversifying the Donor Pool: Did Seattle's Democracy Vouchers Program Reshape Participation in Municipal Campaign Finance?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J McCabe ◽  
Jennifer A. Heerwig
Keyword(s):  
Campaign Finance ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Public Financing ◽  
Financing System ◽  
Donor Pool ◽  
Marginalized Communities ◽  
Voucher Program ◽  
Municipal Election

In this paper, we evaluate whether an innovative new campaign finance program in Seattle, Washington shifted the composition of campaign donors in local elections. In 2015, voters in Seattle approved the creation of the Democracy Voucher program with the intent of broadening representation in the campaign finance system and expanding participation from marginalized communities. Every registered voter in Seattle was provided with four, twenty-five-dollar vouchers that they could, in turn, assign to the local candidate(s) of their choice. Through an analysis of the inaugural implementation of the program in 2017, we investigate whether this innovative public financing system increased participation, broadened involvement from underrepresented groups and led to a donor pool that was more representative of the electorate. Compared to cash donors in the municipal election, we report that voucher users are less likely to be high-income and more likely to come from poor neighborhoods. While older residents are over-represented among voucher users, there is little difference in the racial composition of cash donors and voucher users. Our analysis confirms that the Democracy Voucher program successfully moved the donor pool in a more egalitarian direction, although it remains demographically unrepresentative of the electorate. The lessons from Seattle’s inaugural implementation offer key insights for other municipalities considering public financing policies, and these lessons have the potential to reshape the national policy debate about the influence of political money.

Labor and Housing Markets as Public Spaces: ‘Personal Responsibility’ and the Contradictions of Welfare-Reform Policies

2003 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 779-798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Trudeau ◽  
Meghan Cope
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Housing Markets ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Housing Assistance ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Essential Components ◽  
The Individual

Recent US welfare-form initiatives affecting employment and housing assistance have promoted more flexible applications of assistance as well as devolving the responsibility of care for the poor from federal levels to the individual. Implicit in these policy changes is the assumption that individuals enter labor and housing markets where open access is the norm and a ‘level playing field’ exists. In this paper, we use the analogy of seeing labor and housing markets as public spaces to analyze how the ideals of democratic capitalism in labor and housing markets exist normatively, but are always violated in practice. We argue that the influence of neoliberalism, and the devolution of welfare responsibility to the individual in particular, have led to policy changes that neglect issues of unequal access connected to hierarchies of race and gender and their spatial manifestations. Welfare reform in the specific areas of employment and housing assistance has promoted the primacy of private markets as essential components to ensuring social welfare. These reforms have super-ficially opened more options to recipients of public assistance while simultaneously allowing to continue the instruments, institutions, and structural forces that constrain practical access to the full range of jobs and housing. We argue that efforts to maintain these markets have not been distributed to measures ensuring fair play of participants. As a consequence, some problematic contradictions between policy and practice call into question the suitability of the private market as a strategy of providing welfare for the poor.

Administering Welfare Reform

2006 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Local Practice ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
What Works

This authoritative yet accessible book identifies the key targets for intervention through a detailed exploration of pathways and processes that give rise to health inequalities. It sets this against an examination of both local practice and the national policy context, to establish what works in health inequalities policy, how and why.

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