Presentation Title
"These are the Ghettos of Washington": Neoliberal Public Housing Redevelopment in Tacoma, WA
Degree Name
Master of Interdisciplinary Studies (MA)
Department
Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences
Location
UW Y Center
Start Date
21-5-2015 5:40 PM
End Date
21-5-2015 5:45 PM
Abstract
From 2000-2011, the Tacoma Housing Authority (THA) redeveloped Salishan, a worn down, family public housing neighborhood into a mixed income neighborhood of subsidized, senior, and market rate housing. With this redevelopment process as a case study, I sought to understand how the neoliberal turn in public housing interweaves with local specificities, including regulatory frameworks, political cultures, and housing economies. I used archival research, interviews, and discourse analysis to examine the remaking of Salishan. THA’s promotional literature, and the redevelopment itself, depict an amalgam of inclusive, redistributive, and neoliberal imaginations. For instance, the Tacoma Housing Authority made substantial effort to maximize the amount of public housing available through their public/private hybrid neighborhood, and retain property management jobs for their unionized workforce. However, THA also embraced new roles as a developer, as a shaper of self-sufficient neoliberal subjects, and as a public/private hybrid organization. Neither its neoliberal, inclusive, nor redistributive imaginations were fully realized in Salishan. In its effort to materialize these imaginations, the housing authority transformed its internal structures, its relationships with government and private organizations, the landscape of the neighborhood, who it houses and how, and its mission and vision. New (racialized, gendered, and class) meanings of affordable housing, subsidized housing residence, and the work of a public housing authority have been produced and materialized.
"These are the Ghettos of Washington": Neoliberal Public Housing Redevelopment in Tacoma, WA
UW Y Center
From 2000-2011, the Tacoma Housing Authority (THA) redeveloped Salishan, a worn down, family public housing neighborhood into a mixed income neighborhood of subsidized, senior, and market rate housing. With this redevelopment process as a case study, I sought to understand how the neoliberal turn in public housing interweaves with local specificities, including regulatory frameworks, political cultures, and housing economies. I used archival research, interviews, and discourse analysis to examine the remaking of Salishan. THA’s promotional literature, and the redevelopment itself, depict an amalgam of inclusive, redistributive, and neoliberal imaginations. For instance, the Tacoma Housing Authority made substantial effort to maximize the amount of public housing available through their public/private hybrid neighborhood, and retain property management jobs for their unionized workforce. However, THA also embraced new roles as a developer, as a shaper of self-sufficient neoliberal subjects, and as a public/private hybrid organization. Neither its neoliberal, inclusive, nor redistributive imaginations were fully realized in Salishan. In its effort to materialize these imaginations, the housing authority transformed its internal structures, its relationships with government and private organizations, the landscape of the neighborhood, who it houses and how, and its mission and vision. New (racialized, gendered, and class) meanings of affordable housing, subsidized housing residence, and the work of a public housing authority have been produced and materialized.