Research Center to Host Lecture on Issues Related to Public Housing Elimination

The Center for Urban Research and Education (CURE) at Rutgers University–Camden will offer a free lecture addressing issues related to public housing elimination, as evidenced in the city of Atlanta, at noon Friday, Sept. 12.

Deidre Áine Oakley, an associate professor of sociology and director of undergraduate studies at Georgia State University, will discuss “Resistance was Futile: The Case of Public Housing Elimination in Atlanta.”

Oakley will delve into her research on two complementary National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation-funded projects examining the impact of public housing elimination in Atlanta.

The talk, which is free of charge and open to the public, will be held in the faculty lounge on the third floor of Armitage Hall, located on Fifth Street, between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge on the Rutgers–Camden campus.

For further information, please contact CURE Associate Director Natasha Tursi at ntursi@camden.rutgers.edu or 856-225-6797.

As Oakley explains,  Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) sought to transform public housing by demolishing large, spatially concentrated – and in many cases, deteriorating – developments and replace them with mixed-income housing. For the majority of public-housing residents, this has led to relocation to private market rental housing with the help of a voucher. While there have been a few grassroots-based initiatives in some cities that have compelled public housing authorities to more formally acknowledge the needs of the public-housing residents, in Atlanta, such mobilizations became futile.

She notes that Atlanta was the first city to eliminate all of its traditional project-based public housing, and its initiatives to do so have received national acclaim. Oakley’s paper documents how Atlanta’s public housing resident and advocacy groups attempted to stop the last demolitions, and how the Atlanta Housing Authority was able to get past this loosely structured movement successfully with the help of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The paper highlights the hegemonic public housing transformation regime that Atlanta was able to create, a regime which not only disempowered resident protest and resistance, but their input as well.

Oakley has been widely published in both academic and applied venues, focusing primarily on how social disadvantages concerning education, housing, homelessness, and redevelopment are often compounded by geographic space and urban policies. She has provided congressional testimony concerning public housing preservation and the Neighborhood Choice initiative to the United States House Committee on Financial Services. In addition, she was a guest editor on a special Cityscape symposium concerning public housing transformation, which was published in the July 2013 issue.

Founded in 2001, the Center for Urban Research and Education at Rutgers–Camden aims to encourage, facilitate, and promote research on urban issues by Rutgers–Camden faculty and their collaborators around the nation. The research center’s monthly seminars, held in conjunction with Rutgers–Camden’s Office of Civic Engagement, provide members and affiliates with opportunities to learn about cutting-edge research and initiatives from scholars, community activists and others engaged in urban research and/or urban change.

For directions to Rutgers–Camden, visit camden.rutgers.edu/resources/getting-to-campus.