Welfare as Wrecking Ball: Constructing Public Responsibility in Legal Encounters Over Public Housing Demolition

John N. Robinson III

doi:10.1111/lsi.12210

Welfare as Wrecking Ball: Constructing Public Responsibility in Legal Encounters Over Public Housing Demolition

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 December 2018

John N. Robinson III

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Abstract

Scholarship on welfare privatization illustrates how the process often curtails and undermines public responsibility for the poor. In this article, I examine how recipients, policy makers, and judges participate in the legal process as a means of challenging and defending privatization. I look at cases of litigation initiated by public housing tenants between 1985 and 2012 to fight the demolition of their homes to explore the changing meaning of public responsibility within a shrinking public sector. My findings show that as legislative and administrative reforms steered courts toward a more flexible understanding of public responsibility, courts gave increasing attention to the economic hardships experienced by the state itself, while downplaying the plight of low-income tenants.

Type: Articles
Information: Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , Summer 2016 , pp. 670 - 700

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/lsi.12210 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2016

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