How do public housing authorities and public housing residents differ in their views of key aspects of public housing policy such as the concept of home? Public housing residents are bound by public housing policies but we know very little about the experiences of the residents themselves. Sarah DeGiorgis became interested in this topic while working as the Program Manager for the Choice Neighborhoods Planning and Implementation Grants at the Housing Authority of the City of Camden. Her interviews with residents will provide important insight into understanding how public housing policies directly affect residents’ lives, centered on the concept of home.
About the speaker:
Sarah DeGiorgis is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Affairs at Rutgers University. She holds a master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers and a bachelor of arts in English from Oberlin College. Sarah’s research interests include affordable and public housing, community erasure, the financialization of housing, and participatory mapping/GIS.
“Bandos, Symbolism, and Placemaking in Camden, NJ”
Thursday, March 25, 2021 from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.
In her forthcoming book Toward Camden, Mercy Romero writes about the relationships that make and sustain the largely African American and Puerto Rican Cramer Hill neighborhood in Camden, New Jersey where she grew up. She walks the city and writes outdoors to think about the collapse and transformation of property. She revisits lost and empty houses—her family’s house, the Walt Whitman House, and the landscape of a vacant lot. Throughout, Romero engages with the aesthetics of fragment and ruin; her writing juts against idioms of redevelopment. She resists narratives of the city that are inextricable from crime and decline and witnesses everyday lives lived at the intersection of spatial and Puerto Rican diasporic memory.
Toward Camden travels between what official reports say and what the city’s vacant lots withhold. In this virtual roundtable, Mercy Romero, Ph.D. was joined by Vedra Chandler, Rev. PJ Craig, and Sis. Anetha Ann Perry to talk about landscape, dispossession, and the making of public memory in Camden, New Jersey.
Panelists:
Mercy Romero, Ph.D. Associate Professor of American Literature and American Studies, Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, Sonoma State University, CA Author of Toward Camden (Black Outdoors: Innovations in the Poetics of Study). Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press (release date 10/15/21).
Rev. PJ Craig Sr. Pastor, Cumberland Presbyterian Church of Germantown, TN Ph.D. candidate in Public Affairs at Rutgers–Camden. PJ’s work focuses on youth connections with place. In her current project, she worked alongside youth as co-researchers in North Philadelphia, PA and Camden, NJ to understand how youth shape stories about their neighborhoods and themselves.
Vedra Chandler (pronouns: she/her) Project Manager, Cooper’s Ferry Partnership. Born and raised in Camden, Vedra Chandler graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Government before pursuing a careers in business, music and now community development and creative placemaking. Since 2017 Vedra has worked as a project manager at Cooper’s Ferry Partnership where she uses the arts as a vehicle to tap into the potential of Camden city and its residents. She coordinates the Connect the Lots and A New View initiatives which revitalize underutilized spaces with vibrant programming and public art.
Moderator: Sis. Anetha Ann Perry Ph.D. candidate in Public Affairs at Rutgers–Camden. Sis. Anetha Ann Perry grew up in Camden. In her dissertation research she uses auto-ethnography to tell the story of her family’s home, Perry House, and investigates the uses of “good neighboring” as an African American survival strategy. Despite evolving societal dynamics, Anetha’s study purports to show how settlement houses such as Perry House practice “good neighboring” as part of a modern-day underground railroad support system to African Americans living in urban fragmented communities.
“Community-based approaches to creating sustainable affordable housing”
Thursday, January 28th 12:30pm – 1:30pm via Zoom.
This virtual roundtable we discussed housing cooperatives, community land trusts, and shared equity housing models as viable alternative approaches to creating sustainable affordable housing and building community wealth. Non-market strategies have proliferated over recent years as many lower-income communities, especially in “hot” real estate markets like NYC, experience rising housing cost, fewer affordable housing options, and long-term housing insecurity. The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a brighter light on the chronic and dire state of housing insecurity in the US as millions of lower-income households are facing evictions and potential homelessness. In this virtual roundtable, our panelists shared their insights on the processes of creating affordable housing collectives, and discussed the role of public policy, community organizing, and housing advocacy in the quest for fair housing.
Panelists:
Edward Garcia is lead community organizer and involved with community development at the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition and member of the Northwest Bronx Community Land Trust.
Judy Meima works with tenant groups and cooperatives as an independent consultant. She previously worked at the D.C. nonprofit Mi Casa Inc. and served as the manager of the organization’s TOPA program. In a recently published article in Shelterforce, she shares lessons from 20 years of enabling tenants to buy their buildings.
Ruoniu (Vince) Wang is research manager at Grounded Solutions where he focuses on evaluating affordable housing policies and programs, geography of inequality, and residential mobility. He has recently co-authored a report with the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy that presents the most comprehensive study of shared equity housing programs conducted to date.
