Re: AUT: Harald, welfare state

["Nate Holdren" <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Monty-
It's interesting to hear a little about welfare programs back in the day,
particularly the whole 'no overnight guests without permission' thing.
That's crazy. I'm young enough that I don't really remember welfare before
the current phase of its transformation.
Your comments about friends in education and social work finding themselves
being more like cops hit close to home. I've got friends in similar
sitautions now.

I know I've raised this on the list before but I think it's relevant to this
thread. Here in Chicago public housing is being transformed greatly, moving
toward 'mixed income' housing. The transformation plan is going to displace
around 10,000 families, and there's evidence that the city doesn't have the
money to build the new units it claims to be planning to build, so possibly
even more folks will be kicked out. A lot of the displaced folks are being
offered a voucher that can be put toward paying rent to a landlord on the
private housing market. With the conditions of the housing market in Chicago
(around 96% occupancy rate, 94% is considered to be 'tight housing market'
by gov't standards) the vouchers aren't very helpful because landlords tend
to discriminate against voucher holders and are free to do so since there's
so much competition for available housing. Those who can make use of the
voucher before it expires are forced to go further and further out, into
more remote parts of the city or the suburbs, where public transportation
and social services are even harder to access. (For these reasons a group of
residents and allies is fighting the transformation plan. Residents of one
development have decided to refuse to leave until new housing for them is
built and offered to them. I don't think they've been challenged on this
yet.)

During this transformation process a great deal has been made by the city
out of the 'service connector' programs, which are an example of the
public-private partnerships that the US recently trumpeted in Johannesburg.
The servive connector's function on paper is to provide various welfare
functions to public housing residents, to help people find what other
programs they qualify for, and to ease the transition.
These programs take public dollars to provide these services that were once
provided by public agencies. For example, a former co-worker was once the
head of prevention services for the Chicago Housing Authority when it was
under control of the federal government, he ran education programs on
substance abuse as well as working on rehab programs. When control of the
Chicago Housing Authority passed back into city government's hands all
prevention programs were eliminated and the city has since begun evicting
residents of units where any resident is convicted of a drug related offense
(evicting families for the actions of a member, or room-mate).

I don't know any numbers on this - how many evicted or how much is spent on
this - but the link to policing functions is very clear, as the CHA gets the
arrest data from the police or others in the so-called justice system.

I have another friend who works with residents at a senior building (adults
over 65). Her building - as I believe most if not all buildings considered
public housing - is managed by a private company. As part of the
transformation plan, her building is being redone. In order to do this, the
residents are being forced to leave, to stay in other places while this
building is re-habbed. As far as I know there's no guarantee they'll be
allowed to return to where they used to live. (This is also a big issue with
residents of the non-senior public housing buildings, the residents are not
being guaranteed the right to return to their old neighborhoods and
buildings, even if these building will remain standing.) So my friend who
took the job because she likes working with the elderly (her previous work
was educating senior citizens about their rights and what they need to know
to access health care programs for the elderly and poor) is now forced to do
the landlord functions of notifying folks of their evictions and so on.

On a related note, it'd be very interesting to look at patterns and changes
in  non-profit and for-profit social service spending, particularly in terms
of what foundations and corporations are giving money to. My guess is that
the precariousness and fickle-ness of foundations would prove to be totally
unsuitable to adequately providing any level of welfare that meets human
needs regularly and consistently.

I know people who do counselling for juvenile offenders who are considered
'at risk' for gang-activity (the classification for which could become a
whole huge other thread which I can post a bunch of notes on sometime). The
kids in these programs are put there because they're first time offenders
for 'gang-related' offenses (including loitering!) or because the State's
Attorney thought they couldn't be charged with anything that would stand up
in court.
Now the counselling portion of the program is being reduced or even
eliminated because the program (though run by a private non-profit) is
largely dependent on state funding and the state has cut funds for these
programs due to budget shortfall. Kids will continue to be mandated into
programs for the 'at-risk' though the services they receive is lessening.
Yet another case of the knitting together of social service with
policing/administrative functions followed by a cut in the actual service
provision aspect of the program.

Nate





>From: Montyneill@xxxxxxx
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: AUT: Harald, welfare state
>Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 22:44:52 EDT
>
>Interesting thread, this (and the interwoven reply by Harald to Arriana)
>that
>I am catching up on a bit.
>
>For now I would just point out that at least in the US (and I suspect
>Europe
>and Japan) the variants on the welfare state were most certainly a response
>to class struggle, but always had a policing and controlling aspect. In
>addition to the demand for more money, welfare mothers in the US fought
>against the policing aspect. It was only in early 1970s, for example, that
>in
>Massachusetts women won the right not to have to tell who the parent was,
>or
>the right for a man to stay overnight in the welfare women's apartment. The
>former has in the past few years been overturned, so now it is necessary
>for
>the woman to name a name.
>
>Indeed, the turn began early, by the late 1970s. I went back to grad school
>in 1982 in part because I saw friends in the social work sectors and
>education being more and more asked to repress and police their clients.
>They
>were fighting doing so, but their jobs were redefined to emphasize the
>control functions. I think (to loosely connect also to some of the thread
>on
>Fortunati) much of this was very much about getting reproduction back under
>control after the successes of the women's movements.
>
>Monty




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