As cities around the country continue to grapple with the economic and social fallout of decades of racist public policy, a new book by Georgetown University sociologist Eva Rosen offers a compelling ethnography of the Section 8 housing voucher program. Though The Voucher Promise (Princeton University Press) is focused on a low-income Black neighborhood in Baltimore, its insights apply to Chicago and probably every other segregated American city.
Meanwhile, vouchers bring less money than landlords in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods would get from market-rate renters, which adds an economic disincentive on top of racial and class biases against voucher holders there. But finding housing in a lower-income Black neighborhood doesn’t mean voucher holders (who are disproportionately Black) are free of discimination and class bias.
By Eva Rosen (Princeton University Press)
