Carolyn Swope

Part of a special Journal of Urban Affairs issue edited by @lkb-pdx.bsky.social on “Stopping a Tsunami: learning from and beyond emergency tenant protections during the Covid-19 pandemic” - looking forward to the dialogue!

We look instead toward the transformative potential within tenants’ collective capacity and mobilization to challenge the exploitative rent relationship

Stories we heard from many tenants reflected the bounce back to the same conditions of housing insecurity once ERA funds dried up, even among tenants with the most positive ERA experiences

We build on @davidjmadden.bsky.social's argument on the urban process under “Covid capitalism": state policy responses prioritize protecting interests of property owners, with more tepid and temporary protections for renters

A profit-seeking, exploitative capitalist housing system, which produced crisis before Covid-19 and continues to do so after ERA has largely wound down.

We argue that ERA programs (although they did provide important short-term relief to many tenants!) ultimately lacked transformative potential. They failed to disrupt—or even meaningfully challenge—the root cause of the housing crisis:

...and that reform to address this crisis was possible within the structure of the current housing system

We interrogate how the framing of Covid-19 as an aberrant emergency moment of housing “crisis,” and the creation of solutions narrowly targeted toward addressing it, imply that the housing status quo before Covid-19 was not a crisis...

Most work on ERA to date focuses on evaluation and identifying opportunities for improvement (necessary and important questions!). But we wanted to ask: Was ERA the right kind of program in the first place?

514 state and local ERA programs helped low-income tenants pay rent during the Covid-19 pandemic. We explore how 3 Connecticut programs were designed, how they were rolled out, and how they were experienced by housing-insecure tenants

What better way to start a new semester and return from maternity leave than to share a new paper with my brilliant co-authors! We examine Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) through a critical urban theory lens

When the Bronx Burned, Tenants Died and Landlords Got Rich

During the 1970s, an arson wave ravaged poor communities across the US. Some lost 80% of their housing. Residents were blamed.

In reality, landlords—paid by insurers and enabled by the state—drove this arson-for-profit epidemic.



I reviewed @benchansfield.bsky.social's revelatory BORN IN FLAMES:

What if the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) Redlining Maps Were Not Actually the Root Cause of So Much Modern Health (and Other) Inequality? Seeking more complete—but still highly racialized—explanations of urban spatial inequities.

New from me on scholarship by @cbswope.bsky.social et al.

"As the Trump Administration attempts to eviscerate fair housing...regulations...we need to recognize the persistence and resilience of racial-capitalist exploitation and dispossession, and not view it only as some relic of an earlier era."

Glad to see this piece out!

In it, we trace the explosion of HOLC redlining studies in public health research over recent years and propose that scholars widen their focus to include some of the myriad other discriminatory processes that have generated racial health inequities.

🧵A much-needed corrective to the “HOLC redlining was the primary/root cause of everything bad” literature that has exploded since the HOLC maps were digitized. A more complicated, but still heavily racialized story. Lots of other private and public discriminatory policies & practices involved.

Also check out this response by @lwinling.bsky.social on the importance of recognizing intervening processes and mechanisms leading to the present day - ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/... 10/10

But it means that racial differentiation and exploitation structures housing markets and policies in fundamental ways that go beyond any one process or actor. 9/

All this does not mean that HOLC redlining wasn’t racist, that the federal govt wasn’t complicit in racism, or that the maps aren’t significant sources of information about disinvestment and discrimination! 8/

We offer suggestions for how researchers can align conceptual frameworks, research questions, and study design, including use of alternative data sources beyond HOLC grades 7/

…3) redlining interacted with many other forms of racialized housing dispossession (urban renewal, gentrification, zoning…) to shape present-day riskscapes 6/

We argue: 1) the HOLC maps represent symptoms, not causes, of systematic disinvestment in Black communities; 2) redlining was not produced by the federal government in isolation but was shaped by public‒private collaboration and infused with capitalist logics… 5/

…but are continuously being reproduced by a political‒economic system that devalues Black property and personhood 4/

Rather than understand the maps as strictly causal (evidence suggests otherwise), we use a racial capitalism framework to argue that persistent racial health inequities are not the outcome of one discriminatory program from the 1930s… 3/

Although there’s been an explosion in use of HOLC maps as a measure for structural racism in public health research, how and why, precisely, they help us understand the underpinnings of present-day racial inequities remains unclear 2/

How and Why Does Redlining Matter for Present-Day Health? Critical Perspectives on Causality, Cartography, and Capitalism | AJPH | Vol. 115 Issue 5 Recent years have seen an explosion of public health research on associations between historical redlining maps created by a US government agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), and present...

Belatedly introducing a new piece on racial capitalism, redlining, causality, and public health that I was lucky enough to work on with coauthors @snmarkley.bsky.social, Shannon Whittaker, and Amy Hillier! ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/... 1/

“The issue is that Khalil and the others who have been abducted in recent weeks are being jailed because they were dissident protesters, student organizers, op-ed authors, and anti-genocide activists. In other words, they have been targeted for their political views. They are political prisoners.”

1. Every Dem Senator should be doing this, at minimum, for their constituents.
2. Why won't my Senators in New York do this for my fellow Columbia students incarcerated in Louisiana? It's a quicker flight.

“Dr. Khan Suri is an Indian national who was duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan,” a Georgetown spokesperson said in a statement. “We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention. We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly.”

It is also notable that Georgetown immediately put out this statement defending their community member. Columbia still has not mentioned Mahmoud or Ranjani by name.

SWC - UAW local 2710 logo, "Reinstate Ranjani Srinivasan"

SWC stands by Ranjani Srinivasan, yet another union member targeted by the Trump administration and abandoned by our employer Columbia University. Columbia WAS complicit. Read more:🧵

Columbia must protect its students, defend their academic freedom, and safeguard their ability to study and work without fear!

Read her story here: archive.today/vnrbm