Overview

In this book, Sue Popkin tells the story of how an ambitious—and risky—social experiment affected the lives of the people it was ultimately intended to benefit: the residents who had suffered through the worst days of crime, decay, and rampant mismanagement of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), and now had to face losing the only home many of them had known.  The stories Popkin tells in this book offer important lessons not only for Chicago, but for the many other American cities still grappling with the legacy of racial segregation and failed federal housing policies, making this book a vital resource for city planners and managers, urban development professionals, and anti-poverty activists.  

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9781442268821

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Reviews

Epic and encyclopedic, this vital book illuminates the human drama induced by Chicago's bold Plan for Transformation. Multiple surveys conducted over more than 15 years' time, plus vivid in-depth interviews that put skin on the numbers, reveal a remarkable, surprising, and ultimately hopeful story. Award-winning author Susan Popkin delivers an essential read for anyone who cares about how our nation attends to the housing needs of the poor. --Kathryn Edin, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University

Epic and encyclopedic, this vital book illuminates the human drama induced by Chicago's bold Plan for Transformation. Multiple surveys conducted over more than 15 years' time, plus vivid in-depth interviews that put skin on the numbers, reveal a remarkable, surprising, and ultimately hopeful story. Award-winning author Susan Popkin delivers an essential read for anyone who cares about how our nation attends to the housing needs of the poor. -- Kathryn Edin, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University Susan Popkin's clear-eyed, succinct, and compassionate book focuses on the children and parents who suffered through the intolerable conditions of Chicago's public housing, and then navigated the complex attempts to transform it. With Popkin's unique perspective gained from following families for more than a decade, No Easy Solutions provides a deeply well informed guide to what is needed next. -- Lawrence J. Vale, Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology This important new book offers a hopeful but unflinching account of one of America's most ambitious and also misunderstood efforts to transform ghetto poverty in a major city. In this vivid and accessible account, we learn the real impacts on highly disadvantaged parents and their children over time-and what does and does not make a difference in their lives. Sue Popkin is one of our most astute, seasoned, and dedicated observers of vulnerable families in low-income housing. Her new book is required reading. -- Xavier de Souza Briggs, Vice President, Ford Foundation and Professor of Sociology and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Author Information

Susan Popkin is a senior fellow and director of the Neighborhoods and Youth Development initiative in the Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center at the Urban Institute.

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