UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations

UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Grounds for Eviction: Race, Mobility, and Policing in the Antelope Valley Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fm0c3z2 Author Kurwa, Rahim Publication Date 2018 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Grounds for Eviction: Race, Mobility, and Policing in the Antelope Valley A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology by Rahim Kurwa 2018 © Copyright by Rahim Kurwa 2018 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Grounds for Eviction: Race, Mobility, and Policing in the Antelope Valley by Rahim Kurwa Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Los Angeles, 2018 Professor Darnell Montez Hunt, Co-Chair Professor Robert Denis Mare, Co-Chair This dissertation links research on residential mobility with research on policing and the criminalization of poverty. It does so through a case study of Black movement to Los Angeles’ Antelope Valley through the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program, a federal housing assistance program that is increasingly replacing public housing and one designed to promote residential mobility and racial integration. Fifty years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act banning discrimination in the sale or rental of housing, and the publication of the Kerner Commission report urging integration- oriented housing policy, social policy has turned towards residential mobility as a mechanism of combatting segregation and, by extension, racial inequality. Though the effects of mobility programs like vouchers are known to be smaller than expected, less is known about why this might be the case. I look to the Antelope Valley to examine what voucher experiences there might reveal about this process. Tracing the region’s decades-long history of racial segregation and inequality, I show how racial hierarchy has adapted to changes in laws, racial composition, and economic ii circumstances. I then illustrate how the Great Recession drove Black voucher movement to the valley over the past decade. Turning to qualitative findings, I show how Black voucher renters moving to the Antelope Valley are met with racism, economic resentment, and gendered stereotypes in their new communities. This social context of reception is key to understanding the mobility process. I then trace how one local government reflected and encouraged these sentiments by developing policies designed to reverse voucher movement by criminalizing, policing and evicting Black voucher renters in the area. While some of these schemes were abandoned, changes to the municipal code structure that encourage individual policing remain a highly effective mechanism of intimidating, impoverishing, and evicting Black voucher renters. This participatory policing regime, wherein local residents surveil their neighbors and file complaints with municipal code enforcement and other local authorities, illustrates an understudied contemporary mechanism of maintaining segregation. Finally, I show how Black voucher renters interpret, experience, and navigate these conditions, focusing on how they maintain their housing and avoid eviction. iii The dissertation of Rahim Kurwa is approved. Michael A. Stoll Vilma Ortiz Robert Denis Mare, Committee Co-Chair Darnell Montez Hunt, Committee Co-Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2018 iv This work is dedicated to Black voucher renters in the Antelope Valley, who have been enduring the daily violence of hate, harassment, and policing for far too long. v Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction 1 Case selection 5 Methodology and Limitations 7 Methods 7 Limitations 8 Arguments 10 Roadmap of the dissertation 14 Chapter 2: How Vouchers Came to Dominate Federal Low-Income Housing Policy 19 Public Housing’s New Deal Origins 19 The segregatory context into which public housing was born 20 Construction varies across cities but always fits inside racial boundaries 21 A confluence of liberal and conservative forces turns away from public housing 25 Public housing is partially dismantled and replaced 31 Chapter 3: Research on Mobility and Vouchers Shows the Mixed Results of Reform 38 Gautreaux is seen as positive evidence of the potential of vouchers 38 Life outcomes for tenants in the voucher program 40 Neighborhood attainment and its limits 40 Measures of economic, health, and social well-being 46 Children, schools, and long-term effects 47 Summary 49 This dissertation’s contributions to understanding voucher movement outcomes 52 Social contexts of reception 53 The persistence of white opposition to integration 57 Policing and segregation 60 Criminalizing vouchers 63 Shedding light on the “shadow carceral state” 65 How participatory policing curtails integration in the Antelope Valley 66 Chapter 4: The Antelope Valley from Black Arrival to the Great Recession 69 Sun Village rises 71 As segregation ends, inequality shifts to employment and housing discrimination 72 Macro-economic and demographic changes presage white backlash 75 Reasserting racial hierarchy 77 White supremacist hate crimes 77 Racial terror through public symbols 79 Racial resentment from elected officials 81 Continued institutional barriers to racial equality 82 Chapter 5: The Great Recession and Voucher Movement to the Antelope Valley 84 Forces shaping voucher movement 88 Data and methods 90 Sources of data 90 Limitations of data 91 Coding choices 91 vi Findings 92 Characteristics of census tracts by voucher presence, 2008 92 The foreclosure crisis and changes in the distribution of vouchers 94 Voucher growth after the recession is racially bifurcated and unequal 97 The Antelope Valley’s foreclosure – voucher movement – segregation connection 100 Conclusions 114 Chapter 6: Qualitative Research Methods and Data 116 The voucher population 116 Research methods 116 Voucher population demographic data 117 Limitations and positionality 121 Local residents 122 Research methods 122 Local resident demographic data 125 Limitations and positionality 126 Chapter 7: A Tangle of Prejudices: Voucher Movement and Local Reception 129 Voucher tenants move for practical reasons, not neighborhood preference 129 Local residents see voucher users as a growing threat 132 Group threat 132 Race as voucher 134 Behavior as voucher 135 Moral judgement 136 A tangle of prejudices 139 A widespread culture of hostility from local residents 139 Hostility on the basis of race and gender 140 Hostility on the basis of economics 142 Vouchers and social disorder 145 Experience of hostility by voucher tenants 147 Tenants’ social experiences 147 Tenants’ housing experiences 149 Tenants’ employment experiences 151 Children’s experiences 154 Chapter 8: The Evolution of a Participatory Policing Regime 158 Lancaster goes to war against its residents 158 Creating a partnership to police voucher renters 160 Attempting to create a new Housing Authority 161 Restricting business licenses so as to restrict renting to voucher tenants 162 Racial steering and school-based strategies 162 The nuisance ordinance and a shift in strategy 163 Local residents engage in participatory policing 165 Surveillance and diffusion 167 Deploying police and city agencies 170 Individual level harassment and policing 171 What a participatory policing regime looks like 172 Chapter 9: The Effects of a Participatory Policing Regime 173 vii Tenants know they are being watched 173 Inspections have two purposes – eviction and intimidation 175 Policing the personal lives and identities of voucher tenants 179 How tenants experience and adapt to a hostile climate 181 Barbara 182 Maxine 185 Eviction data 190 Fighting back through legal activism 191 Shifting policing from the home to the street 192 Choosing to stay or leave 193 Chapter 10: Conclusion 196 Implications for understanding racial residential inequality 200 Implications for housing research and policy 201 Implications for the study of policing 205 Future directions for research 206 References 209 viii List of Tables Table 4.1 Median Household Income in the Antelope Valley and Los Angeles County, 1970-2010 (in 2010 Dollars) 76 Table 5.1 Characteristics of Census Tracts in Urban Areas with Over 1M. Residents 93 Table 5.2 Changes in Voucher Counts between 2008 and 2016, by Foreclosure Rate, in Tracts in Urban Areas with Over 1 Million Residents 96 Table 5.3 Characteristics of Tracts in Different Categories of Foreclosure-Voucher Outcomes (Major Urban Areas, 2008-2016) 99 Table 5.4 Racial Composition of Voucher Users in 2016 in Tracts in Different Categories of Foreclosure-Voucher Outcomes (Major Urban Areas, 2008-2016) 100 Table 5.5 Voucher and Overall Population Summary Counts, Antelope Valley and Los Angeles County, 2016 104 Table 5.6 Voucher Counts and Characteristics in the Antelope Valley, 2000-2016 106 Table 5.7 Characteristics of Census Tracts in Los Angeles Geographies 107 Table 5.8 Distribution of Census Tracts across Categories of Foreclosure-Voucher Outcomes, Los Angeles County and Antelope Valley 108 Table 5.9 Racial Composition of Voucher Users in 2016 in Tracts in Different Categories of Foreclosure-Voucher Outcomes (Los Angeles, 2008-2016) 108 Table 6.1 Descriptive Data for the Voucher Population (Antelope Valley, 2012-2016) 118 Table 6.2 Descriptive Data for Voucher Renter Respondents 119 Table 6.3 Demographic Data for Zip Code 93535 in the City of Lancaster (2011-2015 American Community Survey Estimates) 124 Table 6.4

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