“More Than a Roof and Four Walls: Putting Residents at the Center of Housing Policy from Brazil to the United States”
Event Details:
Monday, April 7, 2025
11:20 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.
Rutgers–Camden, Campus Center, Multi-Purpose Room
Registration recommended. Click here to register.
Dr. Donaghy provides evidence as to how housing programs that involve residents in management and implementation empower low-income individuals as citizens with rights and transform cities toward spaces of equality and well-being. Traditional housing policies view the provision of housing for low-income citizens as either a problem to be solved by the market, the government, or a combination of the two. Rarely have housing departments or politicians considered the role of residents, themselves, as part of the solution to housing insecurity. From fieldwork in Brazil, Donaghy discusses the power of auto-gestão (self-managed) housing projects in which housing movements and neighborhood associations coordinate decision making and labor among residents towards construction of new units and urbanization of informal communities. She then examines several other types of resident-engaged projects in the United States and Brazil and aims to link these projects back to the models on which they are based, understanding how the model has been adapted across contexts and then what the variables are for transfer elsewhere. In the end she argues that as climate change causes additional challenges for low-income residents everywhere, looking to the community level for solutions becomes ever more urgent, and public programs should put more power in the hands of residents to act quickly and responsively to whatever challenges arise. Viewing housing as more than a roof and four walls in which residents build community and unite to advocate for themselves is key to democracy and generating hope for a better urban future.
About Dr. Donaghy:
Dr. Maureen Donaghy is an Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University, Camden. She is the author of Democratizing Urban Development: Strategies and Outcomes of Community Organizations for Housing across the US and Brazil, (Temple: 2018) and Civil Society and Participatory Governance: Municipal Councils and Social Housing Programs in Brazil (Routledge: 2013). She has published articles in urban studies, comparative politics, and Latin American studies journals and she is co-editor of the Urban Affairs Review. Dr. Donaghy was the 2022-2023 President of the Urban and Local Politics Section of the American Political Science Association and the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil (2022). At Rutgers, Camden Dr. Donaghy teaches courses on comparative politics, urban politics, Latin American politics, international development, and research design for undergraduates in Political Science and graduate students in the Department of Public Policy and Administration.