Choose One

• Prospective Students
• Current Students
• Faculty & Staff
• Alumni
• Parents
• Community & Friends

• Affordable Housing Conference
• CCS Grants
• CCS Faculty
• Student Members
• Fieldschool in Intercultural Education
• Healthy Communities
• Schools and Community
• Organizational Change
• Urban Neighborhoods
  • Photovoice Project
  • Nashville Street Life Project
  • Housing Trust Fund Project
  • Katrina Project
• International Communities
• Religion, Spirituality, and Community
• Community Power Research Network Proposal
• CCS Colloquia and Meetings
• 2007 CCS Mini-conference
• CCS Research Project Reports

Housing Trust Fund Campaign Project

The Housing Trust Fund Campaign

For the last several years a small group of community and non-profit leaders has been working to establish a public fund that would help address the significant unmet housing needs that exist in Nashville. Starting in August, 2005, researchers from Vanderbilt University began to provide research support for this group. What began as first simple data gathering has blossomed into a partnership and research collaboration that aims to improve: our understanding of the housing dynamics in Nashville's metropolitan area; knowledge about community initiatives to change policy; the limitations and possibilities of university-community partnerships; and most practically, access to housing for very low-income Nashvillians.

Research

The research team (Professors Doug Perkins and Paul Speer and Ph.D. students Mick Nelson and Emily Thaden) is employing emergent design and action research paradigms (see Kemmis and McTaggart, 2000) to both facilitate the success of the coalition in the creation more low income housing opportunities, and to dynamically respond to both "scholarly" (literature based) and community (participant and issue based) directed research questions. We are particularly informed by Flyvbjerg's (2001, 1998) understanding of the importance of attending to power relations and the use of case studies in social science and Speer et al's (1995, 2003) ecological analysis of power in local grassroots community organizing for political change.

We separate our research into three phases: initial, in-depth qualitative, and the final overview and testing phase. Thus far, the initial phase has been completed. The research team has been involved in empirical and analytical work with: data from other cities with successful housing trust fund campaigns, Nashville housing data from the Census and American Community Survey, and phone survey research with non-profits and chamber of commerce members. This work has been used informally in organizing activities by coalition members, as well as formally presented to Nashville community leaders at Housing Nashville: What We Can Do! (Speer & Nelson), and presented at the 2006 Urban Affairs Association Annual Meeting in Montreal (Thaden, Vick, Swift, Conway, & Perkins; Nelson & Speer). This first phase provides the background and context for this particular housing initiative.

Currently, phase two of the research program is underway. This stage involves a deep and long lasting qualitative data collection of the process and participants involved in the coalition. At this stage interviews with key housing advocates and decision makers as well as impacted community members is taking place as well as participant observation and recording of weekly coalition meetings. This data will be used to understand community organizing and advocacy in Nashville and individual and group processes that the organizing activity is built around.

The next phase of the research will involve the development of a survey of participants to test specific "grounded" and literature-based hypotheses developed out of the analysis of current data gathering activities. Network analysis will also be undertaken in the third phase, providing the relational context of organizing and advocacy activities. Other research techniques will be employed as deemed appropriate. This stage will be submitted to the IRB for approval late fall or winter.

In addition to supporting community activities, this research endeavor will lead to the development of several publications. Based on current research activities, three are planned. One, a thorough analysis of community-university partnerships based on the ethical, empirical and practical issues generated from our process. Two, a comparison study using research gathered from the Department of Human Services attempts to change internal policy juxtaposed against this community group's attempt to change policy from without. Three, an analysis based on interview data and meeting processes that examines social activists' understandings and actions, informed by theoretical work done by important but often esoteric social philosophers (Jurgen Habermas, Michel Foucault) in an attempt to bring social theory and practice closer together.

This research project is about universities and communities, about community organizing and advocacy, about data and public policy, but fundamentally it is about Nashville: its people, its political processes, and its neighborhoods.

References

Flyvbjerg, B. (1998). Rationality and power: Democracy in practice (S. Sampson., Trans.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Flyvbjerg, B. (2001). Making social science matter : why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Speer, P. W., & Hughey, J. (1995). Community organizing: An ecological route to empowerment and power. American Journal of Community Psychology, 23(5), 729-748.

Speer, P. W., Ontkush, M., Schmitt, B., Padmasini, R., Jackson, C., Rengert, C. M., et al. (2003). The intentional exercise of power: Community organizing in Camden, New Jersey. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 13(5), 399-408.

For more information about the Housing Trust Fund Initiative please contact Michael Nelson.