Spotlight

To Move or Not to Move: Relationships to Place and Relocation Choices in HOPE VI

Rachel Kleit
Associate Professor at the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs
Adjunct Associate Professor Urban Design & Planning
University of Washington

Lynne Manzo
Associate Professor in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning
University of Washington

Professor Kleit's research interests include public and assisted housing self-sufficiency programs; the impacts of housing programs that mix income groups; and connections between housing location, neighborhood composition, social networks, and access to opportunity. She is the recipient of the 1998 Young Scholar Award from the Urban Affairs Association and Sage Publications, and the 1999 Best Student Paper Award in Housing and Community Development from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning and the Fannie Mae Foundation. She is also a recipient of a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Urban Scholar Postdoctoral Fellowship to support research on the New Holly HOPE VI site in Seattle.

Prof Manzo’s interests and areas of research address environment and behavior in urban space and focus on issues of place attachment, place identity, community participation and development as well as the politics of place. She has spent years conducting housing research and participating in advocacy efforts for affordable housing. As a co-founder of the Housing Environments Research Group at the City University of New York, she researched and advocated for tenants rights to affordable housing and researched grassroots organizing and building rehabilitation efforts among residents of landlord abandoned buildings. In Seattle, Prof Manzo is conducting research on the Seattle Housing Authority’s High Point community and evaluating King County Housing Authority’s redevelopment of Park Lake Homes in White Center.

As an Environmental Psychologist, Professor Manzo specializes in the study of the interrelationships between people and their physical surroundings. Her view of the environment includes not only natural and built settings, but also the socio-cultural and political milieu that shape the appearance, meanings and uses of space.

The West Coast Poverty Center had the opportunity to ask Professors Kleit and Manzo about their thoughts on their recent publication "To Move or Not to Move: Relationships to Place and Relocation Choices in HOPE VI" published in the Housing Policy Debate, Vol. 17, No. 2 (2006) and highlighted in WCPC Research Flash 2008-4