What Does Gender Have To Do With Housing? By Shana griffin

From the Bridge The Gulf website:
This article is adapted from my comments on the panel “Laying the Groundwork: Why do we need to understand gender to understand the major housing issues of our day?” with Gary Perry of Seattle University, and Charmel Gaulden with the Gulf Coast Fair Housing Center. The panel was part of the 2012 Fit for King summit on Women and Fair Housing, hosted by the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center with support from the Gulf Coast Fair Housing Center, Women’s Health & Justice Initiative, and the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Race, Gender and Politics in the South at Tulane University.

For the Women’s Health & Justice Initiative, our organizing acknowledges the intersections of gender and housing—as much of our advocacy challenges the use of social policies, and the ideologies embedded in them, that perpetuate violence in the lives of women of color. At WHJI, we organize from a framework that regards housing as a gendered phenomenon^[1] – and as an important aspect of gender and racial inequalities.

By ‘gendered phenomenon’ I’m referring to the disproportionate utilization of public and subsidized housing programs among women of color and poor women; the gender disparities in high-cost subprime mortgage-lending, particularly among Black women; women and queer people’s elevated risk of vulnerability to poverty due to housing costs and discrimination; and the pervasive nature of gender-based violence in the context of accessing, securing, and maintaining one’s housing. Gender is an important dimension in understanding how access to housing is structured, how racial and economic disadvantage translates to housing disadvantage, and how housing disadvantages reinforce economic dependency and racial and gender segregation.

Access to housing is not only gendered, but varies amongst women according to structural forms of inequality and factors such as a women’s race, ethnicity, marital status, sexual orientation, income, ability, education, and whether or not her household includes children. We employ an ‘intersectional approach’ to examine and challenge these structural forms of inequality in shaping one’s access to housing.

Housing and housing policy are major areas of concern for us, as low-income women of color bear the brunt of housing related poverty, violence, discrimination, and displacement—much of which is the result of gender and racial inequality in society, gender blind housing policies, and myths and stereotypes of low-income communities and people of color.

Housing and reproductive violence

Our work examining the various ways reproductive violence^[2] is embedded and manifested in housing policies show that women who are disproportionately impacted by housing discrimination are also disproportionately targeted by campaigns that seek to control their fertility and criminalize their reproductive capabilities.

As such, the utilization of government funded housing programs by poor women and women of color, particularly among black women, to secure housing for themselves and their families is often meet with racist and sexist stereotypes and stigmatizing labels associated with ‘welfare,’ ‘crime,’ ‘laziness,’ ‘uncontrolled-sexually,’ and ‘poverty’ in the housing market.

Stereotypes and stigmatizing labels such as these, implicitly and explicitly inform low-income women experiences and vulnerability to housing discrimination, ‘not-in-my-backyard’ attitudes, sexual harassment, residential segregation, and social isolation from needed resources.

The racial and gendered subtext of prevailing welfare and public housing assistance stereotypes are revealed in the attitudes and priorities of some policy makers.

Take for example comments made by Louisiana representative Richard Baker in response to public housing post-Hurricane Katrina: “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn‘t do it but God did.”

Or the racist and eugenic 2008 legislative plans of Representative John LaBruzzo to pay poor women $1,000 to get sterilized under the cloak of reducing the number of people on welfare and those utilizing public housing subsidies in Louisiana. He said, “I wonder if it might be a good idea to pay some of these people to get sterilized. My solution: pay impoverished women $1,000 to have their tubes tied so they will stop having babies they can’t afford.”

In September of 2008, when Mr. LaBruzzo’s infamous statements were made, the number of people receiving public cash assistance in Louisiana had dropped by 74% since Hurricane Katrina, and had be declining since the mid 1990s. Currently, less than 1% of Louisiana’s population receives ‘welfare’ or Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) – a number representing approximately 13,000 out of a population of 4.5 million people, with the vast majority of recipients being children and the average public assistance grant being $189 a month for a family of three.

The divestment and attacks on housing programs intended to assist low-income women violates the reproductive rights and autonomy of marginalized women, particularly the rights of women with children. Three core aspects of reproductive justice is the right to have children, the right not to have children, and the right to parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments with access to resources and enabling social conditions. Without access to safe, stable, and sanitary housing, the reproductive rights of women with children are constantly violated.

In an effort to address the multiple ways reproductive violence policies interact to regulate and police the lives of those existing and operating through identities and locations of subjugation, it is very important for us to have an intersectional understanding of gender and housing, and how housing policies shape and influence one’s health and well-being.

Housing is not simply about the dwelling in which one lives, but about how one is situated in a school district, a public transportation system, a job market, a social network, and a community of opportunity. Access to housing is not simply an exercise of finding somewhere to live, but is a continuous process of sustaining access and avoiding losing a home. Many of the challenges women face in securing and maintaining access to housing reflect and reinforce wider gender inequality in society.

The value of taking an intersectional approach

Organizing from an intersectional approach allows us to understand and respond to the ways gender and other identities intersect with housing policies and practices of discrimination – to work in coalition with not in isolation from other social justice, human rights, and service-based organizations without segmenting, isolating, or pitting one priority of our work against another.

For example:


Many black women who are Section 8 vouchers holders in the city often report discrimination in the private housing market at the hands of landlords who refuse to participate in the subsidized voucher program.

It is the intersection of the Section 8 voucher holder’s identities as

• a woman,
• a black person, and
• a poor person

that puts her in the position of vulnerability. It is the intersection of policies, programs, and practices such as

• fair housing laws,
• subsidized housing programs, and
• income discrimination

that support and maintain that vulnerability.

Instead of relying solely on fair housing enforcement organizations to remedy the discrimination experience by black women Section 8 voucher holders, engaging in an intersectional approach of housing justice would create opportunities for various organizations and advocacy approaches to be utilized.


Footnotes

^[1] In talking about housing as a ‘gender’ phenomenon, it’s important to understand that the terms and identities "woman" and “women”, do not signal particular types of bodies or fixed gender identities. Women differ by age, race, ethnicity, gender expression and identity, sexuality, education, ability, relationship status, work sector, and citizenship status.

^[2] For WHJI, reproductive violence refers to the methods used to sustain reproductive oppression. These methods include policies, laws, initiatives, behaviors, practices, and procedures designed to reduce, control, and/or eliminate the reproduction of marginalized communities, as well as regulate and repress one’s sexuality.

Shana griffin (37) is a life-long resident of New Orleans, mother of two, black feminist, researcher, and social justice activist, who has over 16 years experience organizing nationally and locally with low-income communities of color on critical issues pertaining to racial and gender justice; sexual health and reproductive justice; housing affordability; ending gender-based violence; prison abolition; gender and disaster vulnerability; just sustainabilities; education equity; and climate justice. Shana is co-founder of the Women’s Health & Justice Initiative, where she currently serves as Research & Advocacy Director (volunteer), and is the former Interim Director of the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic she co-founded in 2007. Shana is a member of INCITE! and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Women With A Vision, Inc. and Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative, a local neighborhood-based housing and community development non-profit.

The Women’s Health & Justice Initiative is a radical feminist of color organization based in New Orleans, dedicated to improving the social and economic health of women of color and our communities. For more info please visit: www.whji.org.

Photo: Shana griffin and Gary Perry discuss gender and housing at the Fit for King summit on Women and Fair Housing.

Stereotypes, Myths, & Criminalizing Policies: Regulating the Lives of Poor Women

An important statement from the New Orleans organization the Women's Health and Justice Initiative:
Since the beginning of the year, we have witnessed a surge of legislative attacks targeting poor communities through bills calling for mandatory drug testing as an eligibility requirement to receive federal aid under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program in over two-dozen states. (TANF is a federally funded, state- administered aid program created when President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996C (PRWORA), which abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). It is more widely known as the Welfare Reform Act.)

§ On January 25, 2011 U.S. Senator David Vitter, R-Louisiana, introduced The Drug Free Families Act of 2011, (S. 83), which would require all 50 states to drug test all TANF applicants and recipients.

§ On May 10, 2011, Missouri state legislature passed Senate Bill 607, which require welfare applicants and recipients to pass a drug test in order to receive public assistance, if ‘reasonable suspicion’ is raised by a social worker; and on July 12, 2011, Democratic Governor Jay Nixon signed the bill into law.

§ On May 31, 2011, Governor Rick Scott, R- Florida, signed legislation into law requiring adults applying for welfare assistance to undergo drug screenings.

§ And for the fourth consecutive year, Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo aggressively tried to get similar legislation passed before House Bill 7 died in the Senate on June 21, 2011 after winning approval in the House.

The targeting of welfare recipients – under the false pretense of “saving tax dollars from supporting someone’ s drug addiction” or by “helping drug addicts become productive citizens” – is nothing more than the continual use of stereotypes and myths to criminalize the lives of poor women and their families through invasive and unconstitutional regulatory policies of economic violence.

The Women’s Health & Justice Initiative (WHJI) condemns these coordinated federal and state assaults on recipients of public cash assistance. The legislative actions of Governor Scott, Senator Vitter, State Representative LaBruzzo, and others criminalize the poverty of welfare recipients, exploit low-income women’s economic vulnerability, and stereotype welfare recipients as illegal drug users by publicly presuming welfare recipients’ socio-economic status as linked to addiction.

Punitive, Criminalizing, & Discriminatory Attacks

Using the ‘Get Tough’ rhetoric of the War on Drugs; reproductive regulation; and neoliberal austerity measures to attack poor and marginalized women (who rely on government subsidies for financial support) irresponsibly exploits their economic vulnerability by falsely implying their assistance is the cause of the country’s financial woes. Although recipients of public assistance are no more likely to use illegal drugs than the general population, they are often disproportionately targeted by elected officials as social burdens in need of governmental regulation.

At both the federal and state levels, Senator Vitter and State Representative LaBruzzo have tried unsuccessfully for years to restrict public assistance eligibility through mandatory drug testing under the disguise of helping recipients with untreated drug addictions. Despite the fact such testing has been ruled unconstitutional by the Sixth Circuit in 2000, Vitter and LaBruzzo continue to promote dangerously punitive policies.

If passed, Senator Vitter’s Drug Free Families Act of 2011 would amend part A of The TANF Program and thereby require all states to drug test all TANF applicants and recipients. The bill will deny assistance to individuals who test positive for illegal drugs and those convicted of drug-related crimes. Not only will this Act further restrict the privacy and agency of women who are daily portrayed as deceitful, deviant, oversexed, and addicts—all because of racialized gender-based misconceptions of what it means to receive public assistance- it will also subject them to various forms of discrimination with regards to housing, employment, education, and their voting rights.

Additionally, Louisiana State Representative LaBruzzo’s House Bill 7 would have required twenty percent of TANF recipients to submit to drug tests as a condition to receive public assistance – a similar measure attempted by former State Representative and Klu Klux Klan member David Duke in 1989.

Under this year’s version of Representative LaBruzzo’s bill, a participant who wouldn’t sign a written form granting ‘consent’ to a drug test would not have been eligible to receive or to continue to receive cash assistance. Consenting to a drug test is an infringement of one’s constitutional right to privacy and equal protection, yet refusal is a denial of public benefits and a presumption of drug addiction. Clearly, this legislation was designed to both publicly demonize and undermine the agency of welfare recipients – because placing women in a position to “choose” between their right to privacy and the care of their family is not an exercise of “consent” but a blatant form of coercion. The use of coercive policies to compel welfare recipients to submit to drug testing ignores the complex structures of poverty and poor women’s daily battles for subsistence, as they often bear the brunt of income and housing related poverty, violence, and discrimination. By placing women in such positions, LaBruzzo and others are able to justify these systemic forms of coercion by dehumanizing the lives of poor women and their families.

Lastly, legislation signed into law by Governor Scott of Florida on May 31,2011 and by Governor Nixon of Missouri on July 12, 2011 both require adults applying for temporary cash assistance to undergo drug screenings. The Florida law took effect July 1st, which requires the Florida Department of Children and Family Services to drug test all adults applying for TANF assistance. Applicants are responsible for the cost of the screening and will be reimbursed by the state only if they pass the drug test. Those who fail can enter a drug rehabilitation program and reapply six months later or designate someone on their behalf to receive their child's benefits. Governor Scott claims, “we don't want to waste tax dollars...and we want to give people an incentive to not use drugs.” His statement equates public assistance with ‘waste’ and exploits the vulnerability of women’s economic status by violating their Fourth Amendment rights under the pretext of deficit reduction.

In Missouri, the recently signed law allows officials with the Department of Social Services to drug test recipients of public assistance if there is ‘reasonable cause’ to suspect illegal drug use. If an applicant tests positive, they must complete a substance abuse program. And if an applicant refuses to take a drug test or attend a substance abuse program, they won’t be eligible for assistance for three years. This law, like the others, stigmatizes welfare recipient’s economic status and equates their subsidy status with addiction.

The Truth Behind the Legislation

Not only is drug testing unconstitutional, it’s ineffective and costly. Drug testing does nothing but further marginalize and stigmatize TANF recipients. It implies that recipients are to blame for the nation’s current economic deficit, as opposed to the wasteful spending of public resources on the corporate welfare giants of Wall Street and the War on Drugs; militarism; and the over production of unnecessary commodities that negatively impact our environment. The aggressive use of punitive neoliberal policies like these rely on fear and racist stereotypes to falsely frame low-income families as economic burdens of the state, while ignoring the disastrous economic burdens of corporate welfare.

Stereotypes and stigmatizing labels associated with welfare are dramatically different in reality than what is often decried by elected officials. The racial and gendered subtext of prevailing welfare stereotypes of ‘laziness,’ ‘uncontrolled sexuality,’ and ‘drug addiction,’ implicitly informs the negative treatment of people on food stamps; landlords refusing to accept subsidized housing vouchers as rent; the general perception that welfare recipients only have children to receive a “welfare check;” the regulation of low-income women of color’s fertility; and the scapegoating of recipients as constantly burdening the government to take care of them. Despite the fact that the current TANF program carries a 5-year term limit, along with a variety of other requirements and restrictions, the false perception of low-income women of color having endless benefits to support drug habits persists.

Nationally, financial assistance to poor families represents approximately 0.7% of the federal budget. Here in Louisiana, the number of people receiving cash assistance through TANF has been declining since President Bill Clinton signed the 1996 welfare reform legislation; and since Hurricane Katrina, the numbers of families receiving assistance has decreased by 74 %.

Despite the claims of lawmakers like Rep. John LaBruzzo, cash assistance payments in Louisiana represents less than 1% of the state budget, with:

§ Less than .3% of the population receiving assistance through the Family Independence Temporary Assistance Program or FITAP (13,237 people out a population of 4.5 million)

§ The average public assistance grant being only $189 a month for a family of three, and

§ 74% of receipts in the state being children (only 3,656 of the 13,237 recipients are adults)

The reality of welfare in Louisiana clearly illustrates drug testing has nothing to do with saving tax payers dollars and balancing state budgets, but much to do with who’s perceived as receiving benefits.

What We Need

These current actions represent yet another attempt by conservative legislators to pass criminalizing policies to restrict and police the sexuality and reproductive autonomy of subsidy-reliant women under the pretext of saving taxpayers’ dollars. The same women whose fertility and motherhood become routine targets of public debates, reproductive legislation, and policy mandates are the same women who are falsely accused of being economic burdens on the state and punished through government funded programs for being poor, thus becoming disproportionately subjected to racialized gender related poverty, violence, discrimination, and displacement.

We need legislators to take real leadership in addressing budget shortfalls not by weakening the capacity of women to care for their families, which will ultimately create more social and economic cost in the future, but by targeting inflated costs of corporations that pose dangerous risks to our communities. The efforts that have been employed to police the lives of poor women could be better used to:

§ Regulate dangerous industries and out-of-control military spending that threaten the social, economic, and environmental health of families and communities;

§ Increase the efficacy and availability of social programs designed to improve the living conditions of poor communities;

§ Support responsible, accessible, and affordable public services and resources that respect the reproductive and economic autonomy of women of color and low-income women;

§ Prioritize poor women’s economic and social needs to take care of their families in safe and healthy environments.

Legislation that is appropriately funded and provide for childcare resources, family treatment programs, mental health services, non-discriminatory employment opportunities, affordable and decent housing, and safe and non-coercive health care services is needed to assist low-income families not punitive, ineffective, and expensive drug testing initiatives that restrict the opportunities and life chances of low-income women and their families.

Formed in 2006 to address the hidden and persistent racialized gender-based forms of violence, neglect, and inequality laid bare and exacerbated by the disasters of 2005, the Women’s Health & Justice Initiative (WHJI) is a feminist of color organization based in New Orleans that engages in public education campaigns, research projects, and grassroots organizing activities to improve the social and economic health of women of color and our communities. WHJI advocates against punitive social policies, practices, and behaviors that restrict, exploit, regulate, and criminalize the bodies and lives of low-income and working class women of color most vulnerable to violence, poverty, and population control policies of blame, displacement, and social neglect. Our organizing challenges the social invisibility of the various forms of social exclusion, violence, marginality, and socio-economic vulnerability women color and poor women experience, contend with, and fight against —by staving off attempts to further undermine our human rights—while forging new opportunities to build the capacity of our communities to address the social justice implications of women’s economic and social needs to live in healthy and safe environments.

Photo Above: Staff of the New Orleans Women's Health Clinic, 2007.