“New political norms, tactics, and strategies emerged to complement this more radical assemblage of interests for Black social and spatial justice.” “Without the restrictions of uplift ideology, religious morality, and respectability politics structuring political opportunities, more deviant Black interests had the ability to assert power through public housing developments,” Rodriguez writes.
The housing developments were a type of “political opportunity structure” for people whose interests were not well-represented by the city’s ruling political coalition, Rodriguez writes. At times during the 75-year interim, though, public housing tenants, particularly Black women, found ways to use the structures of public housing to access public resources and advocate for their interests, writes Akira Drake Rodriguez in her new book, Diverging Space for Deviants: The Politics of Atlanta’s Public Housing. Both its creation and its demise were pushed forward by a biracial coalition of civic and business leaders, with public housing first seen as a solution to a problem and later as a problem to be solved through demolition and redevelopment. The City of Atlanta opened its first public housing development in 1936 and demolished its last one in 2011.
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