Building Community: Principles for Social Work Practice in Housing Settings

Urban development projects have shown that it takes more than bricks and mortar to build a community. If they are to survive and flourish, communities need to have more than secure housing, available jobs, and good schools; they must also have a sense of community. This sense of community is critical in preventing housing deterioration and substandard school performance and serves as the foundation for healthy families. Feeling part of a community fosters a sense of ownership (Newman, 1972) and serves as a deterrent to alienation. This sense of belonging acts as a strong defense against environmental and social factors that prey on many residents and social work services, provided in a variety of modalities, can enhance this community-building process. This article reviews the experience of Phipps Houses, a nonprofit housing developer, and its affiliate, Phipps Houses Community Development Corporation, in their attempt to foster a sense of community and family well-being in two fully rehabilitated housing developments it sponsored in a community well known for poverty and unsuccessful attempts at renewal. Three facets of Phipps Houses' identity combine to distinguish it from other projects discussed in the professional literature: 1. Phipps Houses is a private, nonprofit corporation that, with its affiliate, provides both housing and social services for tenants. Although it is not uncommon for municipal housing authorities to directly provide social services to tenants, it is very rare to find a nonprofit developer who does so. 2. Phipps Houses primarily produces permanent housing for the general public, as opposed to transitional housing or housing for a special population. 3. Phipps Houses operates within the social, political, and economic context of the 1990s. Although other programs may deal with one or two of these arenas, Phipps Houses appears to be unique in addressing all three. With some notable exceptions, such as NASW's (1987) recommendation that the federal government consider housing as a social utility and permanently ensure services to meet the essential physical and social needs of tenants, Powers's (1979) analysis of the housing and social service linkage through history, and Morrison's (1984) study of locality development with tenants in a changing community, there have been few reports in the literature over the past 20 years that link housing and social work services. However, beginning with the work of British social worker Octavia Hill (1875), the rich literature of past community development activities provides a backdrop and professional legacy of work with programs combining housing and social services. Social workers have struggled with the interplay of social work and housing since the reformers of the 19th century, the work of early social work theorists, the programs of the New Deal, and the initiatives of the War on Poverty and its successors. Recently, along with the development of groups such as the Association of Community Organization and Social Administration (Mizrahi & Morrison, 1993), there has come renewed dedication to social work with impoverished communities, and the profession is again looking for useful models of service (Coulton, 1995; Well, 1996). Phipps Houses Group is a contemporary exemplar of housing development that illustrates practice principles that can be applied in other sites in deteriorated neighborhoods. This voluntary sector model of multiple relationships with residents should become more common as direct federal housing development continues to diminish and increased attention is placed on the need for integrated social work services in housing settings. Although the authors do not suggest that all people need supportive living services, they believe that tenants in poor and distressed communities need social work services that focus on facilitating family well-being and community development. In most neighborhoods, independent social services agencies and other providers attempt to reach out to residents, but residents are generally left to seek services on their own initiative. …