Q&A with Fulbright Recipient Gerald Dickinson ’09

Pittsburgh native Gerald Dickinson ’09 was recently awarded a Fulbright Grant to work and study at the University of Witwatersrand School of Law and the Centre for Applied Legal Studies in Johannesburg, South Africa.

A member of the College Honors Program with a double major in political science and sociology, Dickinson’s honors thesis will serve as a springboard for the work he will pursue in Johannesburg.

Dickinson, who was captain of the men’s soccer team for three years and was recently selected as the 2008-2009 Crusader of the Year, offers some insight into his thesis, titled “The Section 8 Program: The role of housing policy design in facilitating black neighborhood movement and social mobility.”

Q: What did your thesis examine and why did you choose that topic? A: My project examined the effectiveness of the Section 8 program. Section 8 is a social policy that helps low-income families afford rental housing. For my project, I was looking specifically at low-income African-American and African immigrants, because they are historically dealt the blow of sustainment, concentration and segregation more than any other group in American history. So, it’s relevant to examine how public policy affects these Black Americans and African immigrants.

Q: How did you go about researching this? A: Through qualitative research, I actually looked specifically at the experiences of these black recipients. There were three that I interviewed in Worcester, and I also interviewed a staff member at the Worcester Housing Authority. Then I compared and contrasted the responses in terms of questions that had to do with counseling assistance, questions that had to do with social mobility and social capital.

Q: What were your findings? A: I really found that the policy design of the Section 8 Program is ill-informing. With the limited counseling assistance design, it’s poorly informing these families about where the best neighborhoods are to move, and that’s a problem because when you’re not informing individuals to the best of your ability, then you’re denying them their personal autonomy to make an informed decision about where to go. So, I found that all three of these families have moved to concentrated, low-income neighborhoods by using a voucher, which is not what the voucher is supposed to do. It’s supposed to move them into better neighborhoods where they once were. So we’re finding a problem within the policy design and I have to say that I can’t necessarily argue that this is a problem on the national level. What I can say is the WHA policy design is the same policy that every other Section 8 program in the United States uses. So from that I can infer that there are probably some of the same issues going on in other places, but I can’t say for sure.

Q: What are the flaws of the policy? A: For example, one of the quotes I had presented stated that the counselors don’t want to saturate the families with too much information during these two-hour briefing sessions. By saying that they don’t want to saturate them, they’re assuming that because these are low-income families, they can’t necessarily take in all that information, that they’re not capable of doing it. So they merely have a two-hour briefing session that limits how much information the counselors give. There’s a problem there, and it’s implemented into the policy design of Section 8.

Q: Did your research reveal any possible solutions? A: The solution obviously is that you have to inform the families more and better, and that requires hiring individual counselors to be with these families and talk to them specifically. It’s not just having this mere two hour briefing session that gives them the nuts and bolts of what the voucher does; it’s going beyond that and actually helping these families find the right neighborhoods and informing them about them. It’s also a part of a change in mentality of staff at any housing authority in that they shouldn’t look at these families as these deviant individuals that can’t take in too much information. They’re not just little nomads that live out of boxes; they are people that need the benefit of a voucher. So they need to treat these people like individuals, like human beings, and not try to put upon this paternalistic viewpoint that they can’t help themselves.

Q: Will you be continuing this type of study in South Africa next year? A: I would say that this project has been a catalyst for my proposal in Johannesburg because it’s interesting to me and I want to continue it on an international level. I want to see how policy design affects black South Africans. Now, that’s a very simplistic way of using the comparison. I mean, South Africa and the United States are two different worlds, so it’s not that simple. There are a lot more intricate details that go into play when you’re looking at policy design there and here. At the smallest level, though, the work that I’ve done here will inform my work over there.

By Anthony Curotto ’09