Susan Greenbaum
Title: Professor of Anthropology
Specialty: Neighborhood blight, low-income housing, Afro-Cubans in Tampa.
Contact Information:
USF College of Arts and Sciences
SOC 107
Phone: (813) 974-0777
E-mail this USF Collaborative Partner
Details:
Educational and professional background:
Ph.D. in Anthropology, 1981, University of Kansas.
Topics of expertise:
Neighborhood blight, low-income housing, Afro-Cubans in Tampa.
Have you ever had a USF Collaborative grant? If so, what was your Collaborative grant and what did you learn from it?
“Cheryl Rodriguez (African Studies) and I had a Collaborative grant to study the impact of displacing 1100 families from College Hill and Ponce de Leon in 2000. We learned that the move involved a lot of hardship and unremunerated costs, that about a third of the families were simply switched into another public housing complex with conditions no better than previously, and that there is a lack of concern by HUD, and others who ought to care, about what has happened to the dislocated residents.”
What type of research have you done that has to do with children and families?
“We have interviewed about 60 low-income women, most with children, who experienced the HOPE VI relocations. The children experience particular problems with school disruption, loss of friends, and new places with new gangs. Recreational facilities in the new neighborhoods are mostly inadequate. Discontented and restless youth wander streets and frighten their new neighbors, fueling discord between old and new residents of these areas.”
Briefly describe any local or national publicity you may have received because of your research with children and families:
“We were awarded an NSF grant to do a follow up study on the relocation experiences of former public housing residents in two neighborhoods in the general vicinity of USF. I also published a book on Afro-Cubans in Tampa that won a major national award and a second award from the Florida Historical Society. (More than Black: Afro-Cubans in Tampa, Univ. Press of Florida, 2002).”
What have you learned from your research that you wish every professional (your colleagues) knew?
“Neighborhood blight is not caused by poor people, nor can poverty be cured by moving them somewhere else. The plan to “deconcentrate” poor black families is ill conceived and destined to backfire. USF is especially vulnerable to the secondary effects of this mass relocation.”
What have you learned from your research that you wish every student knew?
“There is a critical shortage of low income housing that got much worse in the 1990s and is now confronting increased demand due to rising unemployment. We have grown too accustomed to having a large segment of the population with nowhere to live. Children cannot do their homework in the back seat of a car, and adults cannot look for work without an address.”
What do you think is the biggest issue in your field right now and how would you address it?
“The death of the public sector, especially subsidies for low-income housing.”
