Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Preserving Project-Based Section 8 Within Tight Rental Markets In New England, Megan K. Reagon

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Masters Projects

In New England alone, 57, 508 privately owned, affordable housing units, otherwise known as project-based Section 8, are at risk of converting to market rate housing by 2017. Even though community-based organizations and active residents, in conjunction with local governments, are utilizing federal and state preservation tools, these units are still at risk due to market pressures and administrative burdens.

With proper policy intervention, expired Section 8 contracts, and future expiring contracts, may sustain a reasonable level of affordability. This study assesses the on-going affordability of recently expired Section 8 units within New England. With a broader definition of affordability, …

Improving Flexibility To Increase Housing Affordability, Russell L. Pandres

School of Public Policy Capstones

This paper utilizes Census Bureau and USPS-HUD data sets to examine the relationship between address vacancy and percent of residents who are housing cost burden at the Census Tract level. This research determines there is a statistically significant positive linear relationship for four of the six New England States. Additionally, I examine spatial autocorrelation patterns among the residuals to determine if error term is clustered, dispersed, or random. Finally, I compare my results to how building codes disincentive rehabilitating buildings and incentivize greenfield development. I offer a number of policy suggestions to assist at the local, state, and Federal level …

Digging And Destruction: Artifact Collecting As Meaningful Social Practice, Siobhan M. Hart, Elizabeth S. Chilton

Anthropology Department Faculty Publication Series

Collected sites are commonly seen as places requiring expert intervention to ‘save the past’ from destruction by artifact collectors and looters. Despite engaging directly with the physical effects of collecting and vandalism, little attention is given to the meanings of these actions and the contributions they make to the stories told about sites or the past more broadly. Professional archaeologists often position their engagement with site destruction as heritage ‘salvage’ and regard collecting as lacking any value in contemporary society. Repositioning collecting as meaningful social practice and heritage action raises the question: in failing to understand legal or illegal collecting …