Social Service Review

@socservreview.bsky.social

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Since 1927, publishing thought-provoking, original research on pressing social issues and social welfare policies, organizations, and practices. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/ssr/current

Two tweets from SSR's Twitter account on November 29, 2022. The first reads, "In our current issue, we have hidden a picture of a very good dog in a randomly chosen article." The second reads, "This was a joke. But now your dutiful Twitterer is wondering about raising the possibility with the editors..."
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Social work has traditionally been concerned with the welfare of humans, a mission that some scholars want to expand to include other beings. How can concern for nonhumans & the natural environment best be integrated with the profession’s commitment to social justice? Although commentators have made several proposals, few have critically examined the dilemmas or trade-offs that may await a more expansive social work. Examining such challenges in environmental movements, we identify 3 logics by which some varieties of environmentalism have perpetuated inequity among humans. We then explore how diverse movements for environmental justice—which make equity among humans central to environmental activism—offer a path forward. Environmental justice foregrounds dilemmas raised by integrating concern for humans & nonhumans, & it offers principles for addressing these dilemmas that are rooted in a living tradition of practice. This makes environmental justice the best paradigm for social work.
Census enumeration distributes resources and power and extends potential surveillance and punishment. Given these dual capacities, attempts to insert a citizenship question on the 2020 US Census heightened expectations of depressed participation among undocumented immigrants. We draw on data from 63 undocumented Latin American residents of Chicago to understand decision-making processes across 15 months of enumeration. Analyzing two interview waves conducted before and during the count (N=126), we find broad census uptake despite widespread perceptions of threat. Respondents situated themselves as invested community members embedded in state systems and explained census participation as a claim for investment in neighborhoods and families as well as recognition of their existence. Contributing to the concept of bureaucratic visibility, this article extends scholarship on system avoidance to illuminate how undocumented immigrants engage the bureaucratic arm of the state (continued)
In the past 3 decades, there has been a general contraction of social support while the high-cost lending industry has expanded. We examine how state-level variation in the generosity of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families cash assistance affects the distribution of high-cost payday lenders across local communities from 2001-2017. When TANF support is relatively more generous, the density of payday lending storefronts increases in local communities, all else equal, suggesting that benefits are not enough to replace payday lending demand. Yet local communities also experience slower lender growth as TANF generosity increases, suggesting that the payday lending industry is less growth oriented under these conditions. Further analyses considering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and unemployment insurance confirm that the payday lending industry is sensitive to social program conditions. Findings suggest that the generosity of cash assistance can be leveraged (continued)
Abstract: Using the records of hundreds of thousands of court cases filed across the US between 2010 and 2016, we assess whether residence in public housing reduces the risk of facing an eviction filing. Comparing with similar sets of private market renters, we demonstrate that those living in public housing face equal risk. Once filed against, public housing residents face a far higher risk of serial eviction filing. Within states, public and private market serial eviction filing rates are strongly correlated—evidence that public housing property managers respond to local eviction policies in ways that resemble their private market counterparts. We report on in-depth interviews with property managers from two housing authorities in Ohio. Property managers use the courts to facilitate rent collection in jurisdictions that enable the practice, but doing so does not necessarily result in better outcomes on evaluations conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Abstract: Policy makers at the federal, state, & local levels responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with a broad array of policies that were intended to prevent housing instability among renters. Eviction moratoriums were an important part of this policy landscape. Recent evidence indicates that these moratoriums were effective in reducing eviction-filing rates, but many questions remain about their impacts. Drawing on 60 qualitative interviews with renters in three states (Connecticut, Florida, and Ohio) who had experienced eviction or eviction risk during the pandemic, we examine how renters interpreted, experienced, and navigated the moratoriums; how moratoriums shaped their well-being and housing security; how racism may have shaped policy effects; & how these experiences differed across a varied policy landscape. Our findings demonstrate how moratoriums supported renters and how they fell short, offering important lessons for future eviction-prevention and civil-legal policy making.