Autonomous Problem-Solving and the Creation of Community-Controlled Housing Alternatives in the United States
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Date
2022-10-04
Authors
Farrington, Alex
Journal Title
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
In this dissertation project, I introduce the concept of autonomous problem-solving and apply it to housing struggles in the United States. Autonomous problem-solving is a mode of collective action in which everyday people experiment with self-organized and self-implemented solutions to pressing problems in their community. I show how this concept highlights a set of empirical cases that contemporary scholarship on public problem-solving has failed to address. I then analyze two cases in which organizers used autonomous problem-solving to grapple with housing precarity in their communities. I examine the creation of the first community land trust by civil rights activists in Georgia in 1969 and the creation of Dignity Village (one of the first autonomous houseless villages) in Portland in 2001. In both cases, participants generated novel forms of community-controlled housing by reconfiguring conventional property relations in creative ways.
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Keywords
autonomy, housing, policy, problem-solving