How It Works: Recovering Citizens in Post-Welfare Philadelphia
Robert P. Fairbanks
Abstract
Of the some sixty thousand vacant properties in Philadelphia, half of them are abandoned row houses. Taken as a whole, these derelict homes symbolize the city's plight in the wake of industrial decline. But a closer look reveals a remarkable new phenomenon—street-level entrepreneurs repurposing hundreds of these empty houses as facilities for recovering addicts and alcoholics. This book is a study of this recovery house movement and its place in the new urban order wrought by welfare reform. To find out what life is like in these recovery houses, it goes inside one particular home in the Kensi ... More
Of the some sixty thousand vacant properties in Philadelphia, half of them are abandoned row houses. Taken as a whole, these derelict homes symbolize the city's plight in the wake of industrial decline. But a closer look reveals a remarkable new phenomenon—street-level entrepreneurs repurposing hundreds of these empty houses as facilities for recovering addicts and alcoholics. This book is a study of this recovery house movement and its place in the new urban order wrought by welfare reform. To find out what life is like in these recovery houses, it goes inside one particular home in the Kensington neighborhood. Operating without a license and unregulated by any government office, the recovery house provides food, shelter, company, and a bracing self-help philosophy to addicts in an area saturated with drugs and devastated by poverty. From this starkly vivid close-up, the book widens the lens to reveal the intricate relationships the recovery houses have forged with public welfare, the formal drug treatment sector, criminal justice institutions, and the local government.
Keywords:
Philadelphia,
row houses,
industrial decline,
addicts,
alcoholics,
recovery house movement,
shelter,
poverty,
public welfare,
local government
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226234083 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: February 2013 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226234113.001.0001 |
