I want to say a few things about a paper I recently published in @HousPolDebate. The paper is about how the policing of federally subsidized housing has evolved over time and major policy changes (legal protections for tenants and the replacement of public housing with vouchers).

Prior to 1968, welfare recipients were subject to "man in the house" rules which banned women on welfare from having men live in their homes. Aid was targeted at single women with children and intended to replace the absent male breadwinner in the nuclear family.

So welfare could be withdrawn from women if they were known to be living with men, the idea being that if a man was present, he should be earning the family wage. The enforcement of these rules, including through midnight raids, applied to families in public housing as well.

A documentary called The Pruitt-Igoe Myth documents this in detail. It shows the precondition of family separation that was applied to Black families moving in, as well as the random searches of women's apartments to enforce the policy once they arrived. http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/ 

For more background, I'd also recommend Candace Borders' article "Remembering Black Women in St. Louis’s Pruitt-Igoe Housing Projects" https://www.aaihs.org/remembering-black-women-in-st-louiss-pruitt-igoe-housing-projects/

The "man in the house" rules were struck down by the courts in 1968, as a violation of children's rights to assistance. But what I learned when interviewing Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) renters in Los Angeles County suggests that this type of family regulation continues.

I learned that the voucher program's "unauthorized tenant" rule routinely gets enforced just like those old man in the house rules. Except it's often white residents watching, resenting, and filing complaints about their voucher renting neighbors, who tend to be Black women.

Complaints can be based on things as mundane as two cars in a driveway. But when they trigger inspections, the housing authority can interpret mail addressed to others, a second toothbrush, clothes perceived as belonging to someone else, etc, as evidence of hidden tenants.

Being found in violation of these rules can lead to eviction. So tenants react to this surveillance and policing by stopping everyday romantic, social, and family activities that don't even violate the rules. An unfounded complaint is not worth the risk in a hostile bureaucracy.

This is an example of how the pre-1968 ways that Black women were policed in welfare and public housing have persisted, despite changes in law and public policy. They transformed into private-public forms of policing that produce similar outcomes and power dynamics.

If you found this interesting, here's the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/GUAG4KEFQPGTYXW4U2CV/full?target=10.1080/10511482.2020.1778056 Feel free to email me for a copy if you can't access it.