Book Review: "Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality"

Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality by Robin Bartram. University of Chicago Press, 2022. 

This is "a startling look at the power and perspectives of city building inspectors as they navigate unequal housing landscapes." Though we rarely see them at work, building inspectors have the power to significantly shape our lives through their discretionary decisions. The building inspectors of Chicago are at the heart of this author's analysis of how individuals impact - or attempt to impact - housing inequality. 

Drawing on her extensive research into code enforcement in Chicago, Bartram shows that building inspectors often make surprising choices about who to cite (and who not to cite) and discuss how these choices underscore the continuing challenge of persistent inequality.

In Stacked Decks, she reveals surprising patterns in the judgment calls inspectors make when deciding whom to cite for building code violations. These predominantly white, male inspectors largely recognize that they work within an unequal housing landscape that systematically disadvantages poor people and people of color through redlining, property taxes, and city spending that favor wealthy neighborhoods. This book illustrates the uphill battle inspectors face when trying to change a housing system that works against those with the fewest resources.

The book argues that cities are stacked decks. They are sites of vast disparities in racial wealth, health, education, and well-being. But this stacked deck also motivates. Disparities in the city inspire and organize action. Built environments - and the inequity they embody - motivate frontline workers like building code inspectors. But features of this unequal world also hinder the actions they inspire and work as justice blockers. This tension - between motivation and obstruction - makes inequality particularly stubborn and hard to change. This book is a story of how the stacked deck gets reproduced even when people are trying to do the opposite.

 Results of a Recent Study

Study Finds Baltimore Children who moved from High-Poverty to Low-Poverty Areas had Improved Asthma

The health of Baltimore children with asthma in a subsidized program assisting them to move from high-poverty to low-poverty neighborhoods significantly improved, according to a study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The children experienced fewer asthma attacks after moving and had symptoms on fewer days. These were improvements on par with medication used to treat the chronic condition, said Dr. Craig Pollack, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Hopkins School of Nursing and a lead author of the study.

Asthma constricts airways in the lungs and causes wheezing, chest tightness, coughing, and trouble breathing. It affects 13.7% of adults in Baltimore compared to 9% across the state and country. About a third of Baltimore high school students have been told by a doctor or nurse that they have asthma, compared to about a fourth statewide. The city also has the highest rate of emergency department visits due to asthma in Maryland. Nationwide, Black children are two to three times more likely to have asthma than white children, and have more than twice the risk for emergency department visits and hospitalizations because of the disease, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study found that a major reason why children’s asthma got better after their families moved was because their new neighborhoods had fewer stressors. “Housing mobility programs that help families overcome the barriers to moving can also impact health,” Dr. Pollack said. “As policymakers and practitioners are thinking about the cost of these programs, they should consider the health benefits as well.”

Dr. Corinne Keet, a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and another author on the study, commented "Anyone living in Baltimore understands the impact of violence and poverty on people’s health,” she said. “I mean, it’s pervasive.”

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Sources: Angela Roberts, "Study: Baltimore children moved from high-poverty to low-poverty areas saw their asthma improve," Baltimore Sun, May 16, 2023.