By Tom Parisi
U.S. Rep. Bill Foster recently issued a news release announcing that NIU student Adrienne Holloway has been awarded a federal research grant of nearly $15,000 to study affordable housing issues in Chicago’s suburbs.
Holloway is working as a research associate for the Center for Governmental Studies while also working toward her Ph.D. in political science, with a concentration in public policy and public administration. She holds a master’s degree in public administration from Baruch College, N.Y.
Holloway will study seven years worth of data to see how well suburbs in DuPage County are absorbing increased numbers of Housing Choice Voucher recipients. The Chicago Housing Authority now manages more than 36,000 such vouchers, many of them provided to tenants displaced by demolition of inner-city housing projects.
The grant is through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Early Doctoral Student Research Grant program. The program enables doctoral students to cultivate their research skills through the preparation of research manuscripts that focus on policy-relevant housing and urban development issues.
“Receiving this grant is recognition of the validity of Adrienne’s work,” said NIU Public Administration Professor Heidi Koenig, who is Holloway’s adviser. “She has attended conferences and pulled together a lot of interest in what she intends to study.”
The study also will investigate whether suburban municipalities view affordable housing as an asset. DuPage County is among the top 50 wealthiest counties in the nation.
“My research will examine the particular mix of services and legislative activity that enables municipalities to offer housing at various price points. This includes analyzing economic development processes, municipal ordinances and social service delivery networks,” Holloway said. “These factors provide indicators of a community’s openness to groups from different income levels.
“It is my hope that my research will provide housing practitioners with analyses they can use to develop informed policy to address their respective affordable housing concerns,” she added.