Columbia University Press Settlement Houses Under Siege: The Struggle to Sustain Community Organizations in New York City

Settlement Houses Under Siege: The Struggle to Sustain Community Organizations in New York City examines the past, present, and future of the settlement house in particular and nonprofit community-based services as a whole. Too often viewed as an artifact of the Progressive era, the settlement house remains today, in a variety of guises, a vital instrument capable of strengthening the social capital of impoverished communities. Yet it has been under attack in recent years, particularly in New York City. Cutbacks in social service funding at federal, state, and local levels during the late 1990s left many nonprofit agencies in an essentially untenable position, dependent on a public sector interested primarily in cutting costs. Both this trend and a concomitant shift to privatization continue today, challenging the flexibility and creativity of social service administrators and undermining neighborhoods and community organizations. The findings contained in this book extend well beyond just settlement houses. The tension between the ever more restrictive business practices required by government contracts and the provision of effective social services is a powerful trend in the larger world of nonprofit agencies. Michael B. Fabricant and Robert Fisher offer a ground-level exploration of the complexity of developing and implementing a service-based community-building agenda in a hostile climate. Community building, they argue, will be the most important social service work of the twenty-first century. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with directors and staff members of social service and nonprofit agencies throughout New York City, Settlement Houses Under Siege makes the case for a holistic view of the structural pressures confronting poor communities, one that seeks not only to reposition the idea of social service and revision social assets in a conservative age but also to pose important questions about our broader civic life. Review Fabricant and Fisher offer an important and attractive argument about how the relance of non profit social service agencies on government funding works against the core missionm of such agencies.--Urban Studies Fabricant and Fisher's Settlement Houses Under Siege makes a needed contribution to our understanding of community-based settlement houses and the impact their funding sources have had on their capacity to build and strengthen community life.... Fabricant and Fisher are committed to the notion of community building and the story they tell about how much settlements have been forced to retreat from their traditional neighborhood and community building functions and commitments has profound implications. In many ways their message serves as a 'wake-up call' for social group workers...--Social Work with Groups The book systematically analyzes the role of privatization and contracting for services to changes in the way settlement houses now function... This is a timely book which deals with an important topic. By stressing the need for institutions that build community solidarity, it makes an important contribution to the literature and to community practice.--Social Development Issues A fascinating book--clear, incisive, a lesson for our times... Settlement Houses under Siege is a detailed, well-grounded and exciting text for students in social work, community education and devlopment, health and environmental studies.--Norma Baldwin "Social Work and Review " Fabricant and Fisher have given us an excellent problem analysis with an understanding about the underlying causes.--Bill Buffum "Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare " In a time which is increasingly focused on individual services, clinical work and treatment, Fabricant and Fisher have written an important book that reminds us that social work has always struggled with the duality of individual service provision and social reform activities.--Daniel Kronenfeld "Journal of Teaching in Social W