Federal Intervention

Abstract

The tenant selection and assignment rules were designed by the federal government to limit bureaucratic discretion and to achieve the reformers’ version of equity. Previous chapters have demonstrated that such factors as work conditions, client rejection, bureaucratic norms, third-party influence, and lower-level resistance undermined the implementation of the rules. As is evident in the following discussion of the feedback and control mechanisms which operated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the strength of the enforcement powers of the Department of Housing and Urban Development over the Boston Housing Authority were never fully defined or tested. Significant but often officially unacknowledged compromises apparently developed as a direct result of the unwillingness of either party to provoke an outright showdown.