Public Service Values and Disparate Performance: The Case of Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program

Authors

Melissa Gomez HernandezFollow

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Major/Program

Public Affairs

First Advisor's Name

Mohamad G. Alkadry

First Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Chair

Second Advisor's Name

Shaoming Cheng

Second Advisor's Committee Title

Committee member

Third Advisor's Name

Susannah B. Ali

Third Advisor's Committee Title

Committee member

Fourth Advisor's Name

Matthew D. Marr

Fourth Advisor's Committee Title

Committee Member

Keywords

Section 8, Housing, Public Service Values, Public Administrators

Date of Defense

6-21-2018

Abstract

Public administration scholars accept that public service values guide administrators’ behavior. This guidance also derives from social and cultural values that motivate administrators’ individual attitudes. A part of the field recognizes that public servants play an active role during the implementation process through their daily use of discretion. Nevertheless, public administrators’ values and attitudes are rarely linked to policy implementation and organizational performance. In consequence, public policy evaluation seldom considers the role of values and attitudes of those implementing policy.

This study examines how public administrators’ values and attitudes towards citizens shape policy implementation and influence organizational and program performance. The implementation and results of Section 8 HCV Program serve as case study to address the linkage between public service values and performance. The Section 8 HCV is the federal government's major program that assists low-income families, elderly and disabled people to afford decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market. The Program allows participants to choose any housing that meets its requirements.

This research hypothesizes that environmental and organizational factors impose a toll on organizational and policy performance and that public administrators’ values and attitudes towards recipients buffer some of these effects. The study employs a quantitative methods approach to examine and combine demographic characteristics of the communities that surround Public Housing Authorities -where the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program is implemented-, statistic indicators of the local housing market, Section 8 HCV structural factors of operation, levels of poverty and race desegregation in vouchers recipient, and the quality of their neighborhoods, to establish a correlation between Public Housing Authorities’ poor performance and less advantageous environmental factors, and vice versa.

I conducted semi-structured interviews among Section 8 HCV Program’s case managers, directors and front-line practitioners in Public Housing Authorities in the states of Florida and California to identify the Public Service Values-based strategies that influence program’s implementation, and both, organizational and program’s performance.

The quantitative evidence collected and analyzed in this dissertation indicates that environmental and organizational factors impose a toll on Public Housing Authorities and Section 8 HCV program’s performance. Meanwhile, the qualitative portion of the study suggests that public administrators’ values and attitudes towards recipients permeate the implementation process and influence Section 8 HCV program’s results.

Identifier

FIDC006849

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Hernandez, Melissa Gomez, "Public Service Values and Disparate Performance: The Case of Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program" (2018). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3785.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3785