Semester Award Granted
Spring 2025
Submission Date
May 2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Philip Lewin
Abstract
By the time of the 2022 midterm elections, housing affordability had become a prominent policy issue in Florida, as post-COVID economic conditions, including rising rents and inflation, heightened political attention and debate at the local level. Two counties—Palm Beach County and Orange County—became focal points of this debate, each introducing a ballot referendum offering divergent solutions to local housing affordability challenges. Palm Beach County pursued a market-driven approach, passing a $200 million housing bond to incentivize private-sector development, while Orange County attempted a regulatory intervention through a rent stabilization ordinance, directly challenging Florida’s dominant pro-growth housing framework.
This dissertation examines the political and ideological conditions that sustain growth coalition hegemony over local housing policy and the factors that contribute to its disruption. Using Logan and Molotch’s (1987) Growth Machine Theory, Engels’ (1872) critique of housing under capitalism, and Gramsci’s (1971) concept of hegemony, this study analyzes how elite consensus, institutional constraints, and policy narratives reinforce pro-development governance, while political fractures and ideological reframing can contest it. By situating these cases within the broader political economy of housing, this research demonstrates that sustaining counter-hegemonic housing policies requires not just policy victories but an ongoing ideological and political struggle to confront the systemic exploitation embedded in neoliberal urban governance.
Recommended Citation
Campbell, Annabelle, "THE POLITICS OF HOUSING EXPLOITATION POWER, RESISTANCE, AND COMPLIANCE IN FLORIDA’S POST-COVID AFFORDABLE HOUSING CRISIS" (2025). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 86.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general/86