Trinity College assistant professor of urban studies Laura Humm Delgado has received an American Postdoctoral Research Leave Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) to study United South End Settlements. Delgado’s research, titled “Unsettled: Gentrification’s influence on one social service organization’s ability to serve older adults of color over fifty years,” explores the challenges faced by social service organizations when social spaces disappear.
“This research focuses on how gentrification in the South End of Boston impacted Black and Latino older adults and how they’re served by this organization,” she said. “This organization for decades was a champion of protecting housing for older adults of color, providing services, free lunches, arts classes, and more, but at the same time they faced a lot of challenges from gentrification, from welfare reform, and a shift in the nonprofit funding atmosphere. So eventually they ended up ending their senior programs. My research looks at the complicated forces that organizations like this face.
She adds, “We’re becoming an increasingly urbanized world. Most of the world’s population lives in cities. Cities can be wonderful places with lots of opportunities, but they also can be rough places that are hard to get ahead in. They can help us understand environmental sustainability, labor markets, housing markets, segregation, and racism. A lot of things that affect people’s everyday lives can be understood in an urban context very well.”