ABSTRACT
Houston’s 1982–1987 Recession created a severe crisis in the city’s apartment housing market. As thousands of unemployed, middle-class tenants left Houston, landlords in the city’s western sector restructured apartment operations to rebuild renter populations with new Latino immigrants. Fieldwork in a large apartment complex found that changes made by management to attract Latino immigrants helped these newcomers develop survival strategies. When the recession ended, evolving relations between new immigrants and other tenants helped resist, and cope with, a second restructuring process implemented by apartment management to attract higher-income renters. Throughout Houston’s west side, settlement and coping activities of new Latino immigrants have changed the material and symbolic environments.
