Journal of Social Equity and Public Administration

Revisiting the Responsibility of Care: Lessons from South Los Angeles

Sean Angst

California State University Fullerton

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9600-2382

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24926/jsepa.v4i2.6856

Keywords: care, organizations, structural inequality, collaboration, community

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Abstract

This article advances a framework of care for public administration as a foundation for promoting social justice and strengthening democratic governance. Drawing on 10 years of community-based research in Los Angeles, the analysis examines how care is enacted in contexts shaped by public sector retrenchment. Across multiple projects spanning affordable housing, sustainable employment, quality childcare, and community-led cultural development, care emerged as a consistent analytic theme and was subsequently examined to distill lessons for public administrators. The findings show that care is practiced through efforts that sustain material well-being, uphold dignity, and facilitate collective agency. Rather than treating care as an informal or supplementary activity, the article demonstrates how community organizations and residents enact care as a form of governance—often compensating for gaps in public systems—while also revealing both the limits of relying on community-based care alone and the opportunities for public institutions to engage care more deliberately.

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Author Biography

Sean Angst, California State University Fullerton

Sean Angst (he/him) (sangst@fullerton.edu) is an assistant professor at California State University Fullerton. His research focuses on housing, community development, and racial justice. For the past 10 years, Dr. Angst’s work has examined the impacts of declining affordability and neighborhood change on survival and stress in South Los Angeles.

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