Coercion Through Procedure

Abstract This paper examines a recurring pattern in public housing administration whereby procedural mechanisms—notice timing, silence, selective enforcement, and escalation—are used coercively following tenant boundary assertion and grievance filing. Drawing on socio-technical systems theory, critical race theory, administrative law scholarship, and feminist analyses of coercive control, the paper introduces the concept of coercion through procedure: a mode of institutional power that extracts compliance by exhausting caretakers—particularly mothers—until they offer self-sacrifice to protect dependents. The paper argues that such cases are routinely misclassified as “weak” not due to lack of merit, but due to institutional non-cooperation, reputational risk, and labor intensity. Self-representation emerges not as a preference but as a forced adaptation within an environment of risk sorting and advocacy withdrawal. The analysis situates fear-inducing enforcement behaviors (e.g., repeated door banging, holiday notices, delayed default activation) within a framework of retaliatory sequencing, demonstrating how administrative systems punish boundary-setting while preserving formal neutrality.