Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from Part 1 and Part 2 ]

 

In our examination of Harvard doctoral candidate Laura Tach’s remarkable findings that in HOPE VI properties, incumbent holdovers do not mix with newcomers, largely because the newcomers see things as improved from the past whereas newcomers see the same things as the past continuing into the present.

 

“The future becomes the present,
the present becomes the past,
and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it.”

 

Filtering Ms. Tach’s findings through the lens of my own experience with mixed-income affordable housing, we have two very different interpretive frames that derive from the very different personal paths newcomers and incumbents took to become neighbors:

 

 

Why does this matter? 

 

Because it strikes to the heart of our rationale for income mixing:

 

Policymakers frequently justify mixed income redevelopment initiatives by drawing upon evidence from social science research on the negative consequences of living in high poverty neighborhoods.  To support this argument, they cite evidence that residents of high poverty neighborhoods are socially isolated from mainstream cultural and social institutions (Wilson 1987, 1996; Anderson 1990), have less access to social networks that provide employment opportunities and other resources (Elliott et al. 1999; Campbell and Lee 1992; Rankin and Quane 2000), are less willing and able to intervene in neighborhood affairs to maintain social control (Sampson, Raudenbush, and Earls 1997), and wield less influence in city politics (Bursik and Gramsick 1993; Logan and Molotch 1987). 

 

Harbor Point, Boston: public housing revitalization through de-densifying

 

Using these stylized facts, policymakers and academics alike have argued that increasing the presence of higher income neighbors will reduce social isolation and increase the self-sufficiency of low-income residents by providing access to middle class social networks and role models and improving social organization and social control within neighborhoods (Naparstek et al. 1997, 2000).

 

Except that, if Ms. Tach’s sampling proves representative and recurring in other HOPE VI sites, the higher-income residents aren’t the role model.

 

You are supposed to be my role model

And yet you incessantly stand on your head

Do you think, at your age, it is right?

 

I question this stylized account of the social processes that result when high poverty neighborhoods are redeveloped into mixed income communities.

 

If anything, it’s the other way around.

 

Or it may simply be the extremely poor environs that drag residents down:

 

Many residents in high poverty neighborhoods espouse values and desires consistent with dominant cultural practices, such as attending college (Kao and Tienda 1991), getting married (Edin and Kefalas 2005), staying out of trouble with the law (Anderson 1990), and working a steady job (Newman 1999), despite the structural obstacles they face in achieving these desires.  

 

Columbia Point, Boston, before anything was built

 

The description of high poverty neighborhoods as socially isolated may therefore be an overly simple way of thinking about how culture and role models operate in a neighborhood context (Small and Newman 2001). The extent to which the presence of higher income neighbors would alter the cultural models of behavior available to youth in high poverty neighborhoods is therefore unclear.

 

Columbia Point, 1986, just before its renovation

 

It’s not a lack of social networks:

 

Social Networks

 

It is clear that personal connections play an important role in finding employment for low income workers (Granovetter 1973; Newman 1999; Rankin 2003).  However, the social networks of the urban poor are actually much more diverse and less detached from the middle class than is commonly argued (Oliver 1988; Hurlbert, Beggs, and Haines 2000; Newman 1999; Pattillo McCoy 1999).

 

Nor is it, at least for HOPE VI, lack of political clout:

 

Politics & Institutions   

 

Finally, institutional resource models argue that low income neighborhoods lack the economic and political power to attract city resources and economic investment.  High poverty neighborhoods are at a disadvantage in the metropolitan power structure that makes crucial decisions about land use, the public budget, and economic development (Bursik and Gramsick 1993; Logan and Molotch 1987).

 

That’s certainly true for the pre-HOPE VI development, but not afterwards. 

 

HOPE-VI redevelopment also provided funds and resources for the resident taskforce, which has regular meetings with management and uses its funds to improve the neighborhood.

 

HOPE VI, Lucien Homes, Philadelphia: high-rises into row houses

 

Mayors love HOPE VI and are politically committed to seeing it succeed.

 

The project also received a great deal of positive publicity upon receiving the HOPE-VI grant, giving residents stronger political influence on city officials.  

 

By the time I as done reading her paper, I had become convinced Ms. Tach is right:

 

The findings presented here suggest that the process of redevelopment can improve neighborhood conditions without necessarily relying on the mechanisms presented in Figure 1 [namely, that higher income residents serve as role models — Ed.]. 

 

I think this is very big stuff.  If it’s correct, it means that:

 

1. The goal of income mixing is not role models, but simple deconcentration and choice.
2. In mixed-income, the management challenge isn’t the extremely lows, it’s the low-moderate. 
3. To draw low-moderate residents into the community, you must go beyond a cheap rent.  You have to make them feel part of the social network.
4. Social programs in mixed-income developments need to appeal to the higher-income, and must encourage income mixing. 

 

It turns our mixed-income social upside down.

 

Maybe we have to rethink our housing models

 

For a copy of Ms. Tach’s work in progress, email her at the address you can find here.

 

 

 

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