Neighborhood and Life Chances: How Place Matters in Modern America

Chapter 8. Reinventing Older Communities Through Mixed-Income Development: What Are We Learning from Chicago’s Public Housing Transformation?

C h a p t e r 8 Reinventing Older Communities Through Mixed-Income Development What Are We Learning from Chicago’s Public Housing Transformation? Mark L. Joseph A prevailing challenge for those working to revitalize older U.S. cities in the twenty-first century is the enduring inequity of social and economic opportunity that is starkly defined by place. Without addressing the uneven geographies of opportunity that exist throughout metropolitan areas, the United States will continue to subject significant portions of its population, predominantly racial and ethnic minorities, to a future with limited access to educational, labor market and other resources that are critical for economic mobility (Briggs 2005; Galster and Killen 1995). Furthermore, our metropolitan areas and nation as a whole, by failing to put human and built environment resources to their most productive uses, will fail to maximize their potential and global competitiveness (Brookings Institution 2007; Dreier, Mollenkopf, and Swanstrom 2004). The uneven geography of opportunity in urban America is most severely manifested in social and economically marginalized communities with high proportions of families in poverty (Jargowsky 1997). In these communities, not only do these families have to confront their own deprivation and social isolation, but they are also surrounded by other similarly challenged individuals and families (Wilson 1987, 1996). The most extreme concentrations of urban poverty in the United States are found in public housing developments, originally constructed as temporary housing for lower- and working-class families, which in the 1960s and 1970s become permanent enclaves of poverty and violence for generations of low-income, predominantly African American families (Bowly 1978; Hirsch 1998; Popkin et al. 2000a; Venkatesh 2000). Mixed-Income Development 123 In the United States, the last decade of the twentieth century saw increased federal and local government implementation of two strategies to deconcentrate these most severe manifestations of concentrated poverty (Goetz 2003; Khadduri 2001). First, through dispersal strategies, such as the Gautreaux program in Chicago, the national Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration program, and the increased allocation of housing choice (formerly Section 8) vouchers, families living in public housing have been provided with an opportunity to leave their high-poverty, racially segregated neighborhoods and move to (hopefully ) less economically and racially segregated neighborhoods elsewhere in the metropolitan region (for research on dispersal strategies see, for example, Briggs 1997; Goering and Feins 2003; Rosenbaum 1995; Varady and Walker 2003; and chapters by Briggs et al., ClampetLundquist , Galster, and Gennetian et al. in this volume). Second, mixedincome development, a complementary poverty deconcentration strategy , seeks to attract middle-income families to the site of former public housing developments, while retaining a portion of the low-income population , by demolishing the buildings and rebuilding high-quality housing and investing in strong property management and local amenities (Joseph 2006a; Joseph, Chaskin, and Webber 2007; Kleit, 2005). Through the $4.5 billion HOPE VI program (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) launched in 1992, the federal government has supported mixed-income development on public housing sites throughout the country (for reviews of the HOPE VI program, see, for example, Popkin 2007; Popkin et al. 2004; Sard and Staub 2008). Mixed-income housing has also been built independently of public housing redevelopment across the country (see, for example, Brophy and Smith 1997, Smith 2002). Several Western European countries have also implemented mixed-income housing strategies to revitalize their public housing estates and reintegrate marginalized poor and immigrant families into the broader population (see, for example, Bailey et al. 2006; Berube 2005; Musterd and Andersson 2005; Silverman, Lipton, and Fenton 2005) What explains the wide-scale adoption of the mixed-income approach as a means of deconcentrating poverty? Dispersal strategies, such as housing choice vouchers, are a people-based strategy and address the poverty of place by trying to move people to neighborhoods of less deprivation and greater opportunity. Mixed-income development, on the other hand, is a people- and place-based strategy, seeking to improve the lives of low-income families at the same time that it improves the quality of urban neighborhoods and ultimately cities. In terms of benefits to low-income families, a basic expectation is that compared to their previous public housing residences, which were 124 Geographies of Opportunity plagued by deteriorated buildings, crime, violence, and low-quality public services, their quality of life will be vastly improved by living in a new, clean, well-managed development in the midst of a revitalizing...