By Request: Poverty Dispersal

I got to request to say something about Hannah Rosin's article on the Memphis crime experience. I don't have a ton to say about it other than that you should read the article, since I think the article itself says about everything I would want to say. But to give it a brief gloss, people hoped that tearing down public housing towers and replacing them with Section 8 vouchers would, by dispersing the people on public assistance, help mitigate the social pathologies associated with poverty by breaking up "pockets of poverty." In fact, as Rosin reports, dispersing impoverished people mostly seems to have dispersed rather than dispelled, the crime problems associated with pockets of poverty.

I'm not 100 percent sure where that leaves us. Housing vouchers still seem like a better idea than "the projects" for various reasons related to economic efficiency and choice. And as far as crime goes, we seem to mostly still know what we know -- higher wages for low-skill workers, higher educational attainment, the presence of more police officers patrolling the street, throwing enormous quantities of young men in prison, fewer drug addicts, and reductions in the amount of lead poisoning all seem to lower crime.

Comments

I a study like this, how do you control for the bias in our justice system that arrests and convicts black people at a greater rate than white people? Those people were still mostly black, I presume, even after being dispersed to Section 8 Housing. This study may be as much a measure of the extent to which our justice system is rigged against black citizens as it is a study of the correlation between poverty and crime. If you really want to know if poverty causes crime, make the poor people rich and see what happens.

Posted by mamayaga | June 15, 2008 9:19 AM

A further request. Why doesn't 'Housing vouchers still seem like a better idea than "the projects" for various reasons related to economic efficiency and choice' lead to 'School vouchers still seem like a better idea than "public schools" for various reasons related to economic efficiency and choice'?

Posted by Cisco | June 15, 2008 9:33 AM

"throwing enormous quantities of young men in prison" = "lower crime"?

Was that one a joke?

Posted by Stupid question? | June 15, 2008 9:36 AM

What frustrated me about the article is that the writer seems to imply, but doesn't try to prove, that the dispersion effect has not led to a net reduction in crime.

For instance, she implies that the lower crime rates in New York City have resulted from criminals being priced out of NYC property markets and thus going to New Jersey instead. Yet she doesn't provide any statistics on state-wide crime in New Jersey.

In fact, while she claims the dispersion effect has been slowly building since the mid 1990s, she doesn't even mention the fac that the national crime rate has dropped significantly since then. She doesn't even show state-wide crime statistics in Tennessee when talking about the crime waves in suburban Memphis.

Now, having criticized her for not providing theses statistics, I'll admit that I'm too lazy to do it myself. Still, the article would have been much stronger with a bit more state-wide and nation-wide crime data.

Posted by WillieStyle | June 15, 2008 9:54 AM

How, in a study like this, do you account for the increased police enforcement in communities? After 9/11, we funneled millions into building up local enforcement, as part of "Homeland Security." When I drive around my area, I see the new cars, big and shiny. And as the mom of two young men, I know they run a much greater risk of encountering law enforcement then I ever did as a teen. So I would wonder if we're seeing spread-out crime, or beefed up enforcement.

I also wonder if that "beefed up enforcement," is an attempt at a back-door draft, bust a kid for something, and offer him a trip to Iraq as an alternative to a felony on his record.

Posted by zic | June 15, 2008 10:01 AM

Was that one a joke?

Why would it be? I guess you could quibble with the "enormous," but there's considerable evidence that longer and harsher prison sentences for violent crime--that is, "throwing enormous quantities of young men in prison"--has contributed significantly to lower crime rates.

The "fewer drugs addicts," is important, too, and one reason why I don't take many critics of the War on Drugs very seriously.

Posted by Mixner | June 15, 2008 10:04 AM

"the extent to which our justice system is rigged against black citizens"

Yes, our nasty justice system, it just tricks african americans into committing crimes.

Posted by Hlem | June 15, 2008 10:30 AM

The "fewer drugs addicts," is important, too, and one reason why I don't take many critics of the War on Drugs very seriously.

B/c that's been going really well. And you should do some research on other methods of controlling the number of addicts before you conclude that drug war opponents don't have better solutions.

What frustrated me about the article is that the writer seems to imply, but doesn't try to prove, that the dispersion effect has not led to a net reduction in crime.

Well, I think that in mid-sized cities, it was explicitly stated that crime, as a whole, has been going up. The theory proposed was that more communities are reaching the 'tipping point' where crime increases dramatically. Not sure how valid that is, or what the solution is.

If you really want to know if poverty causes crime
, make the poor people rich and see what happens.

Obviously, you can't make them 'rich'. I would like to see the impact of increasing the minimum wage, though. I wonder if anyone has studied this on a citywide basis, b/c some cities set their own minimum wage. This may be correlated, though, with cities pricing the poor out of cities. I think you would really need a statewide comparison that was not NY (b/c that would still be NYC pushing the poor into NJ).

Posted by mpowell | June 15, 2008 10:34 AM

To WillieStyle:

Memphis violent crime rates have increased from 1656 per 100,000 people in 2001 to 1,989 per 100,000 in 2006. During that same time period, Nashville has decreased from 1,635 to 1,527 violent crimes per 100,000, Knoxville from 1,200 to 1,038, and Chattanooga from 1,788 to 1,235. Obviously, Memphis' crime rise isn't part of some greater statewide urban crime wave. It is a Memphis problem from the state's point of view and they would be right. Have Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville dispersed their project's residents? To the latter two cities, no they haven't and Nashville hasn't to the degree that Memphis has.

As a native Memphian and a graduate from the University of Memphis, it pains me to see my city being framed in this light. It really is a great city with an abundance of culture, great parks, nice people, and loads of great music and nightlife. However, we keep electing and appointing criminals and incompetents to the City Council, Memphis City School Board and Superintendent, and last but not least, Mayor.

It is our own fault and nothing will change until the people want it to change. So far that hasn't happened.

Posted by Patrick | June 15, 2008 11:18 AM

To WillieStyle:

Memphis violent crime rates have increased from 1656 per 100,000 people in 2001 to 1,989 per 100,000 in 2006. During that same time period, Nashville has decreased from 1,635 to 1,527 violent crimes per 100,000, Knoxville from 1,200 to 1,038, and Chattanooga from 1,788 to 1,235. Obviously, Memphis' crime rise isn't part of some greater statewide urban crime wave. It is a Memphis problem from the state's point of view and they would be right. Have Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville dispersed their project's residents? To the latter two cities, no they haven't and Nashville hasn't to the degree that Memphis has.

As a native Memphian and a graduate from the University of Memphis, it pains me to see my city being framed in this light. It really is a great city with an abundance of culture, great parks, nice people, and loads of great music and nightlife. However, we keep electing and appointing criminals and incompetents to the City Council, Memphis City School Board and Superintendent, and last but not least, Mayor.

It is our own fault and nothing will change until the people want it to change. So far that hasn't happened.

Posted by Patrick | June 15, 2008 11:19 AM

And you should do some research on other methods of controlling the number of addicts before you conclude that drug war opponents don't have better solutions.

Well, don't keep us in suspense. What's your supposed "better solution?"

Posted by Mixner | June 15, 2008 11:24 AM

An award for going against liberal orthodoxy and acknowledging that throwing enormous numbers of young men in prison reduces crime. Obviously it's not a good way to do it, and if we can't find better it's a major failure. But living in metropolitan DC east of Connecticut Ave. obviously helps ground one in the "reality based community".

Posted by TACreader | June 15, 2008 11:43 AM

If you really want to know if poverty causes crime, make the poor people rich and see what happens.

This has been done with Rappers; the results are less than encouraging.

Posted by matt foley | June 15, 2008 1:36 PM

I took a class on sentencing policy and these results really surprised me when I heard them. My prof. argued that one possible explanation is that by the age of 6 or 7, children are a "lost cause." So providing mothers with VERY young children (say 2 or 3) with housing vouchers may prove to decrease crime and not merely disperse it.

Posted by Sam | June 15, 2008 1:50 PM

The article was depressing, although it should have been obvious (in retrospect) that simply dispersing poor people to outlying areas, like sending inner-city students to suburban schools, isn't by itself going to lift them up to the economic or educational level of their surroundings, and may, in fact, make things worse. The idea seems to be that the dispersed will, by some sort of osmosis, make up for lack of skills and resources, poor teaching etc in the past without anyone in the "receiving" commmunity having to do anything further to help them, or, indeed, even having to mix with them.

Overcoming poverty, like poor learning, is very complex, and people trying to get out of it need the same kind of, or at least an equivalent, support system as middle class people already have. That is to say family and community, decent job opportunities, services, some financial resources and the like. To think that people could succeed by parachuting them into middle class schools and communities without any of that support system is pretty misguided. And, as the folks in the article stated, doing so deprived them of the communities they had created and the services that cities had provided, so they were really in many ways worse off.

There would seem to be a critical mass of people needing services in an area in order for those services and resources to be provided efficently, but there also has to be the will to provide them. Big Cities did for political and other reasons, but many smaller cities don't seem to be able or willing to do so.

Posted by Mimikatz | June 15, 2008 1:58 PM

Liberals and conservatives always talk past each other on the issue of urban crime. Conservatives say that the problem is broken families and liberals say its lack of economic opportunity. Of course broken families lead to poverty and the lack of opportunity means fewer people feel secure enough economically to marry and settle down. So probably we should work on both fronts.

The liberal side is straightforward enough to address, universal healthcare (a lot of social dysfuntion is merely untreated mental illness) and daycare. Increase the minimum wage to the 1968 level, adjusted to inflation, its between $9 and $10 an hour.

Its the conservative side that requires a lot of moving parts. Tthe first step would be reducing teen pregnancies as much as possible. Since the fathers are (on average) several years older, crack down on statutory rape. Second, Former WV Supreme Court Justice Richard Neely has proposed giving long term birth control to every girl upon reaching junior high school (and to every boy once the FDA approves a male version of the depo shot or norplant) and which is removed when they turn 18. If the parents of the child object, they can opt out.. but they're responsible for child support if their kid brings a child into the world. http://tinyurl.com/6ab9gw

Third, University of Wisconsin Psychiatry Professor Jack Westman has proposed requiring a parenting license before you can raise a child (just like prospective adoptive and foster parents go through classes, background checks and home visits now). For newly married couples, it could be made part of the marriage license process. For new single parents, it could be part of the prenatal care which every state should provide to new mothers. Even if you grandfathered in existing parents, there should still be home nursing visits to every newborn's home. http://tinyurl.com/5cw6k9

Finally, even though Matt's girlfriend is not a fan, Leonard Sax's proposal for single-sex schools is probably the best way to get teenage boys engaged in learning and to not drop out. http://www.boysadrift.com/

Posted by beowulf | June 15, 2008 2:31 PM

The liberal side is straightforward enough to address, universal healthcare (a lot of social dysfuntion is merely untreated mental illness) and daycare. Increase the minimum wage to the 1968 level, adjusted to inflation, its between $9 and $10 an hour.

I think the idea that universal healthcare and daycare, of all things, would have a significant effect in reducing crime is pretty absurd. What evidence can you offer that untreated mental illness that would be treated if we had universal health care contributes significantly to crime? Remember, it's not enough simply to show that there is crime-related mental illness among the uninsured. You have to show that it would likely be reduced significantly if we had UHC. Considering that around a third of those eligible for Medicare are not enrolled, and that untreated mental illness is supposedly rampant even among middle-class Americans who have health insurance, your claim is wildly implausible to say the least.

Third, University of Wisconsin Psychiatry Professor Jack Westman has proposed requiring a parenting license before you can raise a child

And you endorse that, do you? I think it's another absurd idea. And I think the idea that a law requiring Americans to obtain a government license in order to raise their own children wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving a constitutional challenge, assuming it could even get enacted in the first place.

Posted by Mixner | June 15, 2008 3:40 PM

Umm, Beowulf, you do realize that you're describing two solutions that are downright totalitarian? How about we raise all the children born without licenses in state-run orphanages where we can train them to be the Glorious Leader's personal defense force?

Posted by Adam Villani | June 15, 2008 4:14 PM

Dispersing the black underclass from the most convenient urban locations is crucial to gentrifiers like Matt who praise density.

Privately, everybody except the most naïve academics understands that the black underclass is not composed of mere victims of circumstances who are sure to get their act together as soon as we spend some more tax dollars on them. Instead, everybody rightly sees the black underclass as a giant hot potato. So politically powerful interests, such as real estate developers and environmentalist homeowners' lobbies, are constantly trying to palm that hot potato off on somebody else.

For example, what's happened within the Memphis metropolitan areas has also occurred on a larger scale between today's winner cities, such as New York and Washington D.C., and nearby loser cities, such as Newark and Baltimore. As Rosin points out:

"New York, where the rate of violent crime has plummeted, appears to have pushed many of its poor out to New Jersey, where violent crime has increased in nearby cities and suburbs. Washington, D.C. has exported some of its crime to surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia."

As native-born African Americans get economically cleansed from Washington by rising costs, the white population of D.C. has grown from 28 percent to 33 percent in this decade. Similarly, the American-born black population of New York City has been dropping since way back in 1979, eventually lowering crime and recently setting off a baby boom among rich whites in now safe Manhattan.

We are undergoing the Paris-ification of America. The snobbish French always thought Americans were nuts to let Washington, the capital of the country, and New York, the capital of the world, turn into hellholes. Why build public housing projects in the middle of your great cities for riff-raff? The French elite, no fools, kept beautiful Paris for themselves. They warehoused their African immigrants out in the bleak suburbs, where every night is Car-B-Que night.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 15, 2008 4:49 PM

I was really hoping for a bit less Steve Sailer and a bit more state-wide crime statistics.
I suppose that's the blogoshere for you.

Posted by WillieStyle | June 15, 2008 5:43 PM

Well I still think the program has a long-term chance of succeeding. The "projects" had been around for generations and were obvious failures. These "dispersal" programs have been around for less than a decade, give them a couple of generations to see if they are successful in reducing entrenched poverty.

Posted by miguel | June 15, 2008 7:58 PM

Maybe it's addressed above in the thread, but it does not seem to me that section 8 is necessarily more efficient. In particular, it involves a layer of inefficiency in the terms of enforcing the non-discriminatory behavior of landlord: since section 8 is correlated with crime to some extent per the article, then there is an incentive for landlord not to rent to section 8 (ie. to reduce the potential costs associated with evicting a criminal from a unit). For section 8 to work, then the landlord should be coerced into non-discrimination by some legal mechanism which has to be enforced. That must add a lot of frictions in the system.

Posted by cedichou | June 15, 2008 8:41 PM

"University of Wisconsin Psychiatry Professor Jack Westman has proposed requiring a parenting license..."

The underlying concept is correct - most human parents suck at the job. We require people to know how to drive a car - but raise the next generation? Free for all!

The result is every generation is dumber than the last - even though this is partially offset by increased information transfer via media technology, the latest being the Internet - until a war comes along and kills off the morons.

Unfortunately the US hasn't had a major war to kill off the morons in a century. And the population is too big to winnow out any other way.

The solution of state licensing won't work and would be a bad idea for all sorts of reasons.

Bottom line: the US is doomed. But then it was doomed anyway once Transhumans crop up. So who cares?

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 15, 2008 8:43 PM

Maybe it's addressed above in the thread, but it does not seem to me that section 8 is necessarily more efficient. In particular, it involves a layer of inefficiency in the terms of enforcing the non-discriminatory behavior of landlord: since section 8 is correlated with crime to some extent per the article, then there is an incentive for landlord not to rent to section 8 (ie. to reduce the potential costs associated with evicting a criminal from a unit). For section 8 to work, then the landlord should be coerced into non-discrimination by some legal mechanism which has to be enforced. That must add a lot of frictions in the system.

Posted by cedichou | June 15, 2008 8:45 PM

You know, I used to be really down on "the projects." But now, looking at gentrification across NYC, it seems like the projects are the only places ever spared.

It's got to be nice for the 90+ percent of people living in the projects for the past 30 years who have been working (or retired from) low-wage or lower-middle-class jobs to be able to afford to continue to live somewhere remotely close to everyone they know as well as their job, and all now with a reduced crime level.

Just saying that I think the projects are the only place I've seen lots of low-income winners in gentrification. Maybe i'm wrong--someone actually living in projects may be able to fill this in better. But wandering around, that's what I've anecdotally seen.

Posted by anonymous | June 15, 2008 10:29 PM

"Umm, Beowulf, you do realize that you're describing two solutions that are downright totalitarian? How about we raise all the children born without licenses in state-run orphanages where we can train them to be the Glorious Leader's personal defense force?"

So which is the second one, cracking down on statutory rape? Seriously, as for the giving teenagers contraceptives, we already require vaccinations (with parental opt out) to attend schools. Bear in mind, the age of menses has dropped from 17 to 12 in the last 200 years. Since minors can't legally consent to sex, if its medically possible to prevent them from having to deal with the consequences of pregnancy then I don't think its a unreasonable step.

As for parenting licenses, I'd only point that millions of couples (straight or gay) would make wonderful parents but can't have children without waiting years to adopt, often from overseas. They all go through the home study process (i.e. classes and social worker interviews). Hell, some cities require a background check before you can adopt a dog from an animal shelter.

On the other hand, go to the mall any weekend and you'll see teenage girls pushing strollers because, whether by luck, charm or sheer determination, they found some guy willing to sleep with them. The kid in the stroller didn't have any choice in the matter.

Posted by beowulf | June 15, 2008 10:33 PM

beowulf,

There is a long line of landmark Supreme Court cases setting forth fundamental rights in the areas of sex, reproduction, parenting and family life. It is hard to imagine a law that would be more inconsistent with that tradition than the one you are proposing (parenting licenses). What penalties would you like to see imposed on parents who are caught raising their children without a license? Imprisonment? Sterilization? And what are you going to do with their children after you've taken them away? Leave them to the tender mercies of the foster care system? State-run orphanages?

Posted by Mixner | June 15, 2008 11:05 PM

If you really want to know if poverty causes crime, make the poor people rich and see what happens.

This has been tried.

This is similar to the argument that paying legislators more money will make them less vulnerable to corruption and bribery. No matter how rich or poor one is, some people are corrupt, and some people aren't.

Insofar as breaking up the projects is a good idea or not, I'm at least willing to entertain the possibility that we need to continue this experiment for a little longer. Perhaps after a generation or so, the cycle of criminality will fade, but breaking up the projects isn't going to magically turn criminals into non-criminals.

Posted by Tyro | June 15, 2008 11:41 PM

Mixner would prefer that we torture unlicensed parents.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 16, 2008 5:46 AM

Well, don't keep us in suspense. What's your supposed "better solution?"

Since you asked:

http://www.drugpolicy.org/library/tlcnr.cfm

Posted by scythia | June 16, 2008 6:07 AM

And as a follow-up commentary: While some drugs (crack, PCP) do increase violent and anti-social behavior, most of the criminal behaviors associated with drugs are effects of the black market, not the drugs themselves.

(And of course, crack itself only exists because of black-market effects on cocaine prices, but that's a bit complicated to get into at this time of night.)

Posted by scythia | June 16, 2008 6:12 AM

From the article, this seems to be the core issue:

"Recently, the housing expert George Galster, of Wayne State University, analyzed the shifts in urban poverty and published his results in a paper called 'A Cautionary Tale.' While fewer Americans live in high-poverty neighborhoods, increasing numbers now live in places with 'moderate' poverty rates, meaning rates of 20 to 40 percent. This pattern is not necessarily better, either for poor people trying to break away from bad neighborhoods or for cities, Galster explains. His paper compares two scenarios: a city split into high-poverty and low-poverty areas, and a city dominated by median-poverty ones. The latter arrangement is likely to produce more bad neighborhoods and more total crime, he concludes, based on a computer model of how social dysfunction spreads.

Studies show that recipients of Section8 vouchers have tended to choose moderately poor neighborhoods that were already on the decline, not low-poverty neighborhoods. One recent study publicized by HUD warned that policy makers should lower their expectations, because voucher recipients seemed not to be spreading out, as they had hoped, but clustering together. Galster theorizes that every neighborhood has its tipping point—a threshold well below a 40 percent poverty rate—beyond which crime explodes and other severe social problems set in. Pushing a greater number of neighborhoods past that tipping point is likely to produce more total crime."

Assuming Galster is correct, the bad news is that the current dispersal patterns are increasing overall crime rates in certain cities. But it seems to me the good news is that the solution could be even MORE dispersal, not giving up on dispersal entirely. Indeed, I believe the overall U.S. poverty rate is something like 12-13%, so it should be possible to reduce the number of those "moderate poverty" (20-40% poverty rate) neighborhoods as well.

Incidentally, I agree with others above: it seems awfully early to be drawing any general conclusions even about the current programs as they stand. After this sort of discontinuity in residential patterns, it could obviously take time for the most affected residential areas to adapt culturally, and similarly for the local police departments to develop appropriate expertise and methods, and generally for public services to be reconfigured appropriately, and so on. So I wouldn't assume we have reached a steady state yet.

Posted by DTM | June 16, 2008 8:31 AM

By the way, I just looked up a little poverty data. According to the article, the large scale dispersal of people from projects, and high poverty neighborhoods in general, began in the mid-1990s.

So the overall poverty rate was about 13.8% in 1995, and by 2000 it was down to 11.3%. By 2004 it was up again to 12.7%, but then down a bit to 12.3% in 2006 (the last year in my table).

Digging a little further, among white, non-hispanics, the poverty rate went from 8.5% in 1995 to 7.4% in 2000 to 8.2% in 2006.

Among black people it went from 29.3% in 1995 to 22.5% in 2000 to 24.3% in 2006. In other words, the poverty rate has declined much more among black people than white non-hispanics in this period.

Finally, for Hispanics (any race) it went from 30.3% in 1995 to 21.5% in 2000 to 20.6% in 2006. That easily makes them the biggest gainers among these three groups.

Of course I'm not sure this tells us anything about whether poverty dispersal does in fact reduce poverty rates (there are obviously a lot of other factors at play). Still, this data doesn't seem entirely unpromising for this strategy either.

Posted by DTM | June 16, 2008 8:59 AM

Some thoughts on section 8 from someone who used to do policy work in the area.

First, if the theory for welfare-maximization from vouchers is that they increase housing opportunities, then we have to know whether vouchers actually increase choice. Some states have anti-discrimination provisions; others don't. Federal law does not presently include a provision barring potential landlords from refusing to rent to voucher-holders.

Also on this point, as another commenter points out, most voucher holders don't go far, because they are, like most of us, attached to their neighborhood both emotionally and economically. The need for child care, especially, limits the mobility of most working-mom households (so, if you want to move, grandma has to move, too). Relatedly, housing search and moving costs are not zero.

Next, you've left out the political economy story. People who all live in one place are much, much easier to organize. Vouchers disperse the constituency for subsidized housing, resulting in lower support for housing in future political cycles.

Posted by BDG | June 16, 2008 11:30 AM

While the memphis situation is instructive, the city of Chicago is, and will, serve as the primary metric of the success of dispersal.

Note to the wise: The Chicago experiment is an utter disaster. Read Sudhir Venkatesh on this matter.

While Matt is right that "the projects" are not a great alternative, he is missing why they are no good.

Public housing, especially of the superblock variety, became a housing of last resort--serving only the lowest cohort of the income scale. Early on, "the projects" consisted of poor people, working poor, and working people. That all changed , and resulted in public housing being a concentration of all extremely poor people, many of whom were unemployed. When you hyper-concentrate a extremely poor unemployed people and sever them from the activities of normal society and stop addressing their needs, the problems fester.

So, my point is not that "public housing" is bad--quite the contrary, in Europe many publicly subsidized developments are successful--but that when you concentrate poor people--as opposed to mixed income development--the result in an America that provides little safety net is bad.

However, the current vanguard of "mixed income" development is nothing of the sort (at least in Chicago), and instead very few of the families from former developments are included in redevelopment and have been pushed farther to the margins of society. It has devolved into a great land grab on behalf of the city of Chicago, reclaiming the city for gentrification and beautification. Very sad.

Posted by jeff | June 16, 2008 12:13 PM

While the memphis situation is instructive, the city of Chicago is, and will, serve as the primary metric of the success of dispersal.

Note to the wise: The Chicago experiment is an utter disaster. Read Sudhir Venkatesh on this matter.

While Matt is right that "the projects" are not a great alternative, he is missing why they are no good.

Public housing, especially of the superblock variety, became a housing of last resort--serving only the lowest cohort of the income scale. Early on, "the projects" consisted of poor people, working poor, and working people. That all changed , and resulted in public housing being a concentration of all extremely poor people, many of whom were unemployed. When you hyper-concentrate a extremely poor unemployed people and sever them from the activities of normal society and stop addressing their needs, the problems fester.

So, my point is not that "public housing" is bad--quite the contrary, in Europe many publicly subsidized developments are successful--but that when you concentrate poor people--as opposed to mixed income development--the result in an America that provides little safety net is bad.

However, the current vanguard of "mixed income" development is nothing of the sort (at least in Chicago), and instead very few of the families from former developments are included in redevelopment and have been pushed farther to the margins of society. It has devolved into a great land grab on behalf of the city of Chicago, reclaiming the city for gentrification and beautification. Very sad.

Posted by jeff | June 16, 2008 12:21 PM

Sorry, duplicative post result of computer error.

Posted by jeff | June 16, 2008 12:23 PM

Contrary to Rosin’s framing of what happened to low-income housing in Memphis in the last decade “as part of a nationwide experiment to free the poor from the destructive effects of concentrated poverty,” there hasn’t been such a “nationwide experiment” and the limited experiment in five cities (the “Moving to Opportunity” program) wasn’t implemented in Memphis. Changes in Memphis, like in many other cities, were driven by uncoordinated federal policies and funding shortfalls, as well as by local decisions and larger economic forces. The bottom line is that Memphis needs more federal housing assistance not less, combined with policy changes and other services that will help poor families and communities prosper.

After decades of neglect, the demolition of 5,000 public housing units in Memphis — and about 170,000 nationally — was precipitated by a policy adopted in 1996 not by liberal visionaries but by the Republican-controlled Congress, requiring the end of funding for severely distressed projects. Displaced families were sometimes given housing vouchers, but typically even if they got vouchers they received no relocation assistance or services. Under a separate program called “HOPE VI,” grants were awarded to “revitalize” some of these developments. Memphis received such grants for less than half the demolished units. Sufficient funds were never available to replace all the lost affordable housing units. In recent years, Congress has reduced annual funding for the HOPE VI program by more than 80 percent in response to Bush Administration proposals to eliminate the program and to the overall drive to cut domestic appropriations.

The bipartisan supporters of HOPE VI understood that it would take more than a new physical environment to help the severely disadvantaged families that lived in much of the worst public housing progress towards self-sufficiency. The program requires relocation plans and the provision of supportive services to displaced families. Unfortunately, however, the human side of HOPE VI has been its weakest component, due to the absence of strong federal oversight and poor local implementation in many sites.

Contrary to what many believe, most displaced families did not receive housing vouchers. Many were shifted to other public housing projects and excluded from returning to the rebuilt communities. (Nationally, only a third of the units demolished have been replaced by equally affordable housing units.) Only 149 of the 403 families displaced from Memphis’ first HOPE VI site received housing vouchers, and only 97 still had vouchers in April 2000. Many localities failed to assist families that did receive vouchers to use them in better-off areas, with good schools and improved access to jobs. Nonetheless, multi-year research in five cities (not including Memphis) found that former residents of demolished developments who relocated using housing vouchers live in substantially better housing in neighborhoods where, by and large, they feel dramatically safer than they did in their public housing developments. Both parents and children report feeling less worried and anxious and children show fewer behavior problems.

It’s not surprising that the demolition of large, distressed public housing projects, with high rates of crime (often perpetrated by non-residents) would cause a shift in criminal activity to other areas in the absence of preventive measures. Without the shelter of isolated developments and vacant units to carry out drug deals etc., enterprising criminals are likely to move on. Rosin’s article provides no evidence, however, that families receiving Section 8 housing vouchers caused the dispersal of crime. She presents not a single fact that a member of a voucher-assisted family was even arrested for a crime. She states that a few boys who had moved out of public housing “were suspected” of breaking windows. That’s hardly a “murder mystery.” Indeed, only about 3,000 more Memphis families receive Section 8 benefits than before the demolition. It’s unlikely that such a small change in a city of 690,000 people could drive the apparent changing pattern of criminal activity.

Rosin’s thesis is not new. Since the early ‘90s, critics have tied Section 8-assisted families to increases in crime in other cities. Careful investigations have refuted the claim, and collaborations between housing agencies and police departments have proven successful in dispelling myths. Indeed, program rules encourage the end of voucher assistance if a family member has engaged in criminal activity. Administrators in Memphis and other cities vigorously pursue reports of criminal activity and enforce these rules.

It is possible, as Rosin discusses, that an influx of poor families into a neighborhood — particularly one that is already declining due to other economic forces — could have a “tipping” effect, accelerating the rate of decline and a concomitant increase in crime. Unfortunately, little is known about such neighborhood dynamics. Could Section 8 movers create such a tipping effect, even if members of section 8 households are not committing crimes? It’s possible, but most unlikely. Nationally, in less than 3 percent of the neighborhoods with any voucher-assisted residents do voucher families occupy 10 percent or more of the housing stock, and less than 1 percent of neighborhoods are impacted by voucher use in more than a quarter of occupied units.

In Memphis, like in many metropolitan areas, poverty rates have risen in recent years outside of the urban core. This may be due to (1) poor people moving, pushed out by rising rents and condominium conversions as cities have become more desirable places to live and possibly by the demolition of public housing, (2) economic changes in outlying neighborhoods, or (3) both. In Memphis, poverty not only spread, it grew. From 1997 - 2004, there was a 14 percent increase in the share of Memphis school children living in poor families, while the total number of children ages 5 -17 in the Memphis schools remained about the same. National poverty rates declined slightly during this same period.

Rosin provides no evidence that Section 8 vouchers are driving rather than following this trend of poverty dispersal, and I know of no such evidence from other cities. What is likely is that many voucher holders gravitated to familiar neighborhoods where landlords were most willing to accept their vouchers due to declining demand from market renters. Some may have lived in these neighborhoods before receiving voucher assistance, and chose to stay.

That said, the voucher program — as well as HOPE VI relocation efforts — could be more effective at helping families live in low-poverty neighborhoods and avoiding “clustering” of voucher holders in particular neighborhoods, especially those where the concentration of poor or minority families is increasing. The voucher program performs better on these measures than any other federal housing program, but such a relative measure is not good enough. Legislation passed by the House and pending in the Senate would modify a range of policies in the voucher program to encourage agencies to help families move to real “opportunity” areas and facilitate such moves. Changes also are needed in the HOPE VI program if it is to realize its promise to give families mired in deep poverty the chance for a healthier life. The House has passed a HOPE VI bill that makes some but not all of these changes, but Congress is unlikely to finish the job this year.

Vouchers are very effective at their primary task: enabling poor families to have a decent affordable home, with more income available to meet other critical needs. If voucher subsidies counted as income — which they don’t under our official poverty measures — few voucher families would be “deeply” poor (that is, have incomes below 75 percent of an adjusted poverty line). Millions of poor families with children don’t have housing assistance and need it. Expanding as well as improving the voucher program — and providing additional assistance to families that need it to increase their earnings or address other life crises — should be on the agenda of the next Administration. Rosin’s misleading article should not deter such efforts.

Posted by Barbara Sard, Director of Housing Policy, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | June 19, 2008 1:39 PM

Ms. Sard's response focuses on the Sec. 8 voucher program's role in HOPE VI and construing the "Murder Mystery" into an attack upon voucher holders. I think that she's overlooked other factors at play here.

That HOPE VI has displaced large swaths of established low-income central city neighborhoods is uncontestable. Ms. Sard discussion center on those households who were fortunate to have received a voucher.

What about all the other persons who lived in those neighborhoods that were not on the public housing leases. They don't have any vouchers. Any chance that they might have followed those that did?

What about all of the young single mothers who are aging into the system and have no access to affordable housing because the waiting lists are closed. Where are they going? And what about the young men who fathered their babies? Might they not be following them to whever they were lucky enough to find a roof over their heads?

Quite a dilemma.

I am the director of a downstate IL housing authority. Our society largely has turned its back on many in our ranks who are mired in poverty. HOPE VI & the voucher program hold great promise for those fortunate to have that. For many others, it is every man, woman & child for themselves, and their new neighborhoods and communities that now have to sustain them.

The Moving To Opportunity program seems to have a great promise in that participants receive case management services, thus giving them a leg-up in transitioning into their new communities. Efforts like that have to be a necessary part of the solution.

I did not see this article as an attack on HOPE VI & the voucher program. Rather I read it as argument to see the people that many chose not to see, and to improve our public and affordable housing programs to address the quality of life for more people and their neighborhoods & communities.

Posted by Bill Jacobs | June 23, 2008 6:09 PM