Deirdre Oakley

OUT OF THE PROJECTS, STILL IN THE HOOD: THE SPATIAL CONSTRAINTS ON PUBLIC-HOUSING RESIDENTS' RELOCATION IN CHICAGO

ABSTRACT: Public housing, usually located in predominantly poor, minority neighborhoods, has long been associated with concentrated poverty and spatially constraining opportunities for upward mobility. The federal government created HOPE VI in 1992 to transform the physical and social shape of public housing, demolishing existing projects and replacing them with mixed-income developments. To accomplish this public-housing residents are relocated with housing voucher subsidies to the private market and only a small portion will be able to return to the new mixed income developments. To what extent do these voucher subsidies simply reinforce a stratified housing market by limiting the types of neighborhoods available to former public-housing residents? Using spatial analytic techniques, this study examines the spatial patterns and neighborhood conditions of voucher housing and how these patterns link to public-housing relocatees’ destinations. Findings indicate that voucher housing tends to be clustered in poor African-American neighborhoods where the majority of relocated public-housing residents settle. Thus, there appear to be spatial constraints on relocatees’ residential options.

Is Public Housing the Cause of Poor Health or a Safety Net for the Unhealthy Poor

Research has shown that public housing residents have the worst health of any population in the USA. However, it is unclear what the cause of that poor health is among this population. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between public housing and health conditions: specifically, we ask if residents entered public housing already ill or if public housing may cause the poor health of its residents. The data used for this study come from the GSU Urban Health Initiative, which is a prospective, mixed-methods study of seven public housing communities earmarked for demolition and relocation (N = 385). We used the pre-relocation, baseline survey. We found that, while health was not the main reason residents gave for entering public housing, the majority of public housing residents entered public housing already ill. Substandard housing conditions, long tenure in public housing, and having had a worse living situation prior to public housing were not associated with an increased risk of a health condition diagnosed after entry into public housing. Our findings suggest that public housing may have provided a safety net for the very unhealthy poor.

School Segregation in Metropolitan Regions, 1970-2000: The Impacts of Policy Choices on Public Education.

It has been argued that the effects of the desegregation of public schools from the late 1960s onward were limited and short‐lived, in part because of white flight from desegregating districts and in part because legal decisions in the 1990s released many districts from court orders. Data presented here for 1970–2000 show that small increases in segregation between districts were outweighed by larger declines within districts. Progress was interrupted but not reversed after 1990. Desegregation was not limited to districts and metropolitan regions where enforcement actions required it, and factors such as private schooling, district size, and inclusion of both city and suburban areas within district boundaries had stronger effects than individual court mandates.

Locational Patterns of Low Income Housing Tax Credit Developments: A Sociospatial Analysis of Four Metropolitan Areas

This study examined neighborhood characteristics and spatial patterns of Low-Income Housing Tax-Credit (LIHTC) developments in four metropolitan areas using census data and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developments (HUD) LIHTC database. Sociospatial analysis determined neighborhood characteristics associated with LIHTC developments and how clustered or dispersed they are. Findings indicate that as a low-income housing policy, the LIHTC program was more successful than other programs at locating developments in less disadvantaged neighborhoods but not as successful at avoiding geographic concentrations associated with these other low-income housing programs. The presence of a LIHTC project increased the likelihood of nearby LIHTC development by rewarding developers who place LIHTC units in qualified census tracts.

Sense of place among Atlanta public housing residents.

For almost two decades now, cities around the country have been demolishing traditional public housing and relocating residents to subsidized private market rental housing. In this paper, we examine sense of place, consisting of both community and place attachment, among a sample of Atlanta public housing residents prior to relocation (N = 290). We find that 41% of the residents express place attachment, and a large percentage express some level of community attachment, though residents of senior public housing are far more attached than residents of family public housing. Positive neighborhood characteristics, such as collective efficacy and social support, are associated with community attachment, and social support is also associated with place attachment. Negative neighborhood characteristics, such as social disorder and fear of crime, are not consistently associated with sense of place. We argue that embodied in current public housing relocation initiatives is a real sense of loss among the residents. Policy makers may also want to consider the possibilities of drawing upon residents’ sense of place as a resource for renovating and revitalizing public housing communities rather than continuing to demolish them and relocating residents to other neighborhoods.

Housing Homeless People: Local Mobilization of Federal Resources to Fight NIMBYism

Local sentiments are rarely favorable to human service facilities. City governments and neighborhood organizations frequently utilize zoning restrictions to exclude various community facilities, including services and housing for homeless people. This exclusionary phenomenon is commonly referred to as “not-in-my-backyard” or “NIMBYism.” The power of NIMBYism is grounded in the local autonomy afforded municipalities concerning land use policies. However, recent cases suggest that the tradition of local authority over certain types of land uses is being reexamined and, even more frequently, challenged at the extra-local level. Given this trend, the purpose of this article is to question the assumption that local government will be able to preserve their authority over housing for homeless people. Using a case study of a local zoning battle over a proposed housing development for homeless people, the author argues that recent changes in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s governance over Fair Housing Law enforcement and administration of Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance funding, coupled with the agency’s more aggressive position on housing discrimination, may already have changed the balance of power on this issue. By examining the process by which a non-profit organization in Albany, New York, was able to reach a settlement with the city concerning a zoning denial by mobilizing federal resources, the author attempts to highlight a possible emerging federal role in facilitating local mobilization against NIMBYism as it applies to housing for homeless individuals.

HOPE VI, Colonization, and the Production of Difference

Between 1993 and 2010, the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) Program sought to transform public housing by demolishing large spatially concentrated developments and replacing them with mixed-income housing. Drawing on postcolonial geographical thought, this article interrogates HOPE VI as a colonial project. Through the displacement of public housing residents, the razing of the development in which they lived, and the rebuilding of mixed-income housing, including new public housing units, HOPE VI projects seek to revitalize neighborhoods by attracting higher-income homeowners to relocate in these areas. Proponents of HOPE VI and other mixed-income housing strategies contend that socioeconomic mixing will provide a range of benefits for low-income residents in these environments. Yet, there is a growing body of research suggesting that income mixing itself can be a problem for public housing residents because the neighborhood social relations operate to marginalize them. Using a case study conducted in a midsized southern city, we build on this prior work by examining the sociospatial narratives that neighbors surrounding the HOPE VI site use to identify themselves. The article focuses on how new homeowners, residing in a self-contained development right across the street from a HOPE VI site, construct themselves as a community by situating public housing residents as their other. We conclude that these sociospatial distinctions are integral to the broader, state-led effort to colonize and transform this low-income neighborhood situated next to the downtown business district.

LINKING CHARTER SCHOOL EMERGENCE TO URBAN REVITALIZATION AND GENTRIFICATION: A SOCIO‐SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF THREE CITIES

ABSTRACT: The link between neighborhood quality and school quality is long-standing and well established. Over the last two decades there have been several federally sponsored initiatives aimed at revitalizing the urban core; initiatives that emerged around the same time as charter schools. Despite the changing urban context that has occurred alongside charter school emergence, little research has addressed the link between urban revitalization efforts and charter school emergence. Using three cities that have experienced massive urban core revitalization and metropolitan growth since the early 1990s (Atlanta, Chicago, and Philadelphia), we examine whether demographic changes resulting from urban revitalization and gentrification are associated with the opening of a charter school. Our findings illustrate a somewhat mixed account. We find some evidence to support this link in Chicago and Philadelphia, whereas we find little support for it in Atlanta.

The Bottom-Up Mandate: Fostering Community Partnerships and Combating Economic Distress in Chicago's Empowerment Zone

The Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community Initiative (EZ/EC), funded by Congress in 1994, offered geographically targeted funding and tax incentives to distressed urban communities in the US. The mandated community involvement component of the programme was meant to separate it from traditional economic development initiatives, aligning it more fully with the core goals of community economic development. Did the programmatic strategies emphasise economic development more than fostering community partnerships or vice versa? The paper examines how much emphasis was actually placed on fostering community partnerships in the programme. It also assesses how effective this initiative was at achieving socioeconomic gains. Findings indicate that the more traditional community and economic development strategies received the majority of funding, despite the mandated requirement of building community partnerships. Nevertheless, the initiative resulted in modest decreases in poverty and unemployment. The lack of emphasis on the fostering of community partnerships in Chicagos zone did not render the initiative ineffective.

The Imagined Self-Sufficient Communities of HOPE VI: Examining the Community and Social Support Component

The physical redevelopment of Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) communities has been accompanied by efforts to remake the people who live in them. Through a variety of community and supportive services (CSS) programs, residents are offered job training, homeownership classes, and support to develop savings accounts with the goal of moving them toward fuller participation in the private housing market. By examining how CSS have been offered in Nashville and Atlanta, we make the claim that HOPE VI has had limited impacts in its people-based goals fundamentally because the overall CSS concept focuses on driving residents to participate more fully in labor and housing markets. Supportive services are insufficient in scope and resources to buffer the effects of the market on residents, except for a small number who come into the program already well positioned to succeed. As such, HOPE VI’s failures are not a problem of implementation but of design and conception.