Myron Orfield

America's Racially Diverse Suburbs: Opportunities and Challenges

This article examines increasing racial diversity of suburban areas in the 50 largest metropolitan areas of the United States, analyzes the stability of racially diverse areas, and proposes a variety of policies designed to promote stably integrated neighborhoods, municipalities, and schools. The more than 6,500 suburban communities and 22,000 census tracts in the 50 largest metropolitan areas are divided into four types based on their racial composition and urbanization, and data for the period 1980–2010 are used to examine racial change and to evaluate the stability of different types of communities. By 2010, just 39% of suburban residents in these metropolitan areas lived in “traditional” suburbs—predominantly white communities or developing exurban areas. This is much lower than in 2000 when 51% of suburban residents lived in these types of suburbs. At the same time, the percentage of suburban residents living in racially diverse suburbs increased from 38% to 44%, and another 17% lived in predominantly nonwhite suburbs by 2010. Racially diverse suburbs exhibit many strengths, but resegregation and economic decline represent very serious challenges. Many currently integrated areas are actually in the midst of social and economic change, and many communities that were once integrated have now resegregated. Fifty-six percent of the neighborhoods that were integrated in 1980 had become predominantly nonwhite by 2010, and only 40% of neighborhoods that were integrated in the 1980 remained in that category in 2010. A variety of housing, legal, and school policies are available to promote stable integration in these areas.

Regional Educational Policy Analysis: Rochester, Omaha, and Minneapolis' Inter- District Arrangements

Although regional equity scholars have demonstrated how cross-jurisdictional collaboration on transportation, housing, and employment can promote opportunity for low-income families, few have paid serious attention to the potential of regional educational policy to improve opportunity for children. This study seeks to address this gap by examining inter-district “collaboratives” or cooperative agreements between school districts within a metropolitan area. These collaborative arrangements address two inter-related demographic shifts: the rising level of segregation in public schools and the shift from within district segregation to between-district segregation. This article examines three regional collaboratives (Rochester, NY, Omaha, NE, and Minneapolis, MN) that involve varying degrees of cooperation, funding, and legal force. Drawing on 60 in-depth interviews across the three sites, this analysis considers how each program’s design features interact with local political dynamics to shape the degree to which these collaboratives are able to achieve policy goals.

High Costs and Segregation in Subsidized Housing Policy

This article examines the public policies determining the distribution of subsidized housing in the Twin Cities metropolitan area of Minnesota, the resulting distribution of subsidized housing, and the comparative costs associated with building in the regions central cities or in suburbs. The analysis concludes that current policies are clearly not meeting the regions responsibility to affirmatively further fair housing. The metropolitan area abandoned its role as a national leader in this area decades ago. The result is an affordable housing system that concentrates subsidized housing in the regions poorest and most segregated neighborhoods. This increases the concentration of poverty in the two central cities, in the regions most racially diverse neighborhoods, and in the attendance areas of predominantly nonwhite schools. In the long run, this hurts the regional economy and exacerbates the racial gaps in income, employment, and student performance that plague the Twin Cities.

Taking a Holistic View of Housing Policy

Schwartz and Dawkins have both raised questions about the focus of our earlier article, suggesting that it emphasizes particular housing programs too much, or too little. In his response, Schwartz admits that whereas federal policy has contributed significantly to racial discrimination and segregation, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) “is not a significant part of this story” (Schwartz, in this issue). He argues that LIHTC units are less concentrated in high-minority tracts than other types of subsidized units are, and that LIHTC operates at too small a scale to have a significant effect on regional segregation. Dawkins also raises this point. At the outset, we point out that our analysis, arguments, and policy recommendations were by no means focused solely on LIHTC. Most of the regional data summarized in Orfield et al., (2015, Tables 2–3) (Table 1). Include separate breakouts for all place-based subsidized units and LIHTC units. LIHTC units represent only about a fourth of the units included in these data.1 The cost analysis (reported in Orfield et al., 2015, Table 4) also included all units funded between 1999 and 2013 for which the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency (MHFA) was able to provide financial data—not just LIHTC units, or even just units receiving federal funding. LIHTC units alone represent 5%–6% of the total rental market in the Twin Cities, and subsidized units in the aggregate represent 5% of the entire housing market—19% of the rental market at a minimum. These shares are clearly large enough to warrant the attention of policymakers, and are even greater if Housing Choice Vouchers are included. But even if analysis is limited to LIHTC units alone, Schwartz is wrong to declare that their impact on segregation is insignificant. Although tax credits are distributed slightly less segregatively than other subsidies are, our data show very clearly that LIHTC units are dramatically overrepresented in high-minority tracts and school attendance areas. Fifty-two percent of LIHTC units allocated by MHFA between 2005 and 2011 were in census tracts with minority shares greater than 30%, compared with just 23% of all housing units and 40% of all rental units. Similarly, 83% of LIHTC units were in school attendance areas with minority shares greater than 30%, compared with just 46% of the student population in the Twin Cities. As discussed in our original article, in the process of maintaining this segregative pattern, state housing authorities have turned down a substantial number of LIHTC funding proposals from more-affluent suburban areas. This represents a set of selection priorities and systems, laid out in the state’s Qualified Allocation Plan, that favor segregative development. Schwartz also claims we overemphasize the importance of the link between LIHTC and education policy. For instance, Schwartz argues that “most households . . . do not have school-age children,” pointing out that only 29% of all Twin Cities households include children under 18 (Schwartz, in this issue).

Genesee County Metropatterns: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability in Genesee County, Michigan

This research identifies the suburban typology of Genesee County, Michigan through a study of the social and fiscal disparities within the region. Municipal tax base and other demographic data, such as poverty rates measured at the school-level, are used to show wide variations in the capacities of suburban municipalities to provide local public services. The results show that 59% percent of Genesee Countys residents live in municipalities that either show clear signs of current fiscal and social stress or are at-risk of such difficulties in the near future. A range of regional fiscal, planning, and governance reforms are also evaluated.

Response to Poverty-Pimping CDCs: The Search for Dispersal's Next Bogeyman

At the outset, it is important to point out a central error in Professor Goetz’s case against the duty to integrate. He draws evidence from two very different debates: first, the legal debate over the civil rights obligations of public agencies and private housing developers, and second, the policy debate over development priorities in the affordable housing industry. Unfortunately, he ignores this distinction, using policy evidence to interpret the legal evolution of the Fair Housing Act (FHA). But the two questions are quite distinct, and less closely intertwined than he suggests. To rebut our statement that the FHA creates a clear duty to pursue integrated housing, Goetz focuses heavily on internal conflicts within what he describes, at one point, as the housing “policy subsystem.” Goetz’s argument treats the FHA’s requirements as an outgrowth of historical disagreements over whether to emphasize “spatial” or “social welfare” goals in subsidized housing, and he concludes that integration is not “a privileged objective of federal housing policy.” But this approach is backward, relying on an apparent misconception of the relationship between the FHA and the affordable housing community. No one questions, as Goetz points out time and again, that housing programs operated by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other government agencies have multiple objectives—spatial and social welfare alike. The FHA, however, does not emerge from these programs or their objectives, nor does it represent a competing set of interests. It is instead a legal device, envisioned as a direct response to severe public and private housing segregation. The Act was never intended to replace existing housing programs, with their diverse objectives; instead, it was intended to overlay them, constraining the range of permissible policy actions that they can support. Thus, Goetz’s description of our argument that “housing policy should be driven by the obligation to integrate” badly misses the mark. We are instead asserting that the FHA imposes a duty to reduce segregation, and to affirmatively further fair housing, and policymakers are

Miami Valley Metropatterns: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability in the Miami Valley

This research identifies the suburban typology of Miami Valley through a study of the social and fiscal disparities within the region. Municipal tax base and other demographic data, such as poverty rates measured at the school-level, are used to show wide variations in the capacities of suburban municipalities to provide local public services. The results show that 77% percent of Miami Valleys residents live in municipalities that either show clear signs of current fiscal and social stress or are at-risk of such difficulties in the near future. A range of regional fiscal, planning, and governance reforms are also evaluated.

Wisconsin Metropatterns: Regional Cooperation, Economic Growth, and Environmental Protection

This research identifies the suburban typology of Wisconsin through a study of the social and fiscal disparities within the state. Municipal tax base and other demographic data, such as poverty rates measured at the school-level, are used to show wide variations in the capacities of suburban municipalities to provide local public services. The results show clear signs of current fiscal and social stress in the region. A range of regional fiscal, planning, and governance reforms are also evaluated.

Comment on Scott A. Bollens's “In through the back door: Social equity and regional governance”

Abstract The resurgence in regionalism is not coming about primarily because cities and suburbs see themselves as interdependent competitors in the global economy, as argued in Scott A. Bollenss “In Through the Back Door: Social Equity and Regional Governance.” Instead, enough communities are finding tax equity programs, land use measures, and cooperative governance in their own self‐interest to create gentle progress toward regional equity. However, regionalism lags in ending concentrated poverty and racial segregation because few civil rights organizations are raising these issues as fundamental to a regional agenda. The race issue is not being raised because of lack of understanding and because of competing visions on how to do it.

Erie Metropatterns: A Regional Agenda for Community and Stability in the Erie Region

This research identifies the suburban typology of Erie through a study of the social and fiscal disparities within the region. Municipal tax base and other demographic data, such as poverty rates measured at the school-level, are used to show wide variations in the capacities of suburban municipalities to provide local public services. The results show clear signs of current fiscal and social stress in the region. A range of regional fiscal, planning, and governance reforms are also evaluated.