Experts Debate How to Remedy the Thorny Tangle of Race and Public Housing

Newswise — From its inception in the New Deal, public housing in America's big cities has been shaped by the stark realities of racial discrimination, segregation, and isolation.

Although most of the nation's public housing projects are safe and decent, by the early 1990s, a small but important subset had fallen into severe distress—physically decayed with rampant crime and violence, joblessness, and extreme poverty. These troubled projects reflect the legacy of racial segregation and the failure of federal policy to overcome it.

Since then, the federal government and its local partners have tested new strategies for transforming the most severely distressed public housing projects into healthy, mixed-income communities, helping former residents move to better neighborhoods, and encouraging public housing families to become economically self-sufficient. The results for public housing families have been mixed so far, and, in a new Urban Institute Press book, scholars, practitioners, and advocates debate the pros and cons of addressing racial segregation and its consequences more explicitly.

"Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation," by Urban Institute researchers Margery Austin Turner, Susan J. Popkin, and Lynette A. Rawlings, explores how public housing reform policies could overcome the persistent disadvantages facing black communities and black families and whether ignoring these disadvantages may undermine the long-term vision for public housing's transformation. The three Institute authors and a dozen contributors recount the history of racial segregation in public housing, highlight the consequences, and debate remedies. "Federal, state, and local policies were complicit for many years in creating racially segregated, economically isolated, underfunded, and poorly managed housing projects," says Turner, the director of the Urban Institute's Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center. "Dedicated people in and out of government need to recognize and tackle together the special challenges posed by segregation and discrimination."

Each of "Public Housing and the Legacy of Segregation"'s three main chapters delves into one dimension of public housing reform and is followed by essays challenging or complementing the authors' viewpoints. A final chapter presents policy recommendations " for local public housing agencies and their partners, for city governments, and for the federal government.

The authors detail the challenges of creating mixed-income communities that welcome both moderate- and higher-income households and public housing residents. They address the reality that nonwhite communities continue to be deprived of key resources and investments and ask whether public housing redevelopment should thus aspire to be mixed-race as well as mixed-income. Some commentators advocate for investing in poor black neighborhoods instead of trying to replace them with mixed-income developments and argue against moving public housing residents far from their social support networks.

The HOPE VI program constitutes the main federal initiative focused on transforming distressed public housing. Under this program, the federal government has invested over $6 billion for the replacement or revitalization of distressed public housing developments. Through September 2007, 88,100 public housing units had been demolished and 64,300 new homes and apartments had been constructed under the HOPE VI program, not all of which are earmarked for public housing families. Relatively few of the original residents from "HOPE-VI'd" projects have thus far returned to live in the new mixed-income developments. Instead, most are relocating with housing vouchers or to other traditional public housing developments.

HOPE VI has achieved some substantial successes. Many revitalized projects are dramatically improving the neighborhoods around them. And former residents who relocated with vouchers are enjoying higher quality housing in safer neighborhoods. But so far, no significant gains in employment and income or reductions in welfare use have been achieved.

The authors argue that the next generation of efforts to improve public housing and promote residents' economic advancement must address the legacy of racial segregation and discrimination in both housing and employment head on. They offer recommendations not only for the public housing program, but also for city governments. Their recommendations include - Encouraging racial mixing as well as income mixing in redeveloped communities, but also ensuring that all new public housing developments offer the amenities and opportunities families want and need.

- Creating strong incentives for black families to move to predominantly white neighborhoods until more minority neighborhoods can offer comparable opportunities and resources.

- Partnering with qualified local organizations to help former public housing residents overcome personal challenges to work and self-sufficiency.

- Tackling crime so it does not reemerge in new communities that mix public housing with market-rate rentals and for-sale homes.

The racial segregation of public housing began immediately after World War II, when thousands of low-rent apartments were built in response to a housing shortage. Legally enforced limits on where blacks could live and public housing policies separating black from white residents led to the construction of huge projects either in black neighborhoods or in isolated locations. Subsequent policies aimed at revitalizing downtown areas and limiting tenant selection to those with the most severe housing problems reinforced racial segregation and concentrated poverty.

Commentaries for the book are written by Mary Pattillo, Victor Rubin, Elizabeth K. Julian, Harris Beider, Alexander Polikoff, Jennifer Lee O'Neil, Michael Kelly, Philip Tegeler, Conrad Egan and Jennifer Lavorel, Kirk E. Harris, Harry J. Holzer, and Toby Herr and Suzanne L. Wagner.

"Public Housing: The Legacy of Racial Segregation," edited by Margery Austin Turner, Susan J. Popkin, and Lynette Rawlings, is available from the Urban Institute Press (paper, 304 pages, ISBN 978-0-87766-755-1, $29.50). Order online at http://www.uipress.org, call 410-516-6956, or dial 1-800-537-5487 toll-free. Read more, including the first chapter, at http://www.urban.org/books/publichousing/.

The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation.