HomeMy WebLinkAboutMINUTES - 08122008 - C.8A V
HOUSING AUTHORITY OF THE COUNTY OF CONTRA COSTA
TO: BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
FROM: Joseph Villarreal, Executive Director
DATE: August 12, 2008
SUBJECT: ARTICLES CONCERNING AFFORDABLE HOUSING ISSUES
SPECIFIC REQUEST(S) OR RECOMMENDATION(S) & BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION
I. RECOMMENDED ACTION:
ACCEPT attached articles regarding affordable housing issues for.the Board's information.
II. FINANCIAL IMPACT:
This is for informational purposes only and has no fiscal impact.
III. REASONS FOR RECOMMENDATION/BACKGROUND
For the Board's information only.
IV. CONSEQUENCES OF NEGATIVE ACTION:
None.
CONTINUED ON ATTACHMENT: YES SIGNATURE
Joseph Villarreal,Executive Director
RECOMMENDATION OF EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR RECOMMENDATION OF BOARD COMMITTEE
XAPPROVE OTHER
SIGNATURE(S):
ACTION OF BOARD ON007CPPROV D AS RECOMMENDED YX QIER
VOTE OF COMMISSIONERS
I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THIS IS A
UNANIMOUS (ABSENT ) TRUE AND CORRECT COPY OF AN
AYES: y NOES: ACTION TAKEN AND ENTERED ON THE
ABSENT: ABSTAIN: MINUTES OF THE BOARD OF
COMMISSIO ERS ON THE DATE SHOWN.
ATTESTS
JO,8f&H VILLARREAL, CLERK OF
BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
B
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01ifbrnia Chronicle i GOVERNOR SIGNS SECTION 8 HOUSING BILL Page 1 of 2
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Thursday,July 31, 2008
GOVERNOR SIGNS SECTION 8
HOUSING BILL _
California Political Desk
July 17, 2008 California Political
Desk
Sacramento — Assemblywoman Sharon
Runner's (R — Lancaster) Section 8
Housing legislation, Assembly Bill 2827, ,
gained the support of Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger and was signed into law.
I am thrilled that the Governor joined me
in the fight against Section 8 Housing
fraud," Runner said. "This legislation will
help crackdown on those who abuse the
system while increasing access for The California Political
qualified hardworking families who are in Desk provides
need of subsidized housing." information, news
releases, and
"Currently, thousands of Californians who announcements
are in need wait for Section 8 Housing obtained from
support for years on end, while greedy communication and
criminals with sufficient means illegally use public relations offices
public resources and take advantage of throughout the state.
society's goodwill," Runner said.
Are you a Public
AB 2827 will allow District Attorney's Information Officer?
offices to track incidents of Section 8 The California
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will provide substantial evidence on the launched a free local
severity and extent of this fraud, as there public information
is no uniform tracking system within the service. Click here for
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http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/68688 7/31/2008
r 4ali.farnia Chronicle I GOVERNOR SIGNS SECTION 8 HOUSING BILL Page 2 of 2
the necessary data as the extent of the problem is currently unknown
statewide," Runner explained. "This will allow law enforcement to
develop a plan of action to combat Section 8 Housing fraud."
"The citizens of the Antelope and Victor Valleys have seen the
negative effects of this fraud firsthand," Runner added. "AB 2827 is
common-sense, cost-effective legislation that will address this major
issue, protect those citizens in need, and help put an end to this
criminal behavior."
The law will go into effect on January 1, 2009.
http://www.califomiachronicle.com/articles/68688 7/31/2008
4p-Ed Contributor- Tear Down HUD, and Build a Better, Broader Urban Policy - Op-Ed - NYTi... Page 1 of 3
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July 25, 20o8
To Fight Poverty, Tear Down HUD
By SUDHIR VENKATESH
WITH the nation embroiled in a housing crisis, one would expect the Department of Housing and Urban
Development to be playing a central role. But HUD is a marginal player.Although its Federal Housing
Administration division has agreed to underwrite new mortgages,it is merely following the leadership of the
Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.
This is no accident. HUD's sidelined role is a product of its anachronistic approach to both housing and cities.
It might be best to simply close the agency and create a new cabinet-level commitment to urban development.
In 1965,when HUD was created, its mission was to spur growth in and around cities.The agency provided
mortgage assistance to veterans and first-time homeowners, it built housing for the urban poor, and the
Federal Housing Administration spurred suburban expansion by recruiting developers and home buyers to a
relatively new, untested market.
Since its inception, HUD has had a fairly straightforward recipe: develop good relations with mayors and local
real estate leaders, then award grants and underwrite loans that affirm local development priorities. The
longtime mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley,was often credited for creating the "city that works,"but it was
the support of HUD and the housing administration that helped him eradicate slums,build public housing and
create the vast array of working-class neighborhoods that are now Chicago's signature.
But in the last four decades the urban landscape has changed from discrete, independent cities to vast,
interdependent regions where people and goods move freely. Between Los Angeles and Orange County,
Milwaukee and Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, cities have no choice but to collaborate on decisions over
land use and economic development. In taxation and zoning, regional agencies like the Port Authority of New
York and New Jersey and the Southern California Regional Rail Authority are as powerful as big-city mayors.
And for the first time in our nation's history, poverty is rising faster in suburbs than in urban cores. In this new
era, HUD's each-city-is-a-separate-whole approach is not only too inflexible and short-sighted, it also hinders
effective regional growth.
0
To see why, consider HUD's most prominent urban development program: Housing Opportunities for People
Everywhere (VI). Introduced with much fanfare in 1993, HOPE helped municipal governments demolish
dilapidated public housing projects and revitalize their inner cities.To receive program money, mayors agreed
to move families from the projects to low-poverty neighborhoods and build mixed-income housing where the
projects once stood.
Clinton administration officials were quick to credit HOPE for reducing inner-city poverty. Big city mayors
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25venkatesh.html?_r=2&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th... 7/28/2008
r t3p7Ed Contributor - Tear Down HUD, and Build a Better, Broader Urban Policy - Op-Ed - NYTi... Page 2 of.'3
loved it because it gave them.license to raze unsightly projects and gentrify their downtowns.Attractive parks
and revamped schools —entirely new communities, in essence —brought thousands of middle-class families
back to the central city.
But a closer look reveals a more complicated story.
In large cities like Atlanta, Baltimore and Chicago, the program reshuffled project residents to outlying
neighborhoods and struggling inner-ring suburbs whose mayors lack the experience and resources to help the
incoming poor and stem rising crime and gang activity. More than 8o percent of the families who left Chicago's
demolished projects moved into equally poor, racially segregated neighborhoods.
Lawsuits have appeared every few years since the inception of the HOPE program, alleging that HUD used
these funds to resegregate the poor, a violation of civil rights statutes.
A 1998 report from the Government Accountability Office also concluded that HUD oversight was lacking, and
HOPE VI was giving greater weight to the interests of real estate developers. This raised widespread concern
since private developers are less likely to build affordable housing or maintain usable public spaces.
And the construction of mixed-income housing on HOPE sites has lagged,leading to concerns that HUD
policies have reduced the low-income housing stock.
How could a program aimed at curbing inequality and helping the poor end up creating new pockets of
poverty?The answer lies partly in HUD's myopic focus on gentrifying urban cores. The agency ignored studies
showing that former project residents would have difficulty finding rental housing in outlying neighborhoods
and did not provide assistance for inner-ring suburbs with high rates of foreclosures. HUD resisted calls to
slow down housing demolition and to move the poor to areas of high job growth.
By making no effort to ascertain needs and resources on a regional scale, HUD has ended up eliminating
poverty in one place while creating distressed,low-income communities in others. If HUD had developed a
broader vision, one that tied together inner city and suburb, it could have created policies to help both areas
adjust to the modern urban landscape.
In correcting HUD's missteps,we must first separate"housing policy"from"urban development."Today,
housing policy is dictated by private markets, so why not give the Commerce and Treasury Departments
oversight of a single authority that administers Federal Housing Administration financing— needed to keep
homes affordable for the majority of Americans — and all of HUD's other housing programs?
Then,the development needs of our nation's regions -wide areas like the Northeast corridor or Southern
California — could be considered anew. Block grants could provide incentives for municipal and county
governments to collaborate. Regionalism must be embraced, even if it tests local officials who fear losing their
traditional sources of government financing.
Promoting coherent regional development will also entail linking urban policy concerns like community
development and social services with work like rehabbing roads and building railways. With gas prices driving
Americans to public transportation, this is a fitting moment to think holistically.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25 venkatesh.html?_r=2&th=&oref=slogin&emc=th... 7/28/2008
--Op.-Ed Contributor- Tear Down HUD, and Build a Better, Broader Urban Policy - Op-Ed - NYTi... Page 3 of 3
But adding a few more buses won't do the trick.Americans live too spread out, and economic activity is no
longer limited to downtowns. Community-based initiatives —from vocational programs to rezoning efforts to
designing effective transportation corridors and recreational space — are sorely needed but will be effective
only if they tie into a broader vision that anticipates growth on a large scale.
Even our most persistent problems of inequality will require new strategies.A federal agency devoted to
regional planning could help the Health and Human Services Department reconfigure anti-poverty programs
to aid suburban communities that have so far gone unnoticed but are desperately in need. It could motivate the
Labor Department to develop training programs and support the transportation needs of workers.
We need an agency that can work outside old boundaries and design a regional approach to revitalizing cities
and suburbs. Dismantling HUD would be a great place to start.
Sudhir Venkatesh, a professor of sociology at Columbia, is the author of"Gang Leader for a Day:A Rogue
Sociologist Takes to the Streets."
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25 venkatesh.html?_r=2&th=&oref=slogin&emc--th... 7/28/2008
etter - Repair HUD, Don't Demolish It- Letter -NYTimes.com Page 1 of 1
QD CIV 80xk Cl-b o 'Nr Fk'RI F.�W..'W_,::'W
July go,20o8
Repair HUD, Don't Demolish It
To the Editor:
Re "To Fight Poverty,Tear Down HUD,"by Sudhir Venkatesh(Op-Ed,July 25):
Mr.Venkatesh's argument for the abolition of the Department of Housing and Urban Development is based on
flawed history. Regionalism was one of the core mandates of HUD at its inception in 1965. Regionalism was
controversial then — and it is now—because it threatens local political interests.
HUD efforts to regionalize affordable housing in the late 196os and 1970s faced intense resistance by
suburbanites who did not want low-income residents and people of color moving into their communities. The
Nixon administration curbed HUD's efforts to integrate the suburbs by race and by class.
And beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present, HUD has been one of the most underfmanced and
(with a few exceptions) poorly administered cabinet-level agencies.
Mr. Venkatesh is right that the federal government needs to encourage regional cooperation. But the solution
is not to disband HUD:.Mend it, don't end it.
Thomas J. Sugrue
Philadelphia,July 25, 2008
The writer is a professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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1 ,
40
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Why is crime rising in so many American cities?
:JThe answer implicates one of the most celebrated
antipoverty programs of recent decades.
3
BY HANNA ROSIN 3
Photographs by Robert King
Eli. America
2 `1 o get to the Old Allen police station in North Mem-
.
phis,you have to drive all the way to the end of a
(` quiet suburban road until it turns country.Hidden
by six acres of woods,the station seems to be the kind of =-
place that might concern itself mainly with lost dogs, or _
maybe the misuse of hunting licenses. But it isn't. Not
anymore.As Lieutenant Doug Barnes waited for me to
ra
EERIER arrive one night for a tour of his beat he had a smoke
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Barnes is white,middle-aged,and,like many veteran side of the interstate,on the way to the northern suburbs. '
cops,looks powerful without being fit. He grew up four The car"looked like Swiss cheese,”he said,with 40 or
miles from the station during the 196os,he said,back 50 bullet holes in it and blood all over the seats.Barnes
when middle-class whites lived peacefully alongside both started investigating.He located one corpse in the woods
city elites and working-class African Americans.After nearby and another,which had been shoved out a car door,
the 1968 riots,Barnes's father taught him the word cur- in the parking lot of a hospital a few miles away.He found "•
few and reminded him to lock the doors.Still,the place a neighborhood witness,who gave up everything but the
remained,until about 10 years ago,a pretty safe neighbor- killers'names.Two weeks later,he got another call about
hood where you could play outside with a ball or a dog. an abandoned car.This time the body was inside."It was
But as he considered more-recent times,his nostalgia my witness,"he recalled,"deader than a mackerel.'
gave way to something darker."I have never been so dis- At this point,he still thought of the stretch of Mem-
heartened,"he said. phis where he'd grown up as"quiet as all get-out";the only
He remembers when the ground began to shift beneath place you'd see cruisers congregated was in the Safeway
him.He was working as an investigator throughout the parking lot,where churchgoing cops held choir practice €
city,looking into homicides and major crimes.Most of before going out for drinks.But by 2000,all of that had {�
his work was downtown.One day in 1997,he got a call to changed.Once-quiet apartment complexes full of young
check out a dead car that someone had rolled up onto the families`'suddenly started turning hot on us."Instead of
i
42 AMERICAN MURDER MYSTERY
THE ATLANTIC JULY/AUGUST 2008
Ii
the occasional break-in,Barnes was getting calls about Criminologists still debate why:the crack war petered out,
armed robberies,gunshots in the hallways,drug dealers new policing tactics worked,the economy improved for
roughing up their neighbors.A gang war ripped through a long spell.Whatever the alchemy,crime in New York,
the neighborhood."We thought,TFhatthehell isgoingon for instance,is now so low that local prison guards are
here?"A gang war!In North Memphis!'AMl of a sudden worried about unemployment.
it was a damn war zone,"he said. Lately,though, a new and unexpected pattern has
As we drove around his beat,this new suburban war- emerged,taking criminologists by surprise.While crime
fare was not so easy to make out.We passed by the city rates in large cities stayed flat,homicide rates in many
zoo and Rhodes College, a serene-looking campus on midsize cities(with populations of between 500,000 and
a hill.We passed by plenty of quiet streets lined with 1 million)began increasing,sometimes by as much as
ranch houses,not fancy but not falling down,either.Then 20 percent a year.In 2006,the Police Executive Research
Barnes began to narrate,street by street,getting more Forum,a national police group surveying cities from coast
animated and bitter by the block. to coast,concluded in a report called"A Gathering Storin"
Here was the perfectly pleasant-looking Maplewood that this might represent"the front end...of an epidemic
Avenue,where the old azaleas were just starting to bloom of violence not seen for years."The leaders of the group,
'' and the local cops were trying to weed out the Chicago which is made up of police chiefs and sheriffs,theorized
drug connection.Farther down the avenue,two house- about what might be spurring the latest crime wave:the
holds flew American flags,and a third was known for spread of gangs,the masses of offenders coming out of
manufacturing"cheese,"a particularly potent form of prison,methamphetamines.But mostly they puzzled over
powdered heroin.The Hollywood branch of the local the bleak new landscape.According to FBI data,America's
library,long famous for its children's room,was now also most dangerous spots are now places where Martin Scor-
renowned for the time thugs stole$1,800 there from a Girl sese would never think of staging a shoot-out—Florence,
Scout who'd been collecting cookie funds.Finally we came South Carolina;Charlotte-Mecklenburg,North Carolina;
to a tidy brick complex called Goodwill Village,where Kansas City,Missouri;Reading,Pennsylvania; Orlando,
Barnes had recently chased down some gang members Florida;Memphis,Tennessee.
who'd been taking turns having sex with a new female Memphis has always been associated with some
recruit.As we closed in on midnight,Barnes's beat began amount ofviolence.But why has Elvis's hometown turned
to feel like the setting of a David Lynch movie,where every into America's new South Bronx?Barnes thinks he knows
backyard and cul-de-sac could double as a place to hide one big part of the answer,as does the city's chief of police.
I a body.Or like a suburban remake of Taxi Driver,with A handful of local criminologists and social scientists
Barnes as the new Travis Bickle."I'm like a zookeeper now," think they can explain it,too. But it's a dismal answer,
said Barnes."I hold the key,and my job right now is to one that city leaders have made clear they don't want
protect the people from all the animals.' to hear.It's an answer that offers up racial stereotypes
On September 27, 2007,a headline in The Commer- to fearful whites in a city trying to move beyond racial
cialAppeal,the city's biggest newspaper, announced a tensions.Ultimately,it reaches beyond crime and impli-
dubious honor:"Memphis Leads U.S.in Violent Crime." cates one ofthe most ambitious antipoverty programs of
-� �
Local precincts had been seeing their internal numbers for recent decades.
homicide,rape,aggravated assault,and robbery tick up
since the late 1990s,starting around the time Barnes sawarly every Thursday,Richard Jankowski drives to
= l
the first dead car.By 2005,a criminologist closely trackingEing
Memphis's Airways Station for the morning meet-
those numbers was describing the pattern as a crime explo- of police precinct commanders.Janikowski
sion.In May of 2007,a woman from upscale Chickasaw used to teach law and semiotics,and he still sometimes
Gardens was raped by two men,at gunpoint;the assail- floats on a higher plane;he walks slowly,speaks in a nasal
ants had followed her and her son home one afternoon. voice, and quotes from policy books.But at this point
Outraged residents formed Citizens Against Crime and in his career,he is basically an honorary cop.A crimi-
k f lobbied the statehouse for tougher gun laws."People are nologist with the University of Memphis,Janikowski has
concerned for their lives,frankly,"said one county commis- established an unusually close relationship with the city
- sioner,summarizing the city's mood.This March,a man police department.From the police chief to the beat cop,
murdered six people,including two young children,in a everyone knows him as`Dr.J,"or"GQ"if he's wearing his
� !
house a few miles south of Old Allen Station. nice suit.When his researchers are looking for him,they
Falling crime rates have been one of the great Ameri- can often find him outside the building,having a smoke
+' can success stories of the past 15 years.New York and with someone in uniform.
I Los Angeles,once the twin capitals of violent crime,have One Thursday in March, I sat in on the morning
-- calmed down significantly,as have most other big cities. meeting.About 1.00 people—commanders,beat.cops,
Hamner or'assautts reu 1191 cantly. patterns witliBetts's map of Section 8 rentals.Where Jani-
About five years ago,Janikowski embarked on a more kowski saw a bunny rabbit,Betts saw a sideways horse-
1.1; ambitious project.He'd built up enough trust with the shoe "He has a better
g ( er unagmahon,"she said).Otherwise,
police to get them to send him daily crime and arrest the match was near-perfect.On the merged map,dense
reports,including addresses and types of crime.He began violent-crime areas are shaded dark blue,and Section 8
10.
mapping all violent and property crimes,block by block, addresses are represented by little red dots.All of the
across the city."These cops on the streets were saying dark-blue areas are covered in little red dots,like bursts
;i that crime patterns are changing,"he said,so he wanted of gunfire.The rest of the city,has almost no dots.
I to look into it. Betts remembers her discomfort as she looked at the
!�; When his map was complete, a clear if strangely map.The couple had been musing about the connection
shaped pattern emerged: Wait a minute, he recalled for months,but they were amazed—and deflated—to see
thinking.I see this bunny rabbit coming up.People are how perfectly the two data sets fit together.She knew
going to accuse me of being on shrooms!The inner city, right away that this would be a"hard thing to say or write."
where crime used to be concentrated,was now clean.But Nobody in the antipoverty community and nobody in city
everywhere else looked much worse:arrests had skyrock- leadership was going to welcome the news that the noble
eted along two corridors north and west of the central city experiment that they'd been engaged in for the past decade
(the bunny rabbit's ears)and along one in the southeast had been bringing the city down,in ways they'd never
I (the tail).Hot spots had proliferated since the mid-1990s, expected.But the connection was too obvious to ignore,
and little islands of crime had sprung up where none had and Betts and Janikowski figured that the same thing '
f existed before,dotting the map all around the city. must be happening all around the country.Eventually, =�
"I
.---------- •ice
46 AMERICAN MURDER MYSTERY
THE ATLANTIC JULY/AUGUST 2008
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they thought,they'd find other researchers who connected CHA offered housing only in neighborhoods just like hers.
the dots the way they had,and then maybe they could get Polikoff became notorious in the Chicago suburbs; one
.i city leaders,and even national leaders,to listen. community group,he wrote,awarded him a gold-plated
i pooper-scooper"to clean up all the shit"he wanted to
etts's office is filled with books about knocking bring into the neighborhood.A decade later,he argued
I
down the projects,an effort considered by fellow the case before the Supreme Court and won.Legal schol- =_
housing experts to be their great contribution to ars today often compare the case's significance to that of
3
the civil-rights movement.The work grew out of a long Brown v.Board ofEducation of Topeka. =_
history of white resistance to blacks'moving out of what In 1976,letters went out to 200 randomly selected
used to be called the ghetto. During much of the 20th families among the 44,000 living in Chicago public hous-
century,white people used bombs and mobs to keep black ing,asking whether they wanted to move out to the sub-
people out of their neighborhoods.In 1949 in Chicago,a urbs.A counselor went around the projects explaining ° _w
rumor that a black family was moving onto a white block the new Section 8 program,in which tenants would pay o
prompted a riot that grew to 10,000 people in four days. 25 percent of their income for rent and the government a
"Americans had been treating blacks seeking housing out- would pay the rest,up to a certain limit.Many residents
side the ghetto not much better than...[the]cook treated seemed dubious.They asked how far away these places Z
the dog who sought a crust of bread,"wrote the ACLU were,how they would get there,whether the white people
lawyer and fair-housing advocate Alexander Polikoff in would let them in.
his book Waitingfor Gautreaux. But the counselors persevered and eventually got m
_ I Polikoff is a hero to Betts and many of her colleagues. people excited about the idea.The flyers they mailed out 2 _
In August 1966,he filed two related class-action suits featured a few stanzas of a Gwendolyn Brooks poem,"The
against the Chicago Housing Authority and the U.S. Ballad of Rudolph Reed." o ==
Department of Housing and Urban Development', on w
behalf of a woman named Dorothy Gautreaux and other I am not hungry for berries
i
tenants.Gautreaux wanted to leave the ghetto,but the I am not hungry for bread ;:-_
AMERICAN MURDER MYSTERY 49
JULY/AUGUST 2008 THE ATLANTIC i
j;
{,_
3;
jr
Ir
t
24 percent.But this doesn't tell the whole story.Recently, set in.Pushing a greater number of neighborhoods past .
the housing expert George Galster,of Wayne State Univer- that tipping point is likely to produce more total crime.In
sity,analyzed the shifts in urban poverty and published his 2003,the Brookings Institution published a list of the 15
i?
results in a paper called"A Cautionary Tale."While fewer cities where the number of high-poverty neighborhoods
Americans live in high-poverty neighborhoods,increas- had declined the most.In recent years,most of those cit- =G
ing numbers now live in places with"moderate"poverty ies have also shown up as among the most violent in the
rates,meaning rates of 20 to 40 percent.This pattern is U.S.,according to FBI data.
not necessarily better,either for poor peopletrYin to The"Gathering Storm"report that worried over an
break away from bad neighborhoods or for cities,Galster upcoming epidemic of violence was inspired by a call _3:
explains.His paper compares two scenarios:a city split from the police chief of Louisville,Kentucky,who'd seen
into high-poverty and low-poverty areas,and a city domi- crime rising regionally and wondered what was going on.
nated by median-poverty ones.The latter arrangement is .Simultaneously,the University of Louisville criminologist
likely to produce more bad neighborhoods and more total Geetha Suresh was tracking local patterns of violent crime. -a
crime,he concludes,based on a computer model of how She had begun her work years before,going blind into
social dysfunction spreads. the research:.she had just arrived from India,had never
Studies show that recipients of Section 8 vouchers heard of a housing project,had no idea which were the
have tended to choose moderately poor neighborhoods bad parts oftown,and was clueless about the finer points
that were already on the decline,not low-poverty neigh- of American racial sensitivities.In her research,Suresh
borhoods.One recent study publicized by HUD warned noticed a recurring pattern,one that emerged first in the
that policy makers should lower their expectations, late 1990s,then again around 2002.A particularly violent
because voucher recipients seemed not to be spreading neighborhood would suddenly go cold,and crime would
out,,as they had hoped,but clustering together.Galster heat up in several new neighborhoods. In each case, `
theorizes that every neighborhood has its tipping point— Suresh has now confirmed,the first hot spots were the
a threshold well below a 40 percent poverty rate—beyond neighborhoods around huge housing projects,and the '
which crime explodes and other severe social problems later ones were places where people had moved when
.I
---._ --
is
50 AMERICAN MURDER MYSTERY
THE ATLANTIC JULY/AUGUST 2008
the projects were torn down.From that,she drew the connections and to develop comfort zones,"Jankowski i
obvious conclusion: "Crime is going along with them." told me.)But in 2005,another wave of project demoli-
Except for being hand-drawn,Suresh's map matching tions pushed the number of people displaced from public
housing patterns with crime looks exactly like Janikowski housing to well over 20,000,and crime skyrocketed.Jani-
and Betts's. kowski felt there were deep structural issues behind the
Nobody would claim vouchers,or any'single factor,'as increase,ones that the citywas not prepared to handle.Old
the sole cause of rising crime.Crime did not rise in every gangs—the Gangster Disciples and the LeMoyne Gardens
city where housing projects came down.In cities where gang—had long since re-formed and gotten comfortable.
i` 1
- it did,many factors contributed:unemployment,gangs, Ex-convicts recently released from prison had taken up res- i
i" rapid gentrification that dislocated tens of thousands of idence with girlfriends or wives or families who'd moved to II
I, poor people not living in the projects. Still,researchers the new neighborhoods.Working-class people had begun
around the country are seeing the same basic pattern: moving out to the suburbs farther east,and more recipients
projects coming down in inner cities and crime pushing of Section 8 vouchers were taking their place.Now many
outward,in many cases destabilizing cities or their sur- neighborhoods were reaching their tipping points. �
i; rounding areas.Dennis Rosenbaum,a criminologist fat Chaotic new crime patterns in suburbia caught the
_= I' the University of Illinois at Chicago,told me that after the police off guard.Gang members who'd moved to North
high-rises came down in Chicago,suburbs to the south Memphis might now have cousins southeast of the city, 15
and west—including formerly quiet ones—began to see allowing them to target the whole vast area in between
spikes in crime;nearby Maywood's murder rate has nearly and hide out with relatives far from the scene of the crime.
' doubled in the past two years.In Atlanta,which almost Memphis covers an area as large as New York City,but
always makes the top-10 crime list,crime is now scattered with one-seventeenth as many police officers,and a much
i widely,just as it is in Memphis and Louisville. lower cop-to-citizen ratio.And routine policing is more
Y p
`Was this a bad theory of poverty.?
tY
Have we uulderestimated the role of support pPort networks
and .overestimated the role of place?'
Its
In some places,the phenomenon is hard to detect,but difficult in the semi-suburbs.Dealers sell out of fenced-
,. i there maybe a simple reason:in cities with tight housing in backyards,not on exposed street corners.They have
.: markets,Section 8 recipients generally can't afford to live cars to escape in,and a landscape to blend into.Shrub-
=I a
within the city limits,and sometimes they even move to bery is a constant headache for the police;they've taken
different states.New York,where the rate ofviolent crime to asking that bushes be cut down so suspects can't duck
has plummeted,appears to have pushed many of its poor behind them.
out to New Jersey,where violent crime has increased in
nearby cities and suburbs.Washington,D.C.,has exported began reporting this story because I came across a
' some of its crime to surrounding counties in Maryland newspaper article that ranked cities by crime rate and
and Virginia. I was surprised to see Memphis at the very top.At first
Much research has been done on the spread of gangs I approached the story literally,the same way a cop on a
- ' into the suburbs.Jeff Rojek,a criminologist at the Uni- murder case would:here's the body,now figure out what
A:r: versity of South Carolina,issued a report in 2006 showing happened.But it didn't take long to realize that in Mem-
;-I` that serious gang activity had spread to eight suburban phis,and in city after city,the bodies are just the most
counties around the state,including Florence County, visible symptoms of a much deeper sickness.
home to the city of Florence,which was rane most replacing ked�tht If ln projects with vouchers had
g housig
violent place in America the year after Memphis was.In achieved its main goal—infusing the poor with middle-
his fieldwork,he said,the police complained of"migrant class habits—then higher crime rates might be a price
gangs"from the housing projects,and in departments worth paying.But today,social scientists looking back
y seemed wholly unprepared to respond. on the whole grand experiment are apt to use words like
After the first wave of housing-project demolition in baffling and disappointing.A large federal-government
Memphis,in 1997,crime spread out,but did not imine- study conducted over the past decade—a follow-up to
diately increase.(It takes time for criminals to make new the highly positive,highly publicized Gautreaux study
y y +
52 AMERICAN MURDER MYSTERY
THE ATLANTIC JULY/AUGUST 2008
of 1991—produced results that were "puzzling, said Phyllis Betts told me that when she was interviewing
Susan Popkin of the Urban Institute.In this study,vol- residents leaving the housing projects,"they were under
unteers were also moved into low-poverty neighborhoods, the impression they could move into the new develop- .
although they didn't move nearly as far as the Gautreaux ments on site.'Residents were asked to help name the new
families.Women reported lower levels of obesity and developments and consult on the architectural plans.Yet
depression.But they were no more likely to find jobs.The to move back in,residents had to meet strict criteria:if
schools were not much better,and children were no more they were not seniors,they had to be working,or in school,
likely to stay in them.Girls were less likely to engage in or on disability.Their children could not be delinquent
risky behaviors, and they reported feeling more secure in school.Most public-housing residents were scared
in their new neighborhoods.But boys were as likely to off by the criteria,or couldn't meet them,or else they'd
do drugs and act out,and more likely to get arrested for already moved and didn't want to move again.The new
property crimes.The best Popkin can say is:"It has not HOPE VI developments aimed to balance Section 8 and
lived up to its promise.It has not lifted people out of pov- market-rate residents,but this generally hasn't happened.
erty,it has not made them self-sufficient,and it has left a In Memphis,the rate of former public-housing residents
�f lot of people behind." moving back in is 5 percent.
Researchers have started to look more critically at A few months ago,Harris went to a Sunday-afternoon
l::I b
the Gautreaux results.The sample was tiny,and the cir- picnic at Uptown Square,the development built on the
cumstances were ideal.The families who moved to the site of the old Hurt Village project,to conduct a survey.
suburbs were screened heavily and the vast majority of The picnic's theme was chili cook-off.The white people,
families who participated in the program didn't end up mostly young couples,including little kids and pregnant
moving,suggesting that those who did were particularly wives,sat around on Eddie Bauer chairs with beer hold- -
' motivated.Even so,the results were not always sparkling. ers,chatting.The black people,mostly women with chit-
i For instance,while Gautreaux study families who had dren,were standing awkwardly around the edges.Harris
,I moved to the suburbs were more likely to work than a con- began asking some of the white people the questions on _
trol group who stayed in the city,they actuallyworked less her survey:Do you lack health insurance?Have you ever
Ih than before they had moved."People were really excited not had enough money to buy medication?One said to
h about it because it seemed to offer something new,"Popkin her,"This is so sad.Does anyone ever answer`yes'to these
said."But in my view,it was radically oversold." questions?"—Harris's first clue that neighbors didn't talk
Ed Goetz,a housing expert at the University of Minne- much across color lines.One of the developers was there
sota,is creating a database of the follow-up research at that day surveying the ideal community he'd built,and
different sites across the country,"to make sense of these he was beaming."Isn't this great?"he asked Harris,and
a very limited positive outcomes."On the whole,he says, she remembers thinking,Are you kidding gyne?They're _-
people don't consistently report any health,education, all sitting 20 feet away from each other!
or employment benefits.They are certainly no closer to In my visits with former Dixie Homes tenants who'd
leaving poverty.They tend to"feel better about their envi- moved around the city,I came across the same mix of
ironments,"meaning they see less graffiti on the walls and reactions that researchers had found.The residents who
fewer dealers on the streets.But just as strongly,they feel had always been intent on moving out of Dude Homes
"a sense of isolation in their new communities:'His most anyway seemed to be thriving;those who'd been pushed
y surprising finding,he says,"is that they miss the old com- out against their will,which was the vast majority,seemed =
mumty.For all of its faults,there was a tight network that dislocated and ill at ease.
!' existed.So what I'm trying to figure out is:Was this a bad I met 30-yeas-old Sheniqua Woodard,a single mother
theory of poverty?We were intending to help people climb of three who'd been getting her four-yeas degree while hv-
out of poverty,but that hasn't happened at all.Have we ing at Dixie.She was now working at a city mental-health
underestimated the role of support networks and over- clinic and about to start studying toward a master's degree
estimated the role of place?" in special education.She'd moved as far out of the city as
HOPE VI stands as a bitter footnote to this story.What she could,to a house with a big backyard.She said,"The
began as an"I Have a Dream"social crusade has turned fact of being in my own home?Priceless."
into an urban-redevelopment project.Cities fell so hard But I also met La Sasha Rodgers,who was 19 when
for the idea of a new,spiffed-up,gentrified downtown Dixie was torn down (now she's 21). "A lot of people
I that this vision came to crowd out other goals."People thought it was bad,because they didn't live there,"she told
- ' ask me if HOPE VI was successful,and I have to say,`You me."But it was like one big family.It felt like home.If I
i I mean the buildings or the people?'"said Laura Harris,a could move back now,the way it was,I would:'She moved
HOPE VI evaluator in Memphis."It became seen as away out to a house in South Memphis with her mother,and
l:: to get rid of eyesores and attract rich people downtown." all the little cousins and nieces and nephews who drift in
AMERICAN MURDER MYSTERY 53 I
JULY/AUGUST 2008 THE ATLANTIC
during the day.She doesn't know anyone else on the block. on people who have been too burdened already,and to
"It's just here;'she said about her new house.Rodgers may me that's,quote-unquote,criminal."To Lipscomb,what
not see them right out her window,but she knows that matters is sending people who lived in public housing the
the"same dope dealers,the same junkies"are just down message that"they can be successful,they can go to work
the block.The threats are no less real,but now they seem and have kids who go to school.They can be self-sufficient
distant and dull,as if she were watching neighborhood and reach for the middle class.'
life on TV.At Dixie,when there were shots at the corner But Betts doesn't think this message,alone,will stick,
store,everyone ran out to see what was happening.Now, and she gets frustrated when she sees sensitivity about
"if somebody got shot,we wouldn't get up to see: race or class blocking debate."You can't begin to problem- -
Rodgers didn't finish high school,although she did get solve until you lay it out,"she said."Most of us are not
her GED,and she's never had a job.Still,"I know I have living in these high-crime neighborhoods.And I'm out =
to venture out in the world,"she said,running through there listening to the people who are not committing the ;
her options:Go back to school?Get a job?Get married? crimes,who expected something better."The victims,she
Have a baby?"I want more.I'm so ready to have my own. notes,are seldom white."There are decent African Ameri-
I
I just don't know how to get it:' can neighborhoods—neighborhoods of choice—that are 'I
going down,"she said. !"
is difficult to contemplate solutions to this problem In truth,the victims are constantly shifting.Hardly
when so few politicians,civil servants,and academics any Section 8 families moved into wealthy white suburbs.
seem willing to talk about it—or even to admit that In the early phases,most of the victims were working-
it exists.Jankowski and Betts are in an awkward posi- class African Americans who saw their neighborhoods
tion.They are both white academics in a city with many destroyed and had to leave. Now most of them are .
African American political leaders.Neither of them is a poor people like Leslie Shaw,who are trying to do what
l
- . We cant sendeop le back to those barricaded institutions.
s That's not a scenario anyone wants to embrace.'
Memphis native.And they know that their research will Lipscomb asks of them and be more self-sufficient.Which
fuel the usual NIMBY paranoia about poor people destroy- makes sorting out the blame even trickier.Sometimes
. ing the suburbs."We don't want Memphis to be seen as the victim and the perpetrator live under the same roof; "
the armpit of the nation,"Betts said.`And we don't want Shaw's friend at Springdale Creek wanted a better life
■ to be the ones responsible for framing these issues in the for herself and her family,but she couldn't keep her sons
...; wrong way." from getting into trouble.Sometimes they may be the
■ The city's deep pride about the downtown renaissance same person,with conflicting impulses about whether
■
■ makes the issue more sensitive still.CITY,COOL,CHIC to move forward or go back.In any case,more than a ;
read downtown billboards,beckoning young couples to decade's worth of experience proves that!crossing your
new apartments.Developers have built a new eight-block fingers and praying for self-sufficiency is foolish.
mall and a downtown stadium for the Grizzlies,the city's So what's the alternative?Is a strained hope better
NBA team. In 2003, The Commercial Appeal likened than no hopeat all?"We can't send people back to those y
downtown Memphis to a grizzly bear"rumbling back into barricaded institutions,like Escape From New York,"said
the sun."The city is applying to the federal government Betts."That's not a scenario anyone wants to embrace."
ri
for more funds to knock down the last two housing Proj- Physically redistributing the poor was probably necessary:
ects and build more mixed-income developments,and generations of them were floundering in the high-rises.
wouldn't want to advertise any problems. But instead of coaching them and then carefully spread-
Earlier this year,Betts presented her findings to city ing them out among many more-affluent neighborhoods,
leaders,including Robert Lipscomb,the head ofthe Mem- most cities gave them vouchers and told them to move in
phis Housing Authority.From what Lipscomb said to me, a rush,with no support. I
he's still not moved."You've already marginalized people. "People were moved too quickly,without any planning,
and told them they have to move out;'he told me irrita- and without any thought about where they would live,
bly,just ashe's told Betts."Nowyou're saying they moved andhow it would affect the families or the places,"com-
_: somewhere else and created all these problems?That's a. plains James Rosenbaum,the author ofthe original Gau-
really,really unfair assessment.You're putting abig burden treaux study.By contrast,years of public debate preceded
1 1 1
54 AMERICAN MURDER MYSTERY
THE ATLANTIC JULY/AUGUST 2008
I,
welfare reform.States were forced to acknowledge thatApoverty
d beyond this,what?The social services Betts is
if they wanted to cutoff benefits,they had to think aboutecommending did not lift masses of people out of
job training,child care broken families.Hous neverm the ro ects.Perha s outside the roj g, � g � projects. P � P j-
F• became a high-profile issue,so cities skipped that phase. ects,they will help people a little more.But perhaps not.
The problems of poverty run so deep that we're unlikely to
of every project was like Cabrini-Green.Dixie know the answer for a generation.Social scientists track-
Homes was a complex of two and three-story in people who are trying to improve their lives often talk
Is brick buildings on grassy plots. It was,by all about a"weathering effect,"the wearing-down that hap-
accounts,claustrophobic,sometimes badly maintained, pens as alifetime ofbaggage accumulates.With poorpeo-
and occasionally violent.But to its residents,it was,above ple,the drag is strong,even if they haven't lived in poverty
all,a community.Every former resident I spoke to men- for long.Kids who leave poor neighborhoods at a young
tioned one thing:the annual Easter-egg hunt.Demoniz- age still have trouble keeping up with their peers,studies
ing the high-rises has blinded some city officials to what show.They catch up for a while and then,after a few years,
�y was good and necessary about the projects, and what slip back.Truly escaping poverty seems to require awill as
they ultimately have to find a way to replace:the sense strong as a spy's:you have to disappear to a strange land,
of belonging,the informal economy,the easy access to forget where you came from,and ignore the suspicions
social services.And for better or worse,the fact that the of everyone around you.Otherwise,you can easily find
police had the address. yourself right back where you started. i
_ Better policing, better-connected to new residen- Leslie Shaw is writing a memoir,and it contains more
me
.5 tial patterns,is a step in the right direction.Jankowski weather than most of us can imagine.At 15,she left home 1
believes the chaos can be controlled with information with a boy named Fat,who turned out to be a pimp.She i
_. 1. and technology,and he's been helping the department spent the next seven years being dragged from state to
i + improve both for several years.This spring he helped state as a street hooker,robbing johns and eventually
launch a"real-time crime center,"in the hope of making getting addicted to crack.Once,a pimp locked her in.
the department more nimble.Twenty-four hours a day, his car trunk.Another time,her water broke in a crack
1 technicians plot arrests on giant screens representing the house.This covers only the first few chapters.She works
city's geography,in a newly built studio reminiscent of on the memoir endlessly—revising,dividing the mate-
" CNN's newsroom.Cops on the dots is the national buzz- rial into different files(one is labeled,simply,"Shit"). I
word for this kind of information-driven,rapid-response She still has two big sections to go,and many years of
policing,and it has an alluring certainty about it.The her life left to record.Her next big project is to get this
A.
changes seem to be making a difference;recent data show memoir under control,finish it,have it published,and
violent-crime rates in the city beginning to inch down. "hope something good can come out of it"for herself and
!
} In the long view—both Betts and Janikowski agree— the people who read it. j
I better policing is of course not the only answer.The more When I last saw Shaw,in March,she had her plan laid i
fundamental question is the one this social experiment out.About seven months earlier,she had taken in her
was designed to address in the first place:What to do 2-year-old granddaughter,Casha Mona,for what was sup-
about deep poverty and persistent social dysfunction? posed to be a temporary stay.The little girl's mother was
Betts's latest crusade is something called"site-based getting her act together in Albuquerque,where Casha's
resident services."When the projects came down,the father(Shaw's son)was in prison.Shaw's plan was to take
residents lost their public-support system—health clin- Casha Mona back to Albuquerque,then begin a writ-
�i ics,child care,job training.Memphis's infant-mortality ing workshop at the Renaissance Center in Memphis to
rate is rising,for example,and Betts is convinced that has get her memoir into shape.And just before Easter,she'd
something to do with poor people's having lost easy access dropped Casha off,come home,and signed up for the
to prenatal care.The services remained downtown while class.Two days later,she got a call from an aunt in Albu-
the clients scattered all over the city,many of them with querque.Casha had swallowed a few crack rocks at her
no convenient transportation.Alongwith other nonprofit mother's house;state officials had put her in foster care.
leaders,Betts is trying to get outreach centers opened in More weather.Last I spoke to Shaw,she'd bought another
1.I I the outlying neighborhoods,and especially in some of round-tri bus ticket to Albu uer ue and was going t0
( . YI g g � P Y P q q g g
the new,troubled apartment buildings.She says she's get the little girl back.
beginning to hear supportive voices within the city gov- The writing class would have to wait,or she could do
1 ernment.But not enough leaders have acknowledged the it at night,or... "I'm just going to get on that bus,she
new landscape—or admitted that the projects are gone said,"and pray."I_1
_ in name only, and that the city's middle-class dreams Hanna Rosin is an AtlanL'c contributing editor and the author of God's Harvard:
never came true. A Christian College on a Mission to Save America(2007).
I
• s �
PHADA Advocate, 1 2008
i(Vol. No.
Clouds on the Voucher Horizon
The Atlantic Monthly recently published an article by Hannah Rosin entitled, "An American Murder Mystery." Ms.
Rosin reported that two scholars in Memphis,Tennessee discovered a correlation between rising crime rates and
the movement of public housing residents to private sector housing using Housing Choice Vouchers in connection
with HOPE VI public housing revitalization. Unfortunately, the article did more than call attention to this correlation
and made a case that rising crime rates were caused, at least in part, by public housing residents moving into
newer neighborhoods using vouchers.
This theme has taken on a life of its own,appearing as a topic on large numbers of blogs on the internet, and
beginning to appear in the print media as well. A June 13 editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal cited Rosin's
article in a discussion of the unintended consequences of HOPE VI projects and the need for economic
opportunities, effective education and new models for policing. Blogs'and print media's treatment of Rosin's article
and the underlying story have framed the issue predictably as resulting from single parent households and the
moral deficiencies of public housing residents.
Rosin was aware of the likelihood of such responses, quoting one of the researchers saying that this would be a
"hard thing to say or write," and, "... we don't want to be the ones responsible for framing these issues in the
wrong way." Serious flaws in Rosin's presentation of information about Memphis and other communities added to
the opportunities to use this article to support disparaging stereotypes of public housing and Housing Choice
Voucher residents and participants.
Misuse of Research and Reports
To support her argument that large numbers of public housing residents relocating to working class neighborhoods
in Memphis using vouchers caused increases in crime, Rosin wrote, "But in 2005, another wave of project
demolitions pushed the number of people displaced from public housing to well over 20,000, and crime
skyrocketed." From HUD's A Picture of Subsidized Housing data it appears that Memphis demolished approximately
5,000 public housing units, and in 1996, 1997 and 1998 the overall occupancy rate of Memphis's public housing
ranged between 75 percent and 85 percent. In individual public housing apartment complexes in Memphis, the
vacancy rate ranged as high as 80 percent, and one 900 unit property was empty in 1996. Thus, a significant
number of demolished apartments were probably vacant when they were demolished and would not have resulted
in any relocated households. Even if a family moved from each of the 5,000 units Memphis demolished, the HA's
average household size was 2.8 people, resulting in at least 5,000 fewer relocated people than Rosin claims. Using
the HA's average household size and average vacancy rates in the late 1990s, a much more reasonable estimate of
relocated public housing residents is 11,900, 59.5 percent of Rosin's inflated claim.
"American Murder Mystery," cites a report by the Police Executive Research Foundation (PERF) called, Chief
Concerns -The Gathering Storm: Violent Crime in America. PERF's publication is a summary of the proceedings of
its National Violent Crime Summit held in 2006. Representatives from 50 cities gathered to discuss their
perceptions of causes of and solutions to a general increase in the incidence of violent crime. The report cites a
number of variables that police professionals and city leaders believed influenced the rise in violent crime, including
escalation of interpersonal confrontations to violence, disproportionate impact of crime in neighborhoods with high
unemployment, many single parent households, and in minority communities, the growth of gangs, the impact of
rising numbers of robberies, the proliferation of guns in communities, less effective criminal justice systems, and
dwindling resources for law enforcement. Although Rosin cites the PERF report to support her claims concerning the
impact of growing numbers of voucher holders on neighborhoods, references to public housing, vouchers and
Section 8 are absent from the PERF report.
A second body of research Rosin cited in support of her claims concerned shifts in the geographic distribution of
poverty summarized by Prof. George Galster in, "Consequences from the Redistribution of Urban Poverty during
the 1990s: A Cautionary Tale," from the Economic Development Quarterly of May 2005. Prof. Galster proposed that
the impact on social well being of poor households moving into low poverty and moderate poverty neighborhoods is
• R
different. He used a more complex conception of social well being than simply crime rates or incidences, including
annual earned income, hourly wages and the length of time households are poor in his analysis. These relocations
did not appear to adversely affect social well being in low poverty neighborhoods, but they did appear to have
adverse affects in moderate poverty neighborhoods. He defined low poverty neighborhoods as having poverty rates
of 20 percent or lower, moderate poverty neighborhoods as having poverty rates of between 20 percent and 40
percent, and high poverty neighborhoods as having poverty rates greater than 40 percent. He also pointed out that
national changes in neighborhood poverty have been modest. The proportion of the population,living in low poverty
areas rose by 0.2 percent, in moderate poverty areas rose by 1.0 percent, and in high poverty areas declined by
1.2 percent.
Galster raised two caveats and posed a final significant question concerning these findings. He pointed out that,
"there may be other valid criteria for evaluating the spatial distribution of the poor," than the ones he used. He also
wrote that, even if outcomes of the redistribution of poor households adversely affected moderately poor areas,
there may be no acceptable policy tools available to change these relocation patterns or choices. This caveat
parallels a finding from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration (a demonstration cited, but unnamed, by
Rosin). There, researchers discovered that participants who agreed to move to a low poverty neighborhood with a
voucher tended to move to moderate poverty neighborhoods subsequently. Finally, Galster posed the fundamental
question, "Do we know enough about the independent effect of neighborhood on individual behaviors or
opportunities to draw any substantive conclusions about the effects of redistributing poverty populations?" He
indicated that the evidence is scanty and that many outcomes have not yet been assessed, such as educational
attainment, fertility, marriage, psychological and physical health. Despite the hesitancy expressed in some of the
reports, such as Galster's, on which she relied, Rosin was content to claim that, for example, "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."
Rosin's claims, repeated and amplified in the media and the blogosphere, have not gone unchallenged. One blog
has cited a research report prepared in Durham, NC, by students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
which found that the presence of Section 8 rental-voucher recipients did not contribute to rising crime rates. This
study paralleled a study by the University of North Carolina-Charlotte which found no causal connection between
Section 8 housing and crime. The Charlotte study was commissioned by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police
Department, and tracked violent property crimes for a six-month period in 2005 and 2006. It found no relationship
between the changes in Section 8 households and crime. The Charlotte Observer reported that local police said
they have fewer problems with low-rent communities that accept Section 8 because the HA can seize vouchers
from anyone suspected of a crime. Knowledgeplex reported on both of these studies.
Shortly after publication of Rosin's article, Barbara Sard of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote a fact
based response on Matthew Yglesias' blog at Atlantic.com. Sard pointed out that although households may have
been relocated from approximately 5,000 demolished Memphis public housing apartments, the city's entire voucher
program grew by only 3,000 families. She questioned the claim that households relocating from public housing
using vouchers could have had the impacts on crime Rosin claimed in a city of 690,000 people. Sard also implicitly
contested Rosin's claim that the "purpose" for relocations using vouchers and for HOPE VI is, "infusing the poor
with middle class values." Sard concluded that, "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."
Other Factors Influencing Crime
If Rosin's stereotypical treatment of public housing residents is distorted, what else might drive Memphis'
"explosion" of crime? Unfortunately, the explosion Rosin mentions is an explosion in the number of incidents of
crime, and she does not claim any comparable explosion in the rates of crime. Readers don't know whether the
increased incidents Rosin cites reflect a serious increase in crime rates which take relative population size into
account. Galster's analysis of differences in property crime rates cites rates of 10 property crimes per 1,000
population in low poverty areas, and of 12.5 property crimes per 1,000 population in high poverty areas. Although
the increase of 2.5 crimes per 1,000 population is a 25 percent rise, Galster doesn't characterize it as an
"explosion."
But if rates as well as incidents were rising, what else may contribute to that rise?The PERF report pointed to
several potential contributors: rising gang activity, the impact of increasing rates of robberies, overburdened
criminal justice systems, and law enforcement resources suffering through a redistribution of funding to homeland
• � R
security efforts. Many communities are also coping with the return of large numbers of convicted felons who have
completed serving prison sentences and are now returning to their families, friends and neighborhoods. On release,
felons experience significantly diminished opportunities and public support and may become a disproportionate
burden for communities to which they return.
One other factor unrelated to the comparative virtue of public housing residents and voucher holders that may
influence the problems Rosin described is the way in which private sector landlords chose to operate their housing
in Memphis. Housing authorities operating public housing have spent many years becoming proficient in screening
applicants, enforcing lease terms and collaborating with other local institutions to improve and preserve social well
being in public housing apartment complexes. Often HAs have developed very effective relationships with local
police departments that have contributed significantly to security in public housing. They also may have cooperated
with community mental health providers and providers of services for disabled communities to intervene rapidly
when residents with physical or mental disabilities, including residents who abuse drugs or alcohol, developed
problems that adversely affected apartment complexes. Private sector landlords who house families relocating from
public housing apartment complexes with vouchers may be comparative novices in applicant screening and in
coping with behavioral problems new tenants may demonstrate. Rosin failed to consider the behavior of private
sector landlords or their responsibility for maintaining the quality of life in their apartment complexes in her
discussion of the correlation between crime incidents and relocation of public housing residents.
Finally, as Sard argues in her online comments, "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." HAs
operating Housing Choice Voucher programs share the experience of receiving complaints concerning a new
"Section 8" resident in a neighborhood, only to discover that the badly behaving household does not participate in
the Housing Choice Voucher program. Articles such as Rosin's fail to dispel the stereotype that results in these
complaints.
Proactive Attention
Despite the distortions and inaccuracies that Rosin presents in her Atlantic Monthly article, she reinforces a
prevalent caricature of public housing residents and voucher holders, and so the article may produce some new
attention for local Housing Choice Voucher programs and public housing. HAs and other local program sponsors
may wish to proactively present their local programs and participants in those programs in a positive light. Steps
HAs can take include:
• Notifying local media concerning participants'accomplishments, such as winning scholarships,
completing educational goals, and buying homes,
• Emphasizing and publicizing collaborations with other local institutions to satisfy specific populations'
housing needs, including offering police officers or teachers assistance for which they are eligible, and
collaborating with homeless advocates or advocates for people with disabilities in meeting housing
needs,
• Supporting improvements in Housing Choice Voucher program participating landlords'applicant
screening and lease enforcement activities,
• Vigorously following local policies concerning their programs'treatment of voucher holders who
become involved in criminal activity and publicizing those policies and practices,
• Opening support services to voucher holders as well as public housing residents and reminding
voucher holders of the availability of support services,
• Analyzing housing choice patterns of voucher holders and their relationship with crime incidents and
crime rates, and offering the analysis to local communities, and
• Cooperating with neighbors and landlords to foll'o`w up on indications that voucher holders may not be
fulfilling their responsibilities under their leases.
It seems a shame that periodicals such as The Atlantic Monthly would pursue publication of articles such as Rosin's
without any balance, given the existence of evidence from communities other than Memphis that rebut the article's
conclusions. However, faced with the inevitability of media coverage that tends to reinforce mean spirited
stereotypes and caricatures of public housing residents and voucher holders, HAs may wish to consider steps that
tend to inoculate their programs, residents and participants from the most adverse impacts treatments like Rosin's
will likely produce.
July 30, 2008 Advocate
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CLPHA Responds to Atlantic Article
(The JulylAugctst issue of The Atlantic featured a lengthy article on the HOPE VI program speeVically
and economic mobility efforts generally. Below is a respo77se CLPHA Executive Director Sunia Zaterrnan
submitted to the publication.)
To the Editor: about the program's alleged negative ing. She erects a straw man and
It's cherry picking season and impact on the metropolitan areas of knocks it down, writing that "what
Hanna Rosin,in her titillatingly titled New York,Washington,DC,and Chi- began as an 'I I lave a Dream' social
"American Murder Mystor•y" cago are made, but can't be substan- crusade has turned into an urban-re-
(July/August 2008),has a full bucket. t.iated (because they're not true). development project."
In mid-sized cities throughout the To question Rosin's thesis is,we In fact. since its inception 15
country,Rosin writes,crime rates are are told,to be a know-nothing,aguilt- years ago, one of the HOPE VI
rising as a direct result of the HOPE ridden social engineer,or worse."It's program's core objectives was to re-
VI redevelopment program —a fed- difficult to contemplate solutions to vitalize whole neighborhoods by pro-
erally-funded effort to create mixed this problem when so.few politicians, viding housing opportunities to the
income communities where blighted civil servants, and academics seem poorest of the poor, to moderate-in-
public housing projects once stood. willing to talk about it—or even ad- come wage earners, and to high-in-
Former residents, writes Rosin, ate mit that it exists,"she writes. In fact, come households who, able to live
using new housing subsidies to spread those of us who work daily in the most anywhere, choose to live in
violent crime to once sedate neigh- public housing industry think about, newly-energized diverse neighbor-
borhoods.Rosin,however,offers an- discuss, and debate the implications hoods. And that exactly what has
ecdotes and not evidence to make of the policies and programs we happened in dozens of US cities over
her case,selectively employing com- implement and develop on a regular the past fifteen years.
plex data to support a.flawed thesis. basis. We do so in concert with Rosin waxes nostalgic for the dis-
We are informed, for example, elected officials, residents, law en- tressed public housing projects de-
that the prestigious Police Executive forcement professionals, educators, molished under HOPE VI, suggest-
Research Forum, in its 2006 report community groups and others with a ing that they offered'a form of social
("A Gathering Storm")was"puzzled stake in building better communities. stability by segregating those who
over the bleak new [crime] land- Rosin would have us believe that posed a threat to the broader conn
scape." she has hit upon the magic bullet,the munity in a relatively controlled envi-
Frustrated? Angry? Perhaps. But unifying theory,of rising crime rates ronment.And it is true,of course,that
hardly"puzzled."In fact,the report lists outside the urban core of our major many of these developments over
more than adozen"factors influencing and mid-sized cities. It's simply not their long life-spans offered both
the rise in violent crime,"but makes no the case.In fact,most everyone who housing and community to the people
mention of HOPE VI or public housing has studied the issue, like the mern- who called them home. But let's not
or the Section 8 subsidies former public begs of the Police Executive.Research be nave.The buildings that have been
houshig residents use to rent modest Forum, agree that crime is a multi- torn down are not the kind of places
apartments in the private market.None. faceted issue. There is no one thing anyone with an alternative would
Purling indeed. —housing,education,social services, choose. HOPE VI offers such a
Likewise, in Memphis, Rosin economic opportunity,income orrace choice.
writes that one-tin..ie public housing segregation,lackluster offender reen- The real mystery of this story is
residents now living in privately- try programs, demographics, police not the impact and effectiveness of
owned apartments are the cause of funding.recreation—that accounts for the HOPE VI program,but why Rosin
a major suburban crime wave. But the spike in crime rates. Were it only and The fltlantic chose to lambaste
nowhere in the 8600-word article is that simple. one of the few successful anti-pov-
a specific example — an actual case Rosin makes light of the"fanci- erty and neighborhood revitalization
of a former public housing resident in ful names"given to the mixed-income programs of the past two decades.
a new community conunitting acrime communities that have replaced the But as we in the housing business
offered. Not a one. Now that's income- and race-segregated know,it's always easier to tear down
puzzling.Likewise,vague assertions projects that oncedefinedpublic hous- then it is to build up. a
3
1:3Y C'I1A1Zl..,f.S 1IA.I...LMAN , MINNI SOJA S.130 KFIS MAN-RF"COI Dt."IR
June 16, 2008
The U.S. government passed the Housing Act of 1949 that created public subsidized housing and
guaranteed every citizen the right to a decent place to live. Now, over a half-century later, low-
income Americans are facing a public housing crisis that remains "hidden" under the foreclosure
issue that is getting more attention.
Is that 1949 guarantee of decent housing for everyone in this country soon expiring?
"These are the invisible people of our population," noted National Economic and Social Rights
Initiative (NESRI) Legal Program Director Tiffany Gardner. The New York-based organization
"works with public housing communities in particular," she added. "They are not going to be on
the evening news.
"The mortgage crisis is affecting millions of Americans," Gardner noted, "but we don't think it
impacts the public housing community. The pressure on that community is coming from other
areas."
NESRI identified the primary pressure sources as:
1) The demolition of public housing units under the federal HOPE VI program, which began in
1992, initially designed to improve the lives of public housing residents. "The way we look at the
destruction of public housing in this country is not that you are destroying a home, but also
destroying communities,". Gardner pointed out.
2) The loss of more than 300,000 privately-owned, federally subsidized, multi-family housing
units since the Title VI preservation program was eliminated in 1996.
3) A $6.5 billion shortfall in the fiscal year 2009 budget submitted by the Bush Administration
for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and its Section 8 program, which could lead to
another 500,000 low-income apartments lost. This could potentially displace 300,000 families.
"The Section 8 program has been undercut since [former president Ronald] Reagan, who [first]
cut the HUD budget," said Gardner.
Housing advocates predicted when the HOPE program first emerged that it would negatively
affect"hundreds of thousands of residents of public housing," Gardner recalled. "Now we have
had several years of the policy, and you see that this is exactly what's happening. The idea that
the residents of public housing would come back or find alternative housing—that hasn't
worked out."
Gardner calls the destruction of whole communities "a real crisis situation [and] the first threat
we see to public housing," she continued.
The public housing crisis should be a key issue in this year's presidential campaign because it
directly deals with poverty, Gardner suggested. "It is a crucial issue in this country in respect to
domestic policy," she said, adding that it affects the elderly, Blacks, Latinos, Asians, poor and
working-class citizens along with Whites.
"When you think about public housing, Section 8 and federally funded programs that provide
housing for people, we are really talking about the most vulnerable people of our society,"
Gardner said.
NESRI is currently lobbying Congress to hold public hearings that would address the public
housing issue in such cities as New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Minneapolis—
urban areas where HUD's policies are considered to have been particularly destructive—as well
as a joint congressional hearing in Washington, D.C.
The Hollman vs. Cisneros Consent Decree in 1995, which settled a 1992 class action lawsuit
against city and federal housing agencies over the concentration of poor people in North
Minneapolis, later led to the demolition of the Sumner Field public housing project.
According to Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) spokesman Bob Boyd, 770 units
were demolished and 514 families made eligible for relocation. Of these, 83 families purchased
homes elsewhere and did not return; 164 families found alternative housing through Section 8;
209 families moved into other public housing, including suburban units that were developed
because of the Hollman lawsuit; and 23 families left public housing altogether.
The MPHA has no information on 35 other families that either were no longer eligible, evicted,
or left without giving any indication of where they were relocating.
Boyd added that 373 families "were offered an opportunity to return [to public housing]. Only 37
elected to return to the new Heritage Park; 20 are African American, 14 are Southeast Asian, and
three are Caucasian."Three other single households,two Blacks and one Asian, moved into
Heritage Commons, MPHA's senior resident complex, according to Boyd.
However, a 2002 study by University of Minnesota researcher Edward Goetz reported that
although the relocation helped many families move to other neighborhoods, overall it didn't help
the families improve their financial situations.
"The [relocation] policy has not adequately taken into consideration the value of the human
connections that people have in the communities where public housing is located," said local
human rights attorney Peter Brown. He agrees with Gardner that public housing residents are
"the forgotten people" in our society.
"They are the people that are moved about like so many jigsaw puzzles," Brown added. "Their
voices were not heard. The lives of the displaced tenants were not valued, were not seen, and the
value of the existence of their community was invisible."
"Every family [affected by the Hollman Decree] had an opportunity and was invited to move
back," Boyd argued. "But because of time, only 37 chose to move back, plus three additional
persons moved into our senior development."
Across Minnesota, 36,000 low-income people live in public housing in 210 communities; this
includes 12,000 children. Most households in Minnesota public housing (around 59 percent) are
White, with 30.5 percent Black,8.8 percent Asian, 2.4 percent Latino, 1.8 percent Native
American, and all others making up less than one percent.
( � J
The largest concentration of public housing units can be found in the seven-county Twin Cities
area: Hennepin, Dakota, Ramsey, Carver, Washington, Anoka and Scott Counties. Due to HUD
budget cuts—a statewide loss of nearly $13 million from 2002 to 2007—the public housing
crisis is real in Minnesota, says Minnesota Housing Partnership (MHP) Research and Outreach
Coordinator Leigh Rosenberg.
"Most households in public housing are extremely low-income, with an average income of
slightly over$12,000 [annually]," she points out. "Sixty-five percent of people in public housing
either are elderly, disabled or both. We are talking about people who are not likely to earn money
in the workforce anyway. We really see this as a safety-net type of housing."
According to an MHP public housing report released in May, public housing residents, one-third
of whom are children, are frequently at risk for homelessness, and over 92 percent of housing
authorities statewide have a waiting list.
The public housing crisis isn't just situated in the state's largest urban areas of Minneapolis, St.
Paul and Duluth, Rosenberg pointed out. "This is not in any way just in urban areas, but it is
across the state."
Finally, the public housing crisis is a human rights issue. Housing is not a commodity, but a
right, Gardner said. "It is a fundamental necessity to really living a productive life."
Charles Hallman welcomes reader responses to rlurlh�rcu�(r!,SpU1Ce,5'!1"1CZ!?-recol"Clel'.CO)!1
r 4A-Aerica's Other Housing Crisis Page 1 of 3
washingtonpost.com
America's Other Housing Crisis ` w
By Michael Kelly
Saturday, May 24,2008; A21
There's a housing crisis in America -- but it doesn't have
anything to do with the thousands who have been forced from
a
their over-leveraged residences or the steps Congress has ' q y "' ;'M
Via
taken to help those caught in the subprime debacle. This crisis 'r
doesn't generate many headlines, but it threatens Americans
nationwide. 5. '
M.�' r{:�", ;:LM,Tp,;.,�. ,.q Kri '�::iJi�a��.,_. .',`.: �',::•:. .
Over the past eight years, the Bush administration has tried to
cripple public housing. It has devalued and defunded key TAKE THE IQQUIZHERE!
programs. The president's proposed 2009 budget includes
massive cuts in affordable-housing programs that will hit the working poor, people with disabilities and seniors
while dismantling the crowning achievement of federal efforts to revitalize and redevelop city neighborhoods.
This year, for example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed operating subsidies
equal to just 81 percent of what the agency itself determined are needed. This is equivalent to saying that state
and local housing authorities should shutter nearly one-fifth, or 227,000, of their units nationwide. What
happens in such situations? Authorities do not evict the poor but are forced to reduce services to residents and to
delay or neglect repairs and maintenance, which in turn causes public housing units to become run-down.
Budgeting shortfalls feed a vicious cycle.
The administration has killed the $300 million Public Housing Drug Elimination Program, the only crime-
fighting-specific initiative in HUD's budget. The proposed budget recommends eliminating the HOPE VI
redevelopment program, which has transformed neighborhoods in Washington and other cities from pockets of
deep poverty into attractive communities for people of all incomes.
In the past two years in particular, Congress has acted to stem the worst of the administration's slash-and-burn
policies. But with the high federal deficit and public housing's low-priority status, few appreciate the gravity of
the situation. Either the federal government renews its historic commitment to public housing or this scarce
resource will soon cease to exist. The situation is that bad.
In the District, for example, we have a backlog of public housing modernization needs of$150 million. That
money is needed to replace basics such as heating, fire and security systems. Luckily, the D.C. Housing
Authori (DCHA), which I run,has successfully used the private capital markets for some modernization
support.
But the proposed cuts, $415 million, in additional federal capital funds will undermine our credibility in the
bond market and probably impede efforts to secure private assistance. Our ability to maintain and manage
housing units will be further eroded -- another victim of the cycle.
While I understand the realities of economic downturns, I am also hearing from some of the 22,000 people on
the DCHA's waiting list for housing assistance.
One woman wrote to me saying that despite having a full-time job as a dental assistant, she and her four
children "are never at one place too long." Rather, they-double up with friends and relatives when they can and
have been moving "from house to house for the past three-and-a-half-years." The "only thing missing [in our
lives] is a safe place of our own."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052302168_pf.html 7/31/2008
nerica's Other Housing Crisis Page 2 of 3
The nation's public housing program works.
In communities across the country -- rural, suburban and urban -- millions of families that earn low wages,
seniors and Americans with disabilities can pay 30 percent of their limited incomes for decent, safe and
affordable housing. For most, public housing is a stepping stone: More than half of today's residents have lived
in their subsidized apartments for less than four years. Like many Americans, the vast majority of residents in
public housing move up the ladder to privately owned apartments or houses as their incomes increase and their
circumstances stabilize, thus freeing up this scarce resource for others. For those who stay longer, particularly
seniors and people with disabilities, public housing provides modest apartments and some of the services that
allow our most vulnerable to live with dignity in their communities.
Mayors, county executives and local legislators, regardless of political party, realize that public housing is as
vital to a community's infrastructure as the roads on which residents travel to get to work, the schools where
children are educated and the public libraries and parks where our quality of life is enhanced. That is why
national organizations including the Conference of Mayors, the League of Cities and the National Association
of Counties place the preservation and expansion of public housing among their top priorities.
The next administration --whether Democratic or Republican -- will have a full plate with the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, health care, the economy and education. But public housing must also be a priority. As the
government seeks to protect those Americans caught in the subprime crisis, it must not forget the most
vulnerable among us.
Michael Kelly,president of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities, is executive director of the
District of Columbia Housing Authority.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052302168_pf.html 7/31/2008