When I lived in DC, my friends and I called the neighboring suburbs in Prince George County, ‘Greater Southeast’ (a reference to Southeastern D.C). Southeast D.C., was for, generations ubiquitous with urban decay—high poverty, high crime, and high blight with few exceptions. Prince George, on the other hand, was known for having the largest population of upper middle class African American residents. The most obvious reason for the population shift was the rising cost of living associated with gentrification.
But it was while I was an evaluator for a D.C.HOPE VI project (a HUD program started under the Clinton administration to raze physically and socially obsolete housing projects and turn them into mixed income communities), the reason for the shifting crime pattern became even more evident. It was not just gentrifications, but use of HOPE VI, as an urban renewal tool rather than a an inclusive “neighborhood revitalization” tool that was creating a storm of long term disaster.
Under the program, Housing Authorities are authorized to use Section 8 vouchers to help relocate tenants. While housing authorities are merely “required to provide eligible residents with relocation benefits and community and supportive services.”, there was little incentive to provide comprehensive support to residents looking to return or successfully integrate into new neighborhoods. The challenge of taking apart social networks and asking residents to move to places without them has been largely ignored. Instead, Housing authorities have shifted the pervasiveness of poverty out of the projects and scattered it about.
As it stands, less then 10% of former residents actually return to after construction is complete. Less than 20% of the new residents in most of these projects are even low to moderate income (less than 80% of area median income). Instead, former residents move to new communities with no support network and no means of figuring out how to create a new one. Though the legislation requires such support, providing it with families scattered across counties and cities is nearly impossible, and many families become invisible again–except this time without a social network.
Since HOPE VI began, crime has been exploding in the relatively stable near-in suburbs of many mid-sized cities like Mecklenburg(Charlotte) and North Memphis(Memphis); Maywood(Chicago) while it is subsiding substantially in many inner-cities. A study recently conducted by husband and wife team, Richard Janikowski, a criminologist with the University of Memphis, and Phyllis Betts, a housing expert also at the University of Memphis, drives the speculation toward fact. Betts and Janikowski put together a map of crime patterns and a map of section 8 rentals, and voila—they almost perfectly matched.
HOPE VI could be so much. But it is not. HUD should be incentivizing projects to figure out creative ways to re-integrate greater numbers of poor and moderate income residents into the new development (say at least 25%, for example) It should require housing authorities to design comprehensive, multi-tiered strategies to address joblessness, childcare, and eduation while also incentivizing the “step-up” from fully sibsidized housing to possible homeownership. Instead, it gives Section 8 vouchers and permission to housing authorities to simply say “go away.”
Don’t get me wrong, the goal of turning physically obsolescent, blighted public housing into modern, decent housing is of great importance, but the program should be more about creating economically and socially healthy communities and less about the beautification of real estate.
Its high time we time we stopped giving people fish and asking them to go away. Perhaps, its time we, at both the non-profit and public sector levels spend some more time teaching people how to fish instead.
7 responses so far ↓
DR // July 4, 2008 at 1:33 pm |
We’ve worked in our small, community of less than 40,000 for about 15 years to get people together and address community housing needs and the needs of homeless, jobless, and the under-employed. Our proposals to HUD have had a mentoring program linked to transitional housing that included a couple of zero energy cost homes, so that people who moved forward with a decent job, maintained that job, and developed relationships in the community could learn what it takes to manage a home using renewable energy. CBS news has carried significant news coverage of similar efforts in Texas that resulted in an huge increase in technical training, hiring of people into the renewable energy mechanical and technical field, so that it revitalized major sections of Texas. The intent in Texas was to help with affordable housing, address the criticalutility need through the development of housing running on renewable energy; yet the true result was employment into a burgeoning market area that will be here for a while, if not indefinitely. Our state governor’s committee to prevent homelessness rejected our proposals because they were “too agreessive” but mostly because “homeless people cannot move into home ownership” – yet we’ve accomplished this by mentoring homeless families long-term with trained mentor teams, who guide the family to make a life plan, track themselves with an objective scoring mechanism that truly shows success and need for support in 10 areas, moved famlies through building their relationships while building their capacity to obtain and maintain better than a living wage and then move into home ownership with the use of matched savings accounts, Habitat for Humanity, and other affordable home ownership opportunities. All this was focused on moving even Habitat toward buiding zero energy homes, which are actually capable of producing surplus electricity to the local grid and, thus, help produce more affordable electricity for the community and a check each month for the home owner to use for family plans of economic, educational, career, etc. development. Our community actually headed into “solving” the homeless issue by acquiring HUD and state grants that fund “scattered site leasing”, that is the very solution you’ve notice scatters people who have problems with rental and home ownership around the city to a point where they are no longer “visible” but also more impossible to reach with the social service necessary to build their capacity to even maintain rental, much less acquiring home ownership. It’s the structure of our community response to homelessness around our nation, i.e. move them away so they are not concentrated and more visible, although much more accessible for service provision that helps with personal development, success in life, progress for future generations, etc. The result is that everyone in the community believes, and proves with subjective data, that the “problems” of homelessness and affordable rental or ownership housing have “reduced” only to find out that they end up increasing community stress, stress on people trying to transform their lives and live effectively in this world, with the results we’ve had in the past, increased crime, community conflict, more people living with “friends” without paying rent, and all the past housing problems addressed and met to a certain level with “housing projects” that supply social services. We need objective tools that can show the capacity of participants to obtain and maintain housing for their families. This allows community service provision programs to work with mentors over the long-term to find out areas of success and areas of weakness in a participant’s life plan toward personal and family achievement. Without objective scoring tools, we all make “general” and “subjective” evaluations of people and their families struggling with maintaining housing and other basic successes in this world. Moving people who struggle with famiy success issues away from social service tools is not the solution. The farther apart people are moved, the more difficult it is to develop the relationships necessary to support and encourage transformation and the more difficult it is to find and provide any services necessary for helping people work their way through the maze of the world toward success that people can determine for themselves by making a real life plan and subjectively scoring themselves so their mentoring team can guide them forward toward personal and family dignity and self-reliance. Moving people farther away from others, who all need support services, only works to reduce services that end up being provided to the people who want and desire to transform their lives.
Steve Adams // July 7, 2008 at 12:05 am |
Hello —I’m no expert on the Hope VI , housing authorities , or efforts to get people into homeownership. Living and working here in Milwaukee , Wisconsin , it appears that our Housing Authority for the City of Milwaukee ( HACM ) has done some very extensive renovation and new construction of older facilities , utilizing the Hope VI.
In addtion , it appears that they have addressed the importance of working with individuals , that are already residents in the older facilities , to end up in the newer renovated / new facilities .
They have also been very successful in getting these individuals into homeownership by buying vacant lots from the City of Milwaukee Real Estate Department to build new homes and partnering with first -time homebuyer programs and other support based community based organizations.
I don’t have the quantitative aspects of these efforts but it seems they ( i.e. the HACM ) have gotten some pretty favorable press , both locally and nationally , as well as , my ‘ unscientific ‘ observation and tour of the renovated / new facilities.
I think you can find out more info on their website : http://www.hacm.org ( if that is not right , then google the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee )
Thanks for setting this up–hope you get good responses.
Take care , Steve
Candace // July 7, 2008 at 12:06 pm |
A very interesting post. I read a similar article in last month’s Atlantic Monthly regarding shift in centers of criminal activity in Memphis. The article identified some research being conducted that attributes the movement of criminal activity is paralleled with HOPE VI projects and Housing Choice Vouchers. To read:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/memphis-crime
Gary Ponder // July 7, 2008 at 4:28 pm |
First, I’ve enjoyed reading this blog. I’ve followed at distance. I chose to insert myself into this conversation because HOPE VI Community and Supportive Services HOPE VI CSS was a principal part of my work up until the start of the Bush II administration. HOPE VI didn’t start with President Clinton. It is the result of some of the best and worst public welfare and housing reform practices (MODEL CITIES, Welfare-to-Work, Welfare Reform, etc.)
When I began consulting directly with HUD Headquarters on the program in the late 90’s, it was in my first behind clothes door meeting that I asked the question, “Is HUD just now putting services in place to support residents impacted by HOPE VI?” I was a bit more naive at the time. The answer of course was yes. So, my job was to help HUD come-up with tools and create essentially the CSS agenda for HOPE VI. Thus, in short, I write… Bush II cut short the funding for the CSS portion of HOPE VI… sustaining the resources CSS can inject into a HOPE VI revitalization effort has been the latest HUD HOPE VI “ah ha” moment.
I tend to agree with the bulk of the analysis that has been posted here, however, in my opinion, the troubles with HOPE VI, are plural and it is where I first learned to apply my business mantra I frequently espouse through my work… communities with complex problems require comprehensive solutions;
HOPE VI fits firmly under that framework and it has never been given the full support it needs to make good intentions fruitful for residents (past or present) living in public housing.
Jeffrey Higgs // July 8, 2008 at 2:39 am |
Since 1999 I have worked very hard in Memphis to ensure the area around the City’s only HBCU LeMoyne-Owen College (LOC) was revitalized, as we have lived with five public housing developments within earshot of The College and it is for this reason that I write.
I see HOPE VI in a totally different light as the reader has asserted and even as Dr. Betts asserts in her article in Atlantic Monthly. It appears to me when you have communities that for over 30+ years were neglected by City and HUD officials and creatively, the Director of Housing and Community Development for the City decides to take full advantage of a government program to rid the city of this dreaded blight we all should applause. The HOPE VI program comes under scrutiny because communities are making a difference, not only in the lives of the poorest residents in the community, but changing the perception of the city as whole. In our case LOC had a public Housing development sitting directly in front of it for more that fifty years and at no time did any public official or HUD come to The College and say, “…we want to do something about this blight upon this community…” The developers never came to the community and held a meeting regarding what really was causing the problems in this community, nor show much interest as a raising crime tide took hold or to determine the real reasons for the criminal activity – high incidences of poverty. (A community where 48% of the households made $10K or less a year, median household income was $10.7K and 59% of the families lived below poverty levels, 2000 census report.) At no time, while a student (84’) at LOC did I ever hear about HUD or the city wanting to do something to assist with the problems, not of housing or vouchers, but the root causes of this dilemma. With some of the highest rates of poverty in America concentrated in these public housing areas we saw first hand the reason for them not wanting to make the investment to change what was apparent to those of us who lived, worked and played in this neighborhood. In all the conversations, I not heard anyone mention proper education, lack of job opportunities and high poverty rates as the real reason for the crime, and not the displacement of public housing resident to a community that did not reach out to them as the main cause for criminal activity to increase. Sure we can look at the statistics and see crime patterns and overlay that with these same residents who once were public housing residents. What I think is more important is that we must and we cannot afford not to look at the root cause of crime in American cities, not just Memphis, but all over.
It is interesting to note that Memphis and Atlanta has received more HOPE VI grants than any other community in America and most of this was in Atlanta’s case it’s getting ready for the Olympics, and in Memphis case, great applications packages and the large number of public housing units that needed improvements. As a non-profit community developer I have seen first hand how HOPE VI can and is working in Memphis. It has transformed an area that once had some of highest crime statistic in the city to now one of the safest. Certainly, you could say that it was just moving the crime to another area, but you could also say that the root causes were never dealt with initially. HOPE VI allows for CSS services as part of the grant. But, does CSS educate older members of the community, who has never attained a GED, or never worked or whose family is third and fourth generation welfare dependent. I suggest that it does not. I am also suggesting in order for HOPE VI to become the great panacea that we all want it to be we must dig deeper into the root causes of Crime in America – - lack of education and joblessness. We must create better school systems that address the needs of all students regardless of where they live. We must create jobs at home versus fighting wars aboard. The real role of government is not only to educate the masses, and create opportunities for jobs and economic development, that will ultimately benefit us all, but to play a role in setting the agenda for social change.
HOPE VI was intended to be a tool for changing lives and communities into places that are welcoming for all to live work and play. What I think we as community developers have not figured out is how to best to bring all the other pieces of the puzzle to the table for the benefit of the least of these. Memphis has had some real success in creating a HOPE VI program that I believe could be replicated around America. Creating job opportunities for residents, working with the corporate and community leaders in the community to energize the system of care and service delivery that those who need it most are not privy to or do not know how to access and creating a social conscience around the issues of poverty and lack of educational attainment among its poorer citizens, job creation, and economic development. I purpose the keys to eliminating poverty in our life time is not moving to the next suburban ring around a city when your neighbor’s skin color changes or looking back to save those people or demonstrating through the skillful use of data, that you can prove that something positive is not working. In American it is time for changes, not only politically, but in our economic development delivery system of community development and creating communities that offer educational excellence, job opportunities and economic development for all its citizens.
Thanks for listening
Jeffrey
Kit (Keep It Trill) // July 19, 2008 at 6:44 am |
I won’t say much because you and other commenters said it all, but I will add that as a born and raised DC resident whose been living in Maryland for 20 years now, DC has changed enormously. Areas that even police wouldn’t go into without a partner are now fairly safe. At the same time, the poor had an exodus to parts of PG County, but it’s still nicer out there than the old Southeast DC.
Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy // November 14, 2008 at 8:47 pm |
I realize I am a bit late in commenting, but could not resist since the Native perspective (while from a different place, literally and figuratively) may support what you say. We have an adapted saying we use:
“Certainly you can teach a person to fish and that’s better than just handing out fish. But what about giving them a pole, some bait and access to that bountiful pond? THAT can mean feeding generations.”
- OWEESTA Corp (via Lao Tzu)