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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Joan Walsh, editor in chief of Salon
First, full disclosure: I'm on the board of PolicyLink, and I worked for the Urban Strategies Council when Angela ran it back in Oakland, Calif., in the late 1980s and early '90s. So I have a little bit of knowledge, which makes me dangerous. I just want to throw out a few follow-up questions to people:
I'm glad to see the general agreement around the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, but I'm trying to understand Howard's skepticism about using government incentives to create mixed-income developments. I think the "shotgun house" models Habitat is building are great, but why couldn't you also mix in some middle-income housing? It seems to me that rebuilding these neighborhoods with all or mostly poor people builds back in some problems -- namely, that neither the market nor the political system is sufficiently responsive to them. To have vital shops and businesses and schools would seem to me to require a mix of people. What am I missing?
Howard Husock
"Mixing in" the middle class sounds simple -- but becomes politically charged (if you're trying to build mixed-income housing in otherwise affuent areas) and logistically difficult if you have to recruit middle-class families to move to lower-income areas.
Joan Walsh
But hasn't it worked elsewhere? And aren't we talking, in New Orleans, about rebuilding in historically poor neighborhoods, so presumably there isn't the "not in my backyard" issue that comes with trying to push a "mixed" project on a wealthy area?
Howard Husock
But what's the point? In effect, a mixed-income development provides significant subsidy to households that could afford housing anyway -- in the belief that their example will somehow inspire their neighbors. Where's the large-scale evidence that that works -- and if not, why do it? I would argue that it is the desire to "move up" from a poorer to a more affluent neighborhood that helps motivate the poor to organize themselves and make good life decisions (work, save, marry). Thus, the so-called economic stratification of American neighborhoods strikes me as an important aspect of our social system that encourages upward mobility.
Angela Glover Blackwell
Type, cost and quality of housing are not the only factors that determine whether a neighborhood will thrive as a stable mixed-income community or struggle as an island of concentrated poverty and economic immobility. Make no mistake: The reality is that concentrated poverty does not create the desire to "move up," but rather hinders residents from doing so. Housing policies and forms of building are key, of course, but what makes or breaks neighborhoods are the combined qualities of public life: crime and safety, schooling, public spaces, transit and other infrastructure, local retailing, and so forth.
Successful mixed-income communities can take a variety of forms and will attract people of different incomes for different reasons. For example, comprehensive inner-city redevelopments like McCormack Baron Salazar's Murphy Park in St. Louis encompass affordable housing, good schools and transit to create a vibrant, livable community. Well-designed, transit-friendly, tax credit-financed affordable multi-unit housing developments have diversified the income and racial mixes of some San Francisco Bay Area suburban neighborhoods. A new "transit village" in a low-income section of San Diego, being planned by residents with support from the Jacobs Family Foundation, will incorporate a range of incomes and ownership strategies from the start that give generations of families an option to stay as their incomes may grow.
These and other approaches are certainly not easy or simple, but when well executed they meet a combination of market niches that one can envision to a greater or lesser degree in the New Orleans area. And if substantial amounts of land in New Orleans cannot be rebuilt on for safety reasons, then the higher densities for the available land for housing may necessitate that some of it be multi-unit rather than only single-family homes, even modest shotgun houses.
Howard Husock
There has never been more concentrated poverty in this country than the Lower East Side of New York, circa 1900. And yet the desire to move up and out was clearly strong; by 1930, settlement house leaders in the neighborhood observed that density had been replaced by "empties." It is not concentration of the poor per se that hinders upward mobility -- indeed, the desire to move up and out can be a strong one. But without the chance to own, save and then sell to realize gain, the poor are unduly hindered. This has been the burden imposed on them by public housing and other forms of subsidized rental. It is worth bearing in mind when considering the developments to which Angela refers that old-style public housing, too, was opened with great fanfare. Individualized ownership of small properties offers a far more secure route to long-term maintenance. I do agree, though, that these need not be single-family homes. Multi-family homes -- including some with rental units (with owner-occupancy encouraged) -- are a vital component of replacement housing, as well.
Xavier de Souza Briggs
Howard, I read our history differently. Poverty concentration has never been a "natural" condition of city life. Yes, those with the means tended to avoid tenement slums, and immigrants with few options tended to congregate in them. And yes, most Americans would agree with the idea of striving and incentives to encourage same. But it is very hard to look at the evidence on ghetto poverty neighborhoods and conclude that people lack motivation to leave them. Highly regulated markets make it hard for those people to afford to do so, and housing discrimination -- illegal under the law and also wrong -- makes it even harder.
A host of successful mixed-income developments demonstrate the demand by middle-income buyers, at least in tight urban markets, and subsidy to market-rate buyers is very minimal. The cross-subsidy mostly works the other way, to enable low- and moderate-income families to live in environments that people of means are also invested in. A demand study in New Orleans would be easy enough to do, and as Joan says, the central city's historic character gives one many options for effective design and marketing to a range of income levels.
Public housing used to be much more economically diverse, as you know. White families with employed heads fought to get in, because it was better than the old stuff it replaced. Likewise, subsidized or "social" housing is much more income mixed in other parts of the world -- not England, to be sure, but certainly in economically successful cities with high housing costs, such as Singapore.
Joan Walsh
Yes, I have to say that when I toured my Irish immigrant grandparents' neighborhood in the Bronx with my godfather about 10 years ago -- Highbridge -- it was clear that while it had been heavily Irish and immigrant in the '20s-'40s, there was some economic diversity -- local shopkeepers and neighbors who helped my grandparents and my dad and siblings when things were particularly tough. Gradually a Hibernian buddy got my grandfather into the steamfitters union, and they moved to the middle class. So ... the concentration and isolation of the urban poor has seemed to me something especially pernicious, as well as an unintended consequence, as Bruce points out, of bad social investment and social policy. I would think New Orleans offers a chance to bring people back in a different way.
Howard Husock
It's the hubris of "bringing people back in a different way" of which I'm deeply skeptical -- i.e., that an agency, choosing among applicants and issuing a Request for Proposals, can somehow find the right combination of people to mitigate what are said to be a concentration of poverty effects. As for the success of mixed-income projects, again, there remains a Potemkin Village-quality to them -- the planners' idea of what an ideal community should be. Sure, public housing once had a greater economic mix -- but that reflected the post-WWII housing shortage. Similarly, there has been a mixture in New York City -- but that reflected the high percentage of total housing stock which public housing comprises there. If we pave the way for modest homes for those of modest incomes, these can be one of the tools they can use to improve their own lives and forge their own communities.
End of Part I. Tomorrow: Republican Rep. Dennis Hastert provoked controversy when he questioned whether New Orleans should be rebuilt. But do Salon's panelists agree with him?
