Mixed-income housing
[13] As evidenced by the LIHTC passage, mixed income housing became a popular policy strategy in the 1980s and 90s in an effort to de-concentrate poverty and redevelop urban neighborhoods.
[15] In 1987, a prominent scholar William Julius Wilson in his book "The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy," outlined the problems for those living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty.
Wilson highlights the prevalence of violence out-of-wedlock births, female-headed households, and welfare dependency in inner-city neighborhoods, and the lack of role models with sustainable jobs and advanced education.
The deindustrialization of the urban economy and a shift to service sector jobs, have left those without a college degree at a marked disadvantage facing unemployment with little opportunity for additional education.
Wilson aims to connect the plight of those living in the inner city to larger macro-economic forces and calls for public policy interventions that impact the economic organization of the United States.
[16] Wilson uses the term underclass to describe those living in the inner city, and identifies a set of “collective differences in behavior and outlook” that constitute a specific culture.
This design and planning strategy stands in direct opposition to both sprawled suburban development and large high-rise towers of public housing.
Empirical research has shown that living in poor, inner-city neighborhoods results in lower levels of educational attainment, higher participation in criminal activities and other anti-social behavior, more negative health outcomes, more exposure to violence, higher likelihood of teenage pregnancy, and social isolation from good-paying work; in other words – place matters.
Ellen and Turner conducted an exhaustive review of theoretical and empirical work (as of 1997 publication) on “neighborhood effects” and developed a framework that identifies six mechanisms by which neighborhood influences individual outcomes:[25] 1. quality of local services 2. socialization by adults 3. peer influences 4. social networks 5. exposure to crime and violence 6. physical distance and isolation They draw on the seminal work of sociologist William Julius Wilson and describe the ways that adults serve as role models for children and youth through demonstrating work skills and the value of education.
These methodological challenges lead to variable empirical findings thus may offer “scant guidance for policy makers"[28] who lack clarity on the specific causal relationships between particular neighborhood characteristics and individual outcomes over time.
"[29] While Wilson highlighted the macroeconomic forces at the root of joblessness and urban poverty, mixed income housing as a market-based strategy, seeks to address residential segregation as describe by Massey and Denton, and by extension address the “cultural” explanations of persistent poverty, not these larger structural forces related to employment and wages.
Others highlight that mixed income housing also serves to improve neighborhoods and catalyze additional private investments and real estate development in otherwise neglected areas of a city.
[32] He also comments that the way policies are structured seem to privilege the private investment in neighborhoods, as policy makers implicitly ask “What, politically speaking, is the minimum number of very low income households that need to be accommodated to make redevelopment financially appealing to private developers and investors?” [33] Many countries also engage in mixed income housing strategies.
Research draws attention to explicit policy goals of neighborhood diversification in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, and Finland.
[37] In the Netherlands, the attention is often on mixing incomes in rental units, with the goals of providing a housing ladder in the neighborhood and encouraging middle- and higher-income residents to stay in the city.
Particularly in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, policy has specifically distanced itself from social engineering, staying focused on issues of the housing market.
Similar to the United States, research has found that social mixing is limited across income groups and tenure types, but that the stigma of living in “public housing” is reduced.
Overall, the research from abroad reinforces the findings from the United States experience: mixed income housing provides an important level of stability for low-income residents, but is not sufficient to lift people out of poverty in the absence of additional support systems.
[40] Schwartz & Tajbakhsh also identify “racial and ethnic composition of the development and the surrounding neighborhood and the state of the regional housing market”[41] as important preconditions.
[47] Therefore, mixed income housing as a policy strategy has taken hold in the United States not because it is expected to alleviate poverty, but rather because of many ancillary benefits that accrue to the neighborhood, city, and all residents.
[49] Third, the benefits for neighborhood revitalization are demonstrable – housing quality improves, crime decreases, property values and tax bases increase, and public goods and services are enhanced.
[50] Likewise, mixed income housing in stable neighborhoods offer access to safer communities and potentially higher quality schools.
[51] Ultimately housing is an important starting point, but not sufficient to lift people out of poverty; additional support programming, job training, and other social services are needed to achieve these broader goals.
Most often, those displaced include the hardest-to-house, that require the most intensive services due to substance abuse, mental health issues, criminal backgrounds, physical disability, or complicated family and childcare structures.
[55] In this way, mixed income housing developments may just be moving problems around a metropolitan area and not actually lifting people out of poverty or offering them more opportunity.
As Fraser & Nelson ask, “Are we satisfied with moving poverty around cities and metropolitan areas, or can we develop innovative and geographically informed community-based approaches for the integration of housing needs with other domain areas that affect our quality of life?”[56] Further, many mixed income housing developments have strict regulations and background checks for new residents, making some of the hardest-to-house without options to move back into the community.
[58] Finally, the improvements brought by higher income residents’ political clout have not borne out empirically, but remain compelling given greater “participation in community organizations, likelihood of voting, and spending power.".
[61] According to Ellickson, “most housing economists…assert that, as a general matter, portable tenant-based subsidies are markedly more efficient and fairer than project-based subsidies.”[62] Further, Ellickson argues that the goals of economic integration are better suited to a neighborhood, rather than project level scale, which would suggest that tenant-based subsidies would provide more opportunities for moving people out of neighborhoods of concentrated poverty and for building social contacts beyond their immediate circles.
[73] Vale also suggests that empowering lower income residents to meaningfully engage in the management of their developments can help foster positive outcomes for individuals and the neighborhood as a whole through formal and informal social controls.
"[75] While the growing body of literature suggests that economically diverse and integrated neighborhoods support residents’ opportunities and life chances, more research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which this happens.
