Communities of Opportunity: Thompson v' HUD and beyond

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Communities of Opportunity Thompson v. HUD and
beyond

• Housing Justice Network Conference
• Washington, D.C.
• October 22, 2006
• john a. powell
• Williams Chair in Civil Rights Civil Liberties,
  
• Moritz College of Law
• Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
  and Ethnicity

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Place and Life Outcomes

• Where you live is more important than what you
  live in
• Housing -- in particular its location -- is the
  primary mechanism for accessing opportunity in
  our society
• Housing location determines the quality of
  schools children attend, the quality of public
  services they receive, access to employment and
  transportation, exposure to health risks, access
  to health care, etc.
• For those living in high poverty neighborhoods,
  these factors can significantly inhibit life
  outcomes

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Housing and Opportunity

• Housing is Critical in Determining Access to
  Opportunity

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The Web of Opportunity

• Opportunities in our society are geographically
  distributed and often clustered throughout
  metropolitan areas
• This creates winner and loser communities or
  high and low opportunity communities
• Your location within this web of opportunity
  plays a decisive role in your life potential and
  outcomes
• Individual characteristics still matter
• but so does access to opportunity
• Often impacting individual decision making

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The Cumulative Impacts of Racial and Opportunity
Segregation
Segregation impacts a number of life-opportunities
Impacts on Health
School Segregation
Impacts on Educational Achievement
Exposure to crime arrest
Transportation limitations and other inequitable
public services
Job segregation
Neighborhood Segregation
Racial stigma, other psychological impacts
Impacts on community power and individual assets
Adapted from figure by Barbara Reskin at
http//faculty.washington.edu/reskin/
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Ex Influence of Neighborhoods on Health

• Research suggests that living in disadvantaged
  neighborhoods increases the risk of mortality and
  disease
• Possible mechanisms
• direct physical influences (i.e. exposure to
  toxic waste)
• cumulative stress associated with living in
  unsafe neighborhoods with limited resources
• harder to sustain healthy behaviors (i.e. less
  good grocery stores)
• more likely to be targeted by companies promoting
  unhealthy lifestyles (tobacco, alcohol, fast
  food)

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Conditions in High and Low Opportunity Areas
Economic Opportunities
High Opportunity
Low Opportunity
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Children and Schools
High Opportunity
Low Opportunity
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The Impact of Place Qualitative Research from
the MTO Program

• Reflections on living in a low opportunity
  community
• "It was like being in a war zone. It was really
  bad...A lot of drug dealings. Shoot-outs. Girls
  getting beat up by their boyfriends. Young
  girlsEverybody has such low self-esteem and no
  regard for each other. Nobody looked out for
  each other. It was horrible.
• Impact of moving to opportunity
• "I just got promoted to a higher
  position...Moving has done wonderful things for
  me and my family. It has given me an outlook on
  things that I'm surrounded by. Better
  neighborhood, better schools for my kids, a
  better job, great things for me."
• "It gave me a better outlook on life, that there
  is a life outside of that housing."

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Racial Segregation, Opportunity Segregation and
Racial Disparities

• Housing policies, land use patterns and patterns
  of regional investment and disinvestment converge
  to produce continued racial segregation in our
  society
• Often this racial segregation coexists with
  segregation into high poverty neighborhoods and
  separation from many of the opportunities in our
  metropolitan regions
• Producing a racial isolation in neighborhoods
  that are lacking the essential opportunities to
  advance in our society, and fueling racial
  disparities

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Opportunity Segregation

• This segregation from opportunity can be
  quantified, as illustrated in these examples
• Milwaukee
• Chicago
• Cleveland
• New Orleans
• In all examples, African Americans are
  disproportionately segregated into neighborhoods
  of low opportunity

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The Dynamics of Opportunity in the Milwaukee
Region(Light Colors Lowest Opportunity
Neighborhoods Dark Colors Highest Opportunity
Neighborhoods)

• Low opportunity communities are clustered in the
  inner city, high opportunity areas are found in
  the suburbs
• Based on an analysis of multiple indicators of
  neighborhood opportunity including Poverty
  rates, vacancy rates, population change,
  unemployment rates, home values

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The Dynamics of Opportunity in Milwaukee
Population by Race by Neighborhood Opportunity
Level

• Who is living in low opportunity communities in
  Milwaukee?
• Nearly 85 of the Milwaukee regions African
  Americans live in low and very low
  opportunity neighborhoods
• 2/3s of the regions Latinos can be found in
  these communities
• Approximately 200,000 Whites are found in low
  and very low opportunity communities
• 225,000 African Americans and 70,000 Latinos live
  in these communities as well

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ChicagosCommunities of Opportunity

• Neighborhood opportunity is a measurable concept
• Requires looking a large number of indicators
  related to opportunity
• This example is a 6 county communities of
  opportunity map for the Chicago region
• Red Lowest Opportunity
• Blue Highest Opportunity

Source Report published by the Leadership
Council for Metropolitan Open Communities 2005
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Opportunity Segregation in the Chicago Region

• In Chicago, African Americans and Latinos are
  segregated into low opportunity communities

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(No Transcript)
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Comprehensive Opportunity Map and the African
American Population
Light Purple Low Opportunity Areas (also
contain the largest number of African Americans)
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Two Complementary Paths to Opportunity

• Affirmatively connect people to opportunity in
  the region (move people TO opportunity, not just
  AWAY from poverty)
• Housing mobility programs (Gautreaux, Hollman,
  Walker, Thompson, etc.)
• School mobility programs (The Choice is Yours
  in Minneapolis)
• Bring opportunities to opportunity deprived
  neighborhoods and communities
• Portlands UGB
• Marylands Priority Funding Areas
• Michigans Fix-It-First program

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Litigation Walker v. Dallas

• Two homeowners lawsuits filed to block
  replacement housing in white communities, one of
  which was upheld in Fifth Circuit court
• Highlands of McKamy et. al. v. the DHA
• Fifth Circuit ruling vacates district court
  ruling and upholds homeowners argument that the
  DHA Remedial Orders provision requiring the
  location of 474 units of new public housing in
  predominantly white areas is an unconstitutional
  violation of the rights of the homeowners under
  the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution
• The Court argues that the Section 8 program is a
  more appropriate remedy

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Litigation Walker v. Dallas

• Given the Fifth Circuits preference for a
  race-neutral remedy
• vs. research showing that unrestricted vouchers
  dont effectively de-segregate
• Example MTO vs. Gautreaux outcomes
• Unlike Gautreaux, the MTO program was poverty,
  not race-based, and this affected the project
  design and its outcome
• In short, people moved to neighborhoods with
  increasing poverty and not as far away from the
  city as they did in Gautreaux
• What are options for remedy?

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Thompson v. HUD

• Lawsuit filed on behalf of 14,000 African
  American public housing residents in the City of
  Baltimore
• Plaintiffs representatives include the Maryland
  ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund
• In January 2005, US District Court Judge Garbis
  found HUD liable for violating the federal Fair
  Housing Act, for not providing fair housing
  opportunities to Baltimores African American
  public housing residents
• The current remedial phase involves designing a
  court ordered remedy to address HUDs fair
  housing violation

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Thompson v. HUD

• Submitted expert reports in both the liability
  and the remedy phases of the litigation, on
  behalf of plaintiffs
• Used GIS to analyze current conditions of
  segregated public housing (liability phase) and
  frame solutions for desegregation (remedy phase)

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Conditions in Baltimore

• Subsidized housing opportunities in Baltimore are
  generally clustered in the regions predominately
  African American neighborhoods

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Thompson v. HUD Liability ruling

• HUD failed to affirmatively promote fair housing
  by failing to consider a regional approach to
  desegregating public housing
• The failure adequately to take a regional
  approach to the desegregation of public housing
  in the region that included Baltimore City
  violated the Fair Housing Act and requires
  consideration of appropriate remedial action by
  the Court.

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Ruling remedy must be regional

• Geographic considerations, economic limitations,
  population shifts, etc. have rendered it
  impossible to effect a meaningful degree of
  desegregation of public housing by redistributing
  the public housing population of Baltimore City
  within the City limits. Baltimore City should
  not be viewed as an island reservation for use as
  a container for all of the poor of a contiguous
  region.
• The Court finds an approach of regionalization
  to be integral to desegregation in the Baltimore
  Regionby the term regionalization the Court
  refers to policies whereby the effects of past
  segregation in Baltimore City public housing may
  be ameliorated by the provision of public housing
  opportunities beyond the boundaries of Baltimore
  City

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Proposed Remedy Principles

• The remedy should connect subsidized housing
  residents to communities of opportunity
• The remedy must be sensitive to opportunity
• The remedy must be metropolitan-wide
• The remedy must be race-conscious
• The remedy must not force dispersal of public
  housing residents
• The remedy must be goal-driven
• The remedy should make use of a variety of tools
  available to HUD

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Proposed Remedy Opportunity Analysis

• Use of 14 indicators of neighborhood opportunity
  to designate high and low opportunity
  neighborhoods in the Baltimore region
• Indicators of Opportunity (General)
• Neighborhood Quality/Health
• Poverty, Crime, Vacancy, Property Values,
  Population Trends
• Economic Opportunity
• Proximity to Jobs and Job Changes, Public Transit
• Educational Opportunity
• School Poverty, School Test Scores, Teacher
  Qualifications

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Lessons for implementation

• Connecting to opportunity means leveraging
  housing opportunities to connect to decent
  employment, health care, child care, and
  transportation.
• Qualitative research identified two main barriers
  to adult employment for MTO participants
• Health problems
• Lack of available or affordable child care
• People need transportation to reach
• Family members who need care
• Jobs, day care, and health care
• Gender matters in related-service provisions
  (child family care responsibilities) and in
  outcome (i.e. differences in school adjustment
  for African-American teenage girls vs. boys)

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Lessons for implementation

• Difficulties with voucher use
• Rising rent, utility costs
• Tight rental markets
• Problematic relationships with landlords
• Landlords selling the building
• Unit quality
• Lack of available units for families (3 br)
• Points to the need to construct new units not
  just depend on markets, landlords

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Lessons for implementation

• Scale, context, and density matter. Research
  found that
• if only a few Section 8 sites were located w/in
  500 feet of existing homes
• in areas of high opportunity
• there was if anything, a strong positive impact
  on home values
• However,
• if the census tract was low- or moderately-valued
  
• Section 8 sites and units in high densities
• had a strong adverse impact within 2,000 feet

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LIHTC and Segregated Schools

• Currently, LIHTC development is conflicting with
  efforts to desegregate schools.
• Nearly ¾s of African American and Hispanic LIHTC
  residents are located in segregated schools.

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Linked fatestransformative change

• Realize that our fates are linked, yet our fates
  have been socially constructed as disconnected
  (especially through the categories of class,
  race, gender, nationality, region)
• We need socially constructed bridges to
  transform our society
• Conceive of an individuality as connected
  toinstead of isolated fromthy neighbor
• Be advocates for Communities of Opportunity as
  transformative change
• Transformative An intervention that works to
  permanently transform structural arrangements
  which produce inequity and disparity

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Agents of transformative change

• Recognize that housing advocacy is a leverage
  point for connecting clients to other critical
  opportunity structures
• Education
• Jobs
• Child care
• Health care
• Transportation
• All of these are related and affect each other
  all show effects of cumulative disparity all are
  ripe for transformative change!

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www.kirwaninstitute.org