Less Crime, More Hunger

I just finished reading a very frustrating article about the impacts of the HOPE VI program's impacts on public housing residents' lives ($). For those not in the know, HOPE VI is a program that since 1992 provides federal subsidies to demolish and redevelop public housing projects as mixed-income communities.  Proponents say it improves residents' lives by enabling them to live in less-poor neighborhoods with better-off neighbors and that taken together these changes will bring increased safety, economic opportunities and role models for low-income residents.

The "role modeling" thing always ticks me off, but the bigger problem with HOPE VI is that it pursued a housing demolition and development strategy as the sole means to reduce poverty and inequality.  If you know anything about the myriad problems poor people face in terms of job prospects (e.g., health problems, disability, young children at home, etc.), then you'll probably be unsurprised to learn that the most recent HOPE VI assessment shows no impact on residents' economic status.  None. Sigh.

But the "choice" residents face between crime and hunger is what really gets me.

The major impetus for HOPE VI was the high rates of crime and violence in public housing projects in the late 1980s/early 1990s, following a decade or more of slashed operating funds to maintain the aging properties and the unfolding of the crack epidemic.  Based on a small sample, non-demolition, public housing resident relocation program in Chicago, HOPE VI was conceived on a lark of a notion that demolishing entire sites and moving people to lower poverty neighborhoods would have the same effect.  The outcome of almost 20 years of this very expensive, haphazard approach is that so few residents are able to return to the new mixed-income developments (about 30% on average) that researchers actually have no data on whether or not living in these mixed-income developments is a good thing.  NONE!

So they end up comparing residents who get vouchers to rent in the private market, with federal subsidies, to residents moved into other public housing projects.  And they find that for women and girls using vouchers, their quality of life, in terms of sense of safety and reduced anxiety and depression improves dramatically.  For folks living in different projects, they still feel unsafe and fearful.  Point for the voucher tenants.

But then they find that over 60% of voucher holders have a hard time paying for food, because they've now become responsible for paying their own utilities.  Honestly, residents in the projects have a hard time feeding their families too.  But what's so frustrating here is that by giving people a voucher, we're throwing them into an unstable rental market that they can barely afford.  "...most voucher holders chose to pay their rent on time to avoid risking their housing and instead delayed their utility payments and cut back on food and other items."  (Incl. prescriptions, I bet?)

Vouchers are the #1 affordable housing program we have in the US.  The government likes it because it's cheaper than building housing, with only a small administrative cost on top of the rental subsidy.  There's about 2M households who receive vouchers, and an additional 9M who qualify but receive no assistance. So that's 11M Americans, scattered around the country, who we can estimate at least once a month are thinking: rent check or dinner?

But hey, at least they're less depressed.*

(*I know, from experience, that this is no small thing.)

(Photo of HOPE VI redevelopment in Philly by Peyton Chung.)