Stimulus $$ Bypasses High-Poverty Neighborhoods

Interesting piece in WaPo today about stimulus allocation for public housing improvements: Only high performing housing authorities have been awarded $$, in theory to prevent waste and misuse by those not meeting expectations.  Seems reasonable enough.

But the case of the L.A. authority questions this calculation:

King said that larger housing authorities have a tougher job because they've had to make cuts in recent years while maintaining a massive, aging housing stock. The city's housing authority has about 7,000 units serving 21,000 people. The agency will still get $25 million regardless of how it fares with the competitive grants, but it has a backlog of capital needs that exceeds $500 million. He said the competitive grants could enable the city's housing authority to replace some complexes completely rather than remodel them.

Given that the infamous urban high-rise model of public housing represents less than a third of all public housing, and that half of all authorities manage fewer than 100 units total, I suppose this is fair.  But bypassing these large authorities like in Los Angeles and other major American cities, we're doing ourselves no favor in reforming the ideas we hold about public housing - and the people who live in it - based almost entirely on these highly visible urban projects.

Furthermore:

The trade group also objected to HUD saying that money for redevelopment be restricted to complexes in mixed-income neighborhoods. To get some of the $100 million in "transformation" money, HUD said the project must be located in a census tract where no more than 20 percent of residents live in poverty. But more than three-quarters of all public housing units are located in census tracts with poverty levels above that threshold.

"These units are in developments in neighborhoods that are in dire need of reinvestment," the trade group wrote.

This is effectively a creaming or skimming strategy.  The money for capital improvements are going to those authorities situated in neighborhoods that are already better off, leaving behind the worst off.  Inequality among projects will only increase with this allocation.

Many of you will be happy to know that developments for the elderly and disabled have been prioritized.

(Horn Terrace, Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, by Steve Lyons, at top.  Public housing in Sun Valley, Denver, CO, by Jeffrey Beall, above.)