Hope or Harm: Deconcentration and the Welfare of Families in Public Housing

Author: Susan Clampet-Lundquist

Dissertation School: University of Pennsylvania

Abstract:

This dissertation was published in Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, Volume 7, Number 1.

Download Susan Clampet-Lundquist's dissertation (PDF).

In late 1992 Congress created the HOPE VI program to address the concerns raised by the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing earlier that year. One of the goals of HOPE VI is to help low-income families achieve economic self-sufficiency by moving them out of an environment of concentrated poverty and by providing them with supportive services. This study uses qualitative and quantitative methods to look at the relocation of families living in a public housing development in Philadelphia. Forty-one families with school-age children were selected randomly and interviewed 2 years after their moves. More than half of these families used a Section 8 subsidy when they relocated. Census and administrative data show that families who chose to move with a Section 8 voucher were more likely than families who moved into another public housing development to end up in neighborhoods that were significantly less poor and had more employed adults. However, the neighborhood-level variables had no significant relationship with economic self-sufficiency measures 2 years after the relocation. The analysis of the qualitative data indicates that, in the short term, few of the families were able to rebuild local social ties, regardless of the kind of neighborhood into which they moved. This inability to connect with neighborhood social structures has made it difficult for adults and teenagers who moved into less poor neighborhoods to take advantage of the improved opportunities in their new neighborhoods.

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