CHANGING MIDDLE CLASS NEIGHBORHOODS

Changing middle class neighborhoods: Sociology and impact into the educational system

Changing middle class neighborhoods: Sociology and impact into the educational system

Introduction

Research has analyzes the impact of section 8 on low income housing in middle class neighborhoods and on their educational system. Furthermore Analyze cost? graduation rates? and test scores and shows that poverty in urban areas are the cause of a range of social problems. As a result? current housing policy initiatives at all levels of government emphasize the dispersal of subsidized housing. This paper provides a review of research on four questions: How do dispersal programs work? Do they effectively deconcentrate poverty? Does dispersal improve the lives of the poor? How do these programs affect the communities into which the poor? or subsidized housing units? are placed?

Discrimination Within Section 8

In 1996? a black woman from Philadelphia used her voucher to move to a row house in a white neighborhood that contained a large number of properties subsidized by section 8 vouchers. She was immediately the object of racial taunts; two days after she moved in? a neighbor raised the Confederate flag. Seven weeks after her arrival? she moved out. Similar stories of voucher recipients unable to utilize them due to discrimination are ubiquitous. It is easy to conclude then? that the section 8 voucher programs has met with limited success in its goals of promoting racial integration and deconcentrating high-poverty areas.

Part of the reason for this limited success is a limited number of economic resources. For example? a March 1999 report found that 660?000 people were still waiting for vouchers. Furthermore? even though 1. Million Americans receive such vouchers? simply not enough of the housing available is in non-minority locations to which [*PG320] minorities could then relocate? especially in competitive markets. The housing shortage produces rent inflation? thus further limiting the ability to use vouchers because of the rent caps on vouchers.

Events in Minneapolis? Minnesota illustrate precisely this lack of affordable housing and the consequences it renders. In 1995? a federal judge approved of a $117 million race discrimination settlement? including 900 more section 8 rent-subsidy vouchers for low-income renters. As part of the decree? 424 low-income housing units were demolished? with the goal of relocating the families who had lived in the units to the suburbs or areas of the city that did not have concentrations of low-income housing. However? by 1999? Minneapolis had only a one percent vacancy rate; despite efforts to remedy historic patterns of segregation? there were few places to house the dislocated families. In Minneapolis? as in other cities facing similar affordable housing crises? the tight market makes the housing discrimination that many section 8 enrollees face an even larger problem.

It is clear that racial discrimination plays a part in the inability of recipients to find housing in non-segregated areas. For example? four percent of section 8 administrators specifically cited racial discrimination when asked why voucher holders cannot find housing. Research conducted for HUD goes even farther and suggests that there ...