Won't you be my neighbor? Mixed-income neighborhoods sound good in theory, experts say, but the reality is vastly different

Chicago Reporter, The, May-June, 2008 by Kari Lydersen

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When Chicago's public housing developments were born in the 1930s, the stated plan was to create idyllic enclaves where low-income working families could develop close-knit communities and thrive.

The reality, in Chicago and nationwide, turned out quite differently, thanks to factors including government neglect, police corruption and crime. So in 1992, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development launched its Hope VI program, designating mixed-income communities as the way to redevelop and revitalize public housing. Significant funding was made available for housing authorities nationwide to carry out this model. And it soon be came de rigueur for public housing redevelopment from New York to New Orleans to Chicago to Oakland.

The Chicago Housing Authority is almost nine years into its $1.6 billion "Plan For Transformation," started in 1998 with Hope VI funds. In the wake of Hope VI, "mixed income" became a beloved buzzword in government and policy circles nationwide.

"When people are isolated on a [public housing] property like Stateway Gardens or [the Robert Taylor Homes], all they see is poor people, people who sell drugs, bad habits," said CHA Press Secretary Derek Hill. In a mixed-income community, "children may be inspired to be a doctor or nurse or like anyone who lives around them."

The goal of mixed-income communities created through Hope VI is to decentralize poverty by creating pockets where there is an equal distribution of low-, middle-, and upper-income residents, with the idea that, as Hill said, poor people will learn from their more affluent neighbors and enjoy the increased resources and amenities that inevitably flow to higher-income areas.

Popular as the concept is among developers now, mixed-income communities are nothing new. In Chicago, they formed after segregation kept minorities from certain neighborhoods. But those types of economically mixed neighborhoods, upon which the CHA is pinning its hopes for transformation, aren't perfect as tensions and limited interactions between people of varying incomes can limit the inspiration Hill speaks of. And those mixed-income neighborhoods aren't popular--as many people don't live in them and the economic mix doesn't always last for very long.

The Chicago Reporter analyzed census data to find out where exactly mixed-income communities really exist in Cook County, and how well they function. The Reporter found:

* Cook County has more than 5.4 million residents but just 330,000, or 6.2 percent, live in areas resembling the CHA's definition of "mixed-income" communities.

* Many of these mixed-income areas--as opposed to the ones intentionally developed by the CHA-can largely be broken into two categories: longstanding stable ones; and gentrifying ones in states of instability and transition rather than harmony.

* Many areas that statistically fit the CHA's definition of mixed-income in reality look and feel like low income neighborhoods. Nearly 18 percent of the families in the mixed-income areas earned at least $60,000 annually, compared with nearly 46 percent of families elsewhere in Cook County.

* More than 51 percent of the mixed-income areas the Reporter found were predominantly black; another 37 percent were mostly Latino.

Ironically, official and de facto redlining of decades past helped create mixed-income communities.

Before the Fair Housing Act of 1968, it was a common practice for realtors to refuse to sell black families homes in white neighborhoods. Banks also refused to give home loans to people from certain neighborhoods and actually drew red circles on. maps around the neighborhoods they didn't want to lend to; hence the term redlining. As a result, many black people ended up being clustered together, regardless of their income, on the city's South Side.

So by default, mixed-income communities were created. But today, they look and feel much different than what the CHA is proposing. They are more homogenous--often they're mostly black or mostly Latino--and built upon longstanding webs of familial and neighborly relationships, according to Northwestern University professor and author Mary Pattillo.

In one such enclave in South Shore, the varying economic worlds come together. Lakefront property and the grand South Shore Cultural Center are within blocks of vacant, weedy lots and board ed-up buildings. The local library is across the street from a discount liquor store.

The magic formula?

One of the selling points of mixed-income communities is that there is a healthy mix of incomes. However, census numbers show that the difference between the income levels in naturally occurring mixed-income neighborhoods are much narrower than the spread that occurs in CHA redevelopments.

"The range of incomes is super wide" in the CHA's planned redevelopments, Pattillo said, with some market-rate units going for more than $500,000 while public housing residents living in the same complex might only earn $5,000 a year.

Pattillo noted that a naturally occurring mixed-income neighborhood like South Shore "doesn't have as much of that high, high upper-end; it includes a larger working class; and the poor families are often not as poor as public housing families."