Here’s a hot-button topic that’s been popping up in the news lately: the argument that subsidized housing isn’t being built in the suburbs, but is being concentraed in the central cities
Here’s one of the charts from Myron Orfield’s Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity, showing the where subsidized housing is being built:
Peter Callahan at Minnpost had another article on it today, about a DC lawsuit. Here’s the takeaway:
The groups bringing the complaint want the two cities to stop over-concentrating low-income housing in already impoverished neighborhoods. Doing so, even while assuring the federal government that they are not, is in violation of both the federal Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act, the complaint says.
…
On the street level, the difference is dramatic: In high-minority census tracts in Minneapolis, there is one low-income unit for every block; in low-minority tracts, there is a low-income unit every 6.5 miles, the complaint says.
For more on this topic, see the streets.mn podcast with Orfield, a post I wrote about scale, or David’s take on what “affordable housing” actually is.
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Here’s a very recent counterpoint to Orfield’s research conclusions, also from the U of M (Ed Goetz at the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs).
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/where-the-white-people-live/390153/
Definitely worth a read as it illuminates the broader range of residential segregation, as well as the often overlooked ways in which governments subsidize and support racially concentrated areas of wealth.