Chart of the Day: Central City Share of Subsidized Housing

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:

orfield-2015-share-subsidized-housing

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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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Bill Lindeke

About Bill Lindeke

Pronouns: he/him

Bill Lindeke has writing blogging about sidewalks and cities since 2005, ever since he read Jane Jacobs. He is a lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Minnesota Geography Department, the Cityscape columnist at Minnpost, and has written multiple books on local urban history. He was born in Minneapolis, but has spent most of his time in St Paul. Check out Twitter @BillLindeke or on Facebook.