Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia

The effect of environmental influences on individuals has long been debated by social theorists and is also a popular topic for literature (cf. Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"). These debates persist because it is usually impossible to decouple the effect of environment from confounding factors, such as income or educational attainment. Generally, it is not possible to conduct a controlled random experiment in which similar individuals are sent to different environments and their fates compared.The Gatreaux project is such an experiment: poor black families of similar backgrounds were given the chance to move to either suburban or urban locations, and the results were dramatic. The Gatreaux project has thus captured national attention, having been featured on Oprah, the Today Show and in major publications such as the New York Times and the Economist.Unlike most social programs, Gatreaux has universal political appeal: the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations lauded the program's dramatic results on the lives of its participants, and used it as a model for housing projects nationwide.The way that the program works is simple: The Chicago Housing Authority designates a day on which Section 8 vouchers are distributed to the first N callers. On this day, the phone lines are jammed as tens of thousands of public housing residents scramble for a way out of the projects. Applicants are screened by very minimal standards --- basic apartment maintenance and lack of a serious criminal record --- and two-thirds of the applicants are accepted. Successful applicants are offered a placement in either a city or suburban apartment unit. While candidates can turn down the offer, they know that they were already lucky to be given this opportunity and almost all accept the placement. The program is intentionally very low-profile: only a few participants are moved into each suburb in order to prevent "white flight" and residents move into private market apartment units and have no external markers of being on welfare. The suburban and urban participants are initially identical: all were selected from the same pool of callers, and were randomly placed into private apartments in either suburban or urban locations. However, the suburban participants find their lives changed drastically by their moves.While the urban participants mostly remain on the welfare rolls, their suburban counterparts are very likely to find employment and leave welfare. While the urban participants' children are likely to drop out of high school, their suburban counterparts are likely to graduate from high school and even college. In fact, Prof Rosenbaum relates that he met the daughter of a Gatreaux participant attending Northwestern University, where he teaches.Rising from the desolation of the Chicago housing projects, Gatreaux has emerged as perhaps the single most successful American social program of the past fifty years. This book is essential reading for people of a

In 1965, Black residents of public housing filed a civil rights suit alleging that public housing in Chicago was segregated. they won in 1969. This book tells (part of) the story of the 30 year struggle for relief which followed that victory.Initially, the court ordered more (non-segregated) public housing built. That did not happen (at least for many years). This book focuses on the secodn remedy tried: the Section 8 mobility program, in which public housing residents were offered Section 8 housing subsidies (not otherwise available) in exchange for their agreement to relocate to white, middle class suburbs.Admitting that the people who accepted this offer were both self-selected and carefully screened, the authors detail the generally positive effect these moves had on the participants, including much safer neighborhoods, generally better schools, and less racism than would be expected. Given this limited goal, the book covers its subject superbly.The question which this book avoids is whether this experiment actually benefited the class of plaintiffs who brought the case--or whether it benefitted them more than other possible remedies. For example, what if each member of the class had simply been given cash--in an amount equal to whatever the government spent on the mobility and scattered site programs? What if all of the money had been spent on aggressive enforcement of housing discrimination laws? Similarly, the authors make no attempt to determine why most of the plaintiffs did not want to participate.All in all, the book teaches some very valuable lessons about the positive effects of integration--proving the experts (Clark, et al) right who opined as long ago as Brown vs. Board of Education that segregation really does inflict harm on children.Excellent read for anyone concerned about the issues of poverty and race.

This book is a good primer on the Chicago public housing desegregation lawsuit known as Gautreaux, and on the mobility program resulting from that lawsuit. Under the Gautreaux mobility program, thousands of families moved from low-income Chicago neighborhoods into white, middle-class suburbs. This book charts the progress of these suburban pioneers--both the good (e.g., safer communities and better schools), and the bad (e.g., isolation and racial harassment). The authors examine the results of studies conducted in the early and late 1980's, studies that focused on the issues of safety, social contacts, schooling, and jobs. The book shows just how radically the Gautreaux families' lives changed--and, for the most part, improved. In so doing, the authors debunk the "culture of poverty" myth--the notion that low-income African-American families are too dysfunctional to seize opportunities to improve their lives. Instead, argue the authors, low-income families can thrive in any "geography of opportunity"--any place where they find real opportunities to improve their lives. This book is best suited for advocates not already familiar with Gautreaux--to a large extent it repackages studies reported years ago. But it is an important book for the general public, and for policy makers who care about improving the lives of society's most vulnerable citizens.