Communities of Opportunity: A Framework to Produce Greater Racial, Social and Regional Equity

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Communities of OpportunityA Framework to
Produce Greater Racial, Social and Regional Equity

• June 21st 2006
• Presentation for the National Resource Center for
  the Healing of Racism
• Town Hall Meeting
• Jason Reece, AICP
• Senior Research Associate
• Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and
  Ethnicity
• The Ohio State University
• http//www.kirwaninstitute.org/
• Reece.35_at_osu.edu

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Todays Presentation

• Why Opportunity Matters
• Segregation from Opportunity
• Communities of Opportunity
• An opportunity based framework to address racial,
  social and regional inequity and produce a more
  vibrant, just society

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Opportunity MattersPlace, Space and Life Outcomes
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Place and Life Outcomes

• Where you live is more important than what you
  live in
• Housing, in particular its location, is the
  primary mechanism for accessing opportunity in
  our society
• Housing location determines the quality of
  schools children attend, the quality of public
  services, access to employment and
  transportation, health risks, access to health
  care and public safety
• For those living in high poverty neighborhoods
  these factors can significantly inhibit life
  outcomes

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Housing and Opportunity

• Housing is Critical in Determining Access to
  Opportunity

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The Web of Opportunity

• Opportunities in our society are geographically
  distributed and often clustered throughout
  metropolitan areas
• This creates winner and loser communities or
  high and low opportunity communities
• Your location within this web of opportunity
  plays a decisive role in your life potential and
  outcomes
• Individual characteristics still matter but so
  does environment
• Often impacting individual decision making

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Conditions in High and Low Opportunity Areas
Economic Opportunities
High Opportunity
Low Opportunity
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Children and Schools
High Opportunity
Low Opportunity
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Housing
High Opportunity
Low Opportunity
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The Impact of Place Qualitative Research from
the MTO Program

• Reflections on living in a low opportunity
  community
• "It was like being in a war zone. It was really
  bad...A lot of drug dealings. Shoot-outs. Girls
  getting beat up by their boyfriends. Young
  girlsEverybody has such low self-esteem and no
  regard for each other. Nobody looked out for
  each other. It was horrible."

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The Impact of Place Qualitative Research from
the MTO Program

• Impact of moving to opportunity
• "I just got promoted to a higher
  position...Moving has done wonderful things for
  me and my family. It has given me an outlook on
  things that I'm surrounded by. Better
  neighborhood, better schools for my kids, a
  better job, great things for me."
• "It gave me a better outlook on life, that there
  is a life outside of that housing."

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Racial Segregation, Opportunity Segregation and
Racial Disparities

• Housing policies, land use patterns and patterns
  of regional investment and disinvestment converge
  to produce continued racial segregation in our
  society
• Often this racial segregation coexists with
  segregation into high poverty neighborhoods and
  separation from many of the opportunities in our
  metropolitan regions
• Producing a racial isolation in neighborhoods
  that are lacking the essential opportunities to
  advance in our society (fueling racial
  disparities)

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The Cumulative Impacts of Racial and Opportunity
Segregation
Segregation impacts a number of life-opportunities
Impacts on Health
School Segregation
Impacts on Educational Achievement
Exposure to crime arrest
Transportation limitations and other inequitable
public services
Job segregation
Neighborhood Segregation
Racial stigma, other psychological impacts
Impacts on community power and individual assets
Adapted from figure by Barbara Reskin at
http//faculty.washington.edu/reskin/
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Opportunity BenefitsEveryone

• While African American and Latino city residents
  are most often burdened, these groups are not the
  only ones negatively impacted by our opportunity
  segregation
• Low income Whites and Whites living in the city
  and inner suburbs are harmed as well
• Low income Whites also have their housing
  mobility limited by fair housing impediments
  (such as exclusionary zoning)
• This opportunity segregation also impacts their
  outcomes in life
• Conversely, providing true access to opportunity
  would benefit many Whites as well
• High concentrations of poverty and segregated
  neighborhoods can also have deleterious effects
  on the well-being and health of the entire
  metropolitan region

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Linked Fate Why Should Others Care About Equity
and Inclusion

• Why should those who are not marginalized care
  about equity challenges?
• A region and all its residents share a linked
  fate
• This issue is particularly important today
• To thrive, regions must be competitive in the
  global economy
• Inequality is a sign of an economically/socially
  inefficient region, where proper investments are
  not made in human capital, and where much of the
  population can not meet its creative potential
• These disparities make the region less
  competitive, nationally and globally

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Economic Health and Equity

• How do racial and social inequities impact
  overall regional health?
• Racial and regional inequities impact the health
  of the entire region, and impact everyone in the
  region
• The region loses its competitive edge in the
  global economy
• Inequitable schools that produce an unprepared
  (undereducated) labor force
• Interregional economic competition that erodes
  the regions collective economic voice and power
• Fragmented and redundant governments, underused
  and redundant infrastructure in suburban areas

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Communities of Opportunity
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The Communities of Opportunity Approach

• The communities of opportunity model was
  proposed by Kirwan Institute Executive Director
  john powell
• The model is based an extensive body of research
  and literature related to concentrated poverty,
  regional equity, metropolitan dynamics, spatial
  racism, housing mobility, segregation, etc.

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The Communities of Opportunity Approach

• The central principle of opportunity based
  housing is that residents of metropolitan regions
  are situated within a complex, interconnected web
  of opportunity structures (or lack thereof) that
  significantly shapes their quality of life
• Need to think in terms of opportunity
• Opportunity structures are the resources and
  services that contribute to stability and
  advancement
• Fair access to opportunity structures is limited
  by segregation, concentration of poverty,
  fragmentation, and sprawl in our regions for
  low-income households and families of color

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Creating Communities of Opportunity

• Two simultaneous goals must be met to address to
  create communities of opportunity and guarantee
  access to opportunity
• Affirmatively connect people to opportunity in
  the region
• Example housing and school mobility for low
  income residents
• Bring opportunities to opportunity deprived
  neighborhoods and communities
• Example initiatives to grow jobs, bring new
  investment to distressed communities

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KI InitiativesReforming the Low Income Housing
Tax Credit Program
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LIHTC Advocacy and Research

• The LIHTC program is a 5 billion tax credit
  program for private developers to create
  affordable housing opportunities
• While recent federal budgets have reduced funding
  for most housing programs (public housing,
  vouchers, Hope VI), the LIHTC program has
  remained untouched
• The LIHTC program is the primary source of new
  subsidized housing construction in the US
• LIHTC projects produced over 800,000 units in the
  1990s, compared to just 50,000 units of
  traditional site based subsidized housing

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Is the LIHTC Producing Segregation?

• Although the LIHTC program is siting units in
  slightly better neighborhoods than traditional
  public housing, these neighborhoods still
  continue to be areas of very high poverty and
  predominately segregated
• Most notably in urban areas of the Midwest and
  Northeast
• The LIHTC program is administered by the IRS and
  has become a civil rights free zone because of
  the unusual way the program is implemented
• KI and PRRAC are working with state advocates and
  housing finance agencies to set guidelines to
  reduce segregation in LIHTC siting and connect
  more LIHTC units to high opportunity areas

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• KI and PRRAC have worked in several states to
  identify problems in siting patterns of LIHTC
  units and to propose strategies to reform siting
  guidelines
• Maryland
• North Carolina
• Illinois
• Wisconsin

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KI InitiativesThompson v. HUDFair Housing
Litigation
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More on Thompson v. HUD

• Lawsuit filed on behalf of 14,000 African
  American public housing residents in the City of
  Baltimore, plaintiffs representatives include the
  Maryland ACLU and NAACP Legal Defense Fund
• The case has been in court for 12 years
• In January 2005, US District Court Judge Garbis
  found HUD liable for violating the federal Fair
  Housing Act, for not providing fair housing
  opportunities to Baltimores African American
  public housing residents
• The current remedial phase involves designing a
  court ordered remedy to address HUDs fair
  housing violation
• "Baltimore City should not be viewed ... as a
  container for all of the poor of a contiguous
  region
• U.S. District Judge Marvin J. Garbis

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More on Thompson v. HUD

• We intend to secure a remedy that will help
  African American public housing residents undo
  the harms they have suffered for more than sixty
  years because of HUDs discriminatory policies.
  We believe that this case, in Thurgood Marshalls
  hometown, is the most important housing
  desegregation lawsuit in a generation.
• -Theodore M. Shaw, NAACP LDF Director-Counsel
  and President

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Conditions in Baltimore

• Subsidized housing opportunities in Baltimore are
  generally clustered in the regions predominately
  African American neighborhoods

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Opportunity Analysis

• Use of 14 indicators of neighborhood opportunity
  to designate high and low opportunity
  neighborhoods in the Baltimore region
• Indicators of Opportunity (General)
• Neighborhood Quality/Health
• Poverty, Crime, Vacancy, Property Values,
  Population Trends
• Economic Opportunity
• Proximity to Jobs and Job Changes, Public Transit
• Educational Opportunity
• School Poverty, School Test Scores, Teacher
  Qualifications

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Concluding Thoughts

• We need integration with opportunity to have a
  truly just society
• A society where all people would have access to
  the means essential to living a life they have
  reason to value
• A society where a geographic identifier would not
  predict an individuals life chances
• Linked fate

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