HOPE VI reduced intergenerational poverty

This is a good day for walkable neighborhood design, as a new multigenerational study validates the largest implementation of New Urbanist principles on low-income populations—the HOPE VI program in the 1990s and 2000s. 

HOPE VI is the most dramatic public policy success of the New Urbanism—even more than form-based codes, because the impact was more immediate and long-lasting—but the movement took a lot of heat for it. In 1996, then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros signed the Charter of the New Urbanism. Soon afterwards, New Urbanists conducted workshops on designing mixed-income neighborhoods and published a guidebook for HUD.

The design principles taught by New Urbanists were adopted by local housing authorities, who implemented the $17 billion HOPE VI program—and the principles are still being applied through its successor, the federal Choice Neighborhoods program. HOPE VI developed and renovated over 111,000 units, 60,000 of which were affordable to public housing tenants, across 262 projects. The program demolished 91,000 units, displacing 72,000 families, temporarily or permanently.

HOPE VI was applied to the “worst of the worst” Modernist public housing projects across the country, plagued by crime and related social problems. HOPE VI brought mixed-income and market-rate housing in New Urbanist neighborhoods, and the public housing units were not replaced on a one-to-one basis (a policy that was criticized and changed in the successor Choice Neighborhood program). 

Many observers, particularly in the academy, were not happy with HOPE VI. As NPR reports, “Some scholars and activists argued the program was a kind of government-backed gentrification, sending many of the poorest residents of the city packing while serving the interests of private developers.”

That aligned with general attacks at the time by academics who charged that New Urbanism was backward-looking and served the interests of affluent suburbanites. Weighing against that criticism were the HOPE VI projects themselves, which dramatically reduced crime and helped to revitalize surrounding neighborhoods. And yet the overall impression was that HOPE VI was a mixed bag.

And now we have the study by Harvard-based Opportunity Insights showing dramatic economic benefits for children who grew up in HOPE revitalized public housing, who, as adults, earn 50 percent more than those who didn’t have the benefit of these neighborhoods. This study took 30 years to materialize because it measures the program’s generational impact, which has very promising implications. Researchers tracked the economic progress of more than a millionpublic housing residents from 1993 to 2019. The study has attracted major coverage, including a piece in The New York Times titled “How to Bring Back the American Dream.” 

Here are the key findings:

• Adults did not gain economically from HOPE VI revitalization. Neighborhood poverty rates fell by 10 percentage points after revitalization, driven by higher-income residents moving into market-rate housing, but adults who lived in public housing units did not earn more.
• Children who grow up in revitalized neighborhoods earn more as adults. Each year of childhood exposure to a revitalized public housing unit raised children’s earnings in adulthood by 2.8 percent. Those living there from birth earned 50 percent more over their lifetimes.
• Earnings gains exceed the costs of revitalization. Revitalizing a single public housing unit increases the future earnings of children who grow up there by $500K (adjusting for inflation and interest rates), far exceeding the cost of $170K borne by taxpayers.
• Gains for children were driven by stronger social connections with higher-income neighbors.Children in revitalized public housing interacted more with higher-income neighbors and benefited most when surrounded by more affluent peers.
• We can Increase economic mobility by better connecting low-opportunity areas. Many low-income neighborhoods remain disconnected from nearby high-opportunity areas. Connecting such neighborhoods, mapped here, could increase economic mobility at scale.

Urban design doesn’t get much attention here, but it was critical to the success of HOPE VI. The Modernist designs of high-rise or low-rise buildings paid little attention to street frontages, the legibility of public spaces, and the city’s vernacular architecture. The projects screamed “public housing,” and no middle-class people would willingly buy into the area. The New Urbanists replaced the outdated designs with housing that resembled the city’s better historic neighborhoods, featuring appealing public spaces and new construction. HOPE VI restored the city fabric and could be sold as mixed-income. It removed the barriers between public housing and the city's more prosperous areas.

“Prior to the intervention, the HOPE VI sites were islands of disadvantage, where kids growing up in public housing were largely interacting only with other families in public housing," Matt Staiger, a research scientist at Opportunity Insights who co-authored the study, told NPR. "What we found is that Hope VI broke down the barriers that led to this isolation and increased the degree to which kids in public housing were interacting and befriending kids who live nearby. And that is what appeared to be central in driving the long-run gains in their outcomes.”

NPR continues: “These new housing complexes were designed to more seamlessly blend into surrounding neighborhoods. And they wove together public housing with market housing, integrating families with different incomes to live closer to each other and reducing the miseries of concentrated poverty that had plagued the projects. The program also offered low-income denizens services like childcare and job training.”

Although New Urbanists could not have foreseen this particular study, the outcome was no accident. They believed that design could connect public housing residents to opportunity. It turns out that the economic benefits mainly accrue to the next generation.

When the projects were torn down, the adult public housing residents had to go through a difficult but necessary transition. Federal officials and Congress realized that these old housing projects were dysfunctional and at the end of their lifespan. But those who were fortunate enough to live in HOPE VI projects enjoyed nicer neighborhoods with lower crime rates. As a 2009 study reports, “There is no question that the enormous improvement in safety and consequent reduction in fear of crime is the biggest benefit for many original residents.” 

Also, residents must have been happy to see children doing better. As NPR explains, “In addition to observing sizable gains in income, the researchers also found that kids who grew up in HOPE VI neighborhoods were 17 percent more likely to attend college and, for boys, 20 percent less likely to be incarcerated.”

The implications extend beyond HOPE VI. Researchers are more interested in how planners can address the intractable problems of poverty through better neighborhood design. They conclude by identifying examples of neighborhoods all across the US that would benefit from a similar approach.

This is a hopeful finding, but it takes patience. The economic benefits don’t show up until the next generation comes of age. In the meantime, reductions in crime and more walkable neighborhoods enhance quality of life.