Fifteen years later: Can residential mobility programs provide a long-term escape from neighborhood segregation, crime, and poverty

We examined whether the Gautreaux residential mobility program, which moved poor black volunteer families who were living in inner-city Chicago into more-affluent and integrated neighborhoods, produced long-run improvements in the neighborhood environments of the participants. We found that although all the participants moved in the 6 to 22 years since their initial placements, they continued to reside in neighborhoods with income levels that matched those of their placement neighborhoods. Families who were placed in higher-income, mostly white neighborhoods were currently living in the most-affluent neighborhoods. Families who were placed in lower-crime and suburban locations were most likely to reside in low-crime neighborhoods years later.

[1]  D. Varady,et al.  Vouchering out distressed subsidized developments: Does moving lead to improvements in housing and neighborhood conditions? , 2000 .

[2]  Kyle Crowder,et al.  Escaping Distressed Neighborhoods: Individual, Community, and Metropolitan Influences , 1997, American Journal of Sociology.

[3]  Frans M. Dieleman,et al.  Modelling residential mobility; a review of recent trends in research , 2001 .

[4]  I. Luckey.  : American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass , 1995 .

[5]  Harry J. Holzer,et al.  The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: What Has the Evidence Shown? , 1991 .

[6]  D. Ellwood.  The Spatial Mismatch Hypothesis: are There Teenage Jobs Missing in the Ghetto? , 1983 .

[7]  K. Crowder.  Racial Stratification in the Actuation of Mobility Expectations: Microlevel Impacts of Racially Restrictive Housing Markets , 2001 .

[8]  M. A. Thompson.  The Impact of Spatial Mismatch on Female Labor Force Participation , 1997 .

[9]  Scott J. South,et al.  RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY BETWEEN BLACK, WHITE, AND INTEGRATED NEIGHBORHOODS* , 1998 .

[10]  S. Popkin.  A Decade of HOPE VI: Research Findings and Policy Challenges , 2004 .

[11]  G. Duncan,et al.  Access to Social Capital , 1995 .

[12]  W. Wilson,et al.  The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, The Underclass, and Public Policy. , 1988 .

[13]  Scott J. South,et al.  Housing Discrimination and Residential Mobility: Impacts for Blacks and Whites , 1998 .

[14]  D. Armor.  Housing Segregation and School Desegregation , 1995 .

[15]  Robin Jacob,et al.  Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program , 2003 .

[16]  G. Duncan,et al.  Neighborhood resources, racial segregation, and economic mobility: Results from the Gautreaux program , 2006 .

[17]  David K. Shipler,et al.  A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America@@@America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible , 2001 .

[18]  Laurence E. Lynn,et al.  Inner-city poverty in the United States , 1990 .

[19]  D. Massey.  American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass , 1993 .

[20]  Ingrid Gould Ellen,et al.  Does neighborhood matter? Assessing recent evidence , 1997 .

[21]  J. Rosenbaum,et al.  If Low-Income Blacks Are Given a Chance to Live in White Neighborhoods, Will They Stay? Examining Mobility Patterns with Quasi-Experimental Data (WP-02-28) , 2002 .

[22]  William Julius Wilson,et al.  Studying Inner-City Social Dislocations: The Challenge of Public Agenda Research. , 1991 .

[23]  E. Gramlich,et al.  Moving into and out of poor urban areas , 1992 .

[24]  J. Rosenbaum,et al.  If low‐income blacks are given a chance to live in white neighborhoods, will they stay? Examining mobility patterns in a quasi‐experimental program with administrative data , 2003 .

[25]  J. E. Kaufman,et al.  Social Integration of Low-Income Black Adults in Middle-Class White Suburbs , 1991 .

[26]  J. Crane.  The Epidemic Theory of Ghettos and Neighborhood Effects on Dropping Out and Teenage Childbearing , 1991, American Journal of Sociology.

[27]  Kamhon Kan,et al.  Expected and Unexpected Residential Mobility , 1999 .

[28]  Loïc J. D. Wacquant,et al.  Poverty, Joblessness, and the Social Transformation of the Inner City , 1989 .

[29]  Lawrence F. Katz,et al.  Bullets Don't Got No Name: Consequences of Fear in the Ghetto , 2001 .

[30]  W. Wilson.  The Truly Disadvantaged , 1987 .

[31]  E. Rosenbaum.  Racial/Ethnic Differences in Home Ownership and Housing Quality, 1991 , 1996 .

[32]  R. Alba,et al.  Making a place in the metropolis: Locational attainment in cities and suburbs , 1996, Demography.

[33]  J. Rosenbaum,et al.  Labor market experiences of low-income black women in middle-class suburbs: Evidence from a survey of gautreaux program participants , 1993 .

[34]  O. Patterson.  The Ordeal Of Integration: Progress And Resentment In America's "Racial" Crisis , 1997 .

[35]  William A. V. Clark,et al.  Residential preferences and residential choices in a multiethnic context , 1992, Demography.

[36]  Douglas S. Massey,et al.  Use of Black English and Racial Discrimination in Urban Housing Markets , 2001 .

[37]  Leonard S. Rubinowitz,et al.  Crossing the Class and Color Lines: From Public Housing to White Suburbia , 2000 .

[38]  Mark D. Shroder,et al.  Successful Lease-Up in a Randomized Housing Voucher Experiment , 2001 .

[39]  John R. Logan,et al.  Minority Proximity to Whites in Suburbs: An Individual-Level Analysis of Segregation , 1993, American Journal of Sociology.