15 ms·

New data challenges the cultural consensus on public housing

93 points by e15ctr0n 10y ago

DanielBMarkham 10y ago
"...studied the effects of Section 8 and did not find evidence that vouchers were any better for children than traditional public housing..." Aside from, presumably, more direct experience with crime? Because housing projects do have higher crime rates, right? It seems there may be some context missing here. Aside from the clear title, I had difficult teasing out the value in this story.
- ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
  People like us that used to care just got fatigued out on these issues. We're never given the full story. The right doesn't cover these topics, and the left exaggerates and manipulates them. Leaving a large gap of information about causes and effects both long term and short term. My relatives came to America with little to nothing, they were dirt poor back home, and dirt poor when they moved here. Lived in a poor neighborhood and the first thing they did was get the hell out of there. Reason: the lack of civility of the people living there. Not all poor people are "uncivilized" but not all poor people are "just unfortunately people trying their best" either. Too many of them are where they are for a reason, defective characteristics. And it seems no one wants to be honest about that.
  - elevenfist 10y ago
    > Reason: the lack of civility of the people living there. Not all poor people are "uncivilized" but not all poor people are "just unfortunately people trying their best" either. Too many of them are where they are for a reason, defective characteristics. And it seems no one wants to be honest about that. > People like us that used to care just got fatigued out on these issues. > The right doesn't cover these topics, and the left exaggerates and manipulates them. Really? Why even pretend to care? It's not difficult at all to get involved and make a difference. And this is a very right-wing attitude, but I think you know that.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Thats because there is nothing to be honest about. The obvious question become what reason are you talking about. How do you objectively define defective characteristics which cant be referensed to culture, upbringing etc without being able to point to some sort of mental illnes?
    - ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
      You don't think: laziness, anger management problems, party culture, pump & dumping women, being chronically late, not taking care of your kids, beating women and children, being on welfare with 3 kids and having a front yard full of trash, not caring about grades or good behavior. You don't think those things are defective characteristics? If you live a nice neighborhood most of your life you might not get it. When you mix with these people, work with them like I have you start to realize why they are where they are in life.
  - ones_and_zeros 10y ago
    Any citation on poor people being poor because they have "defective characteristics"? That is a little unsettling, especially if you start to explore the demographics of poverty...
    - Helmet 10y ago
      My perspective: I moved to the States from an Eastern European country in the early 90's. We lived in a public housing project for about two years, before my parents saved enough money to move to the suburbs. What I remember: there was constant fighting, drug dealing, and public alcohol consumption; our apartment was broken into twice, my father was mugged once; there was trash and filth everywhere and people blasted music well into the night; very few people, sans my parents and other immigrants like them, had actual wage-paying jobs. There was just a general and very palpable feeling of social and moral decay. The behaviors that I witnessed, that my parents witnessed, cannot be explained economically, because the immigrant families that lived there (Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, and some Russians) simply didn't exhibit these same "defective characteristics" or behaviors, even though we were just as poor (and learning a new language) - it was almost exclusively from the native population that had lived there before we arrived. This indicates that the problem is either cultural, or something else. How do you fix the culture? That I don't know.
  - natrius 10y ago
    "Civility" is learned behavior, and an unending history of government-imposed racial and economic segregation is bound to result in a gap in learned behaviors. Maybe we should stop allowing our governments to create exclusive neighborhoods for the wealthy. The market has no power to exclude cheaper homes.
    - ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
      Uh, we're from eastern Europe where everyone in the country is the same ethnicity. We had the extreme rich and the extreme poor and we all behaved. Money and civility are two different things. In fact we had communism which followed and really kept people out of opportunities. We didn't walk around acting like rednecks or gangsters. Same as in the USA 50 years ago. When blacks and whites used different bathrooms, and racial segregation was at its peak, still both black and white communities dressed well to go to church, authority was more respected, the family stayed in tact, sex before marriage was taboo. Now despite "integration and desegregation" culture and morality has rotted out society. Long story short, I don't agree with "government is the problem, government is the solution". Low culture and standards are the problem. High culture and standards are the solution. Regardless of neighborhood or income.
      - natrius 10y ago
        America is not integrated. I agree culture and standards are the solution. Those do not spread easily in segregated societies.
        ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
        Culture & standards were higher during segregation, we are more integrated than we were in the past and the culture rot is even worse. Your narrative that race and separation has everything to do with it is incorrect.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    I grew up poor. I still am really. This is entirely true. Now that is not to say that it is entirely their fault, if your parents are two minimum wage, alcoholic, chain smokers who had kids at 16 what example do you have to emulate? I think we do education all wrong. 12 years of education should leave you in a position to feed and house yourself. If it can't do that, why bother with it? I say more trade schools, less focus on college prep. Example: I bought a house that is essentially right on the line between the wealthy and poor areas in my town. If you go to the Wallmart on the poor side the carts are just left everywhere but the Wegmans on the wealthy side the patrons bother to put them away.
  - soundwave106 10y ago
    That's because the words "uncivilized" and "defective characteristics" are words tied to cultural, social, and moral norms that vary from person to person, so it's hard to have a quality discussion along those lines. In my book there are "uncivilized" and "defective characteristic" people among all sorts of income lines (and vice versa), up to and including the very rich. I will say that I do kind of get what you mean (in that there may be unique problems with concentrated poverty that hinder mobility -- as a theoretical, for instance, if crime was a much bigger problem in impoverished areas, that definitely would be of concern). But too much of the low quality articles written on poverty have a high tendency to fall back on stereotype... we must be careful to be more data oriented. Personally, I don't think this story was one of those political type stories you often see on this type of subject that fall back on well-worn tropes. This was a study that simply tried to examine whether subsidized housing helps out future household earnings. For many groups, it did. For a few groups, it didn't. In light of the issues with social mobility in America at present, I didn't consider the article that low quality personally. The original study probably would have been a fair bit more enlightening and hopefully had a much more thorough analysis: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22721?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw http://www.nber.org/papers/w22721?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_mediu... But unfortunately it's behind a paywall. :|
    - ericd 10y ago
      I would guess they mean rule following, being considerate of others, self control, the sorts of things that can help you succeed in society. But yeah, specific meaning varies from person to person, and culture to culture.
- ng12 10y ago
  > Because housing projects do have higher crime rates, right? I'd be surprised if they did. Landlords opt-in to the Sec 8 program, and the ones that do generally do so because it's a profitable course for a "problematic" property. As a non-Sec 8 recipient I will always shy away from Sec 8 friendly housing because it tells me a lot about the landlord, the neighborhood, and the condition of the building.
  - gnopgnip 10y ago
    This depends on local laws. In many places it is illegal for landlords to deny applicants because of their source of income.
    - ng12 10y ago
      In the US? Landlords do not have to accept Sec 8 and as far as I am aware no state has a law against rejecting an applicant for lack of income/credit. On the federal level income status is not protected.
  - cowpewter 10y ago
    My parents own a couple houses that they rent out. They were looking for a tenant after the previous tenant disappeared without paying several months rent, and one lady that applied had Section 8. She was a single mother, and my mom really felt for her, because she raised me as a single mom herself, and while she'd never had to live in public housing she did get assistance from WIC (or whatever it was called in the 80s). She really thought it was going to be win-win: since the government was paying the rent, they'd always get the check, and this single mom would have a nice place to live and raise her kids. Well... it was fine, for about six months. Then the lady's old boyfriend starting hanging around the house all the time, bringing his drug dealing friends around, and one day the renter just ditched the place in the middle of the night, leaving the entire place pretty much trashed. My parents had to spend weeks repairing the damage to the house and cleaning it up (my mom said the bathtub was literally black with grime). So now they are extremely reluctant to rent to a Section 8 holder again. They lost money on the deal, considering the costs of repairs and cleaning, even with all the labor for the repairs/cleaning done by them rather than hiring a service.
rayiner 10y ago
Instead of spending huge amounts of money on inner-city school districts, we should build public housing in good school districts in the suburbs. Integration is the answer to inter-generational poverty, not the highly refined "separate but equal" of our current policies.
- bcx 10y ago
  Part of the reason the suburban schools in good districts are so good is because they have relatively low population density and relatively high property tax revenue. So they can spend more money per student. At some point there are probably diminishing returns to the amount of $$ spent per student in a school system. But you can imagine that most suburban parents would have a hard time reducing the $$ spent on their own kids for the benefit of the greater good.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    It's a self-reinforcing cycle: High housing cost -> affluent population -> more tax revenue -> better schools -> increased home demand -> higher housing cost -> more affluent population ... ... ... The other cycle is self-reinforcing too: Low housing cost -> working class population -> less tax revenue -> worse schools -> reduced home demand -> lower housing cost -> even less affluent population ... ... ... There doesn't seem to be an obvious weakest link, but I'd start with untying school funding from LOCAL taxes and from "school performance" which is code-word for "richer students". Allocate funds state-wide or even nation-wide to those schools with the highest need. EDIT: Alternatively, let me send my kid to whatever school I want, regardless of which side of some artificial school district line I live.
    - niftich 10y ago
      Sadly the first circle is not self-reinforcing (and, sadly, the second cycle is entirely accurate). Instead, in the 'good exurban schools' case, the evolution usually goes: 1. Rural, periphery area attracts affluent folks seeking bigger houses on cheaper land. High-end residential subdivisions are developed. 2. Increased tax revenue allows for good schools, nice government amenities. 3. Good schools attract additional residents. Residential population swells, commercial and industrial population remains low. 4. Residential brings fewer tax dollars per infrastructure cost than commercial or industrial. At some point, municipal costs (roads, sewer, fire, schools) begin to approach revenue. Services are cut. Schools decline, making residents eligible to contemplate moving to another area in step #1 or step #3. Those who can't afford to move to a newer area stay; they are thus on average lower-income than those who left. At this point, there is a danger of falling into the second cycle.
newtons_bodkin 10y ago
As somebody that grew up in a poor family in the 80s this really resonates with me.
davesque 10y ago
I'm sure people have suggested this, but what's the thinking about giving people housing stipends instead of making them live in a specific building which is annexed for a housing project? Seems like this could address some of the shortcomings of housing projects such as racial segregation and concentration of crime.
- RobertKerans 10y ago
  They do this here in the UK, it's called housing benefit. Still get segregation due to affordability of housing, but in part it's there to get around issues suurounding ghettoised sink estates and allow people freedom to live where they need to live.
- maxsilver 10y ago
  We effectively already offer this in the US -- it's Section 8 "Housing Choice Voucher", as the article mentions. http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_choice_voucher_program_section_8 http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_choi...
  - ch4s3 10y ago
    You will find that places accepting Section 8 vouchers are highly concentrated, poorly connected to transit, and highly segregated. Local property owners often vigorously fight zoning that allows any new, better connected, or mixed income development that accepts section 8 payments. So in effect you get privately managed projects. Its pretty tragic really.
    - ulber 10y ago
      Is there a good reason this aid is given as a voucher versus giving out money against proof of a rental contract (e.g. how it works in Finland)? Simplified bureaucracy? This would solve at least some of the discrimination problems since there wouldn't be a class of people recognizable by them holding a special form of money.
maerF0x0 10y ago
>"earn hundreds of dollars more each year " ... Uh, not worth spending millions on public housing then.. IMO the "Section 8" (housing vouchers) seems to be a market solution to housing issues and helps fight segregation (when landlords arent doing illegal things). One of the solutions to classism is to have people mix more. Live together, school together, work together, marry together.
- jseliger 10y ago
  IMO the "Section 8" (housing vouchers) seems to be a market solution In theory that's true, but in practice many U.S. municipalities have restricted the development of any new housing to the point that Section 8 vouchers are impractical due to costs and simple apartment availability (http://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/supply-side-of-affordable-housing-matters-most http://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/supply...). Without doing something about NIMBYs and local zoning processes, Section 8 vouchers will not be effective. Matthew Desmond's book Evicted is pretty good on this point (http://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/dp/0553447432?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/d...). I've written or worked on Section 8 proposals, as well HUD 811, 202, HOPE VI, and related programs (see http://seliger.com/2008/07/27/reformers-come-and-go-but-hud-abides/ http://seliger.com/2008/07/27/reformers-come-and-go-but-hud-... if you're curious); the people who run them, especially in high-cost cities like LA, SF, NYC, and Seattle are well aware of the problems that local zoning imposes on affordable housing.
- twblalock 10y ago
  > IMO the "Section 8" (housing vouchers) seems to be a market solution to housing issues Once any kind of government vouchers or subsidies are involved, you don't have a market solution anymore. Market solutions are solutions that the market provides all by itself. I agree that vouchers are a better solution than public housing or rent control, and probably introduce fewer distortions in the market than those policies, but it is incorrect to call vouchers a market solution. In particular, voucher programs generally require landlords to work with local housing authorities to accept rent payments, additional inspections, etc. As a result of this, many landlords don't want to accept tenants who use the vouchers.
dre85 10y ago
"Remarkable" things happen when kids grow up in projects, such as earning 500 bucks more ANNUALLY. Maybe the authors managed to p-hack their way to some statistical significance with this number, but I would think that the life significance of an extra 500$ a year in the U.S. is not something astounding.
- aruss 10y ago
  They also found decreased rates of incarceration, which is pretty significant.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  Well, considering that median household income for the US is $52k/yr, $500/yr is ~1% increase in household income per person, so a ~1-2% effect per household, which isn't nothing, even if not astounding. Of course, that's if it were households which earned a median income that received the benefit. Given the correlation between poverty growing up and poverty later in life, it's likely more like a 5% increase per household on the low end of the spectrum, which I would call a fairly strong effect.
- josho 10y ago
  So, you discount the research because your intuition says otherwise. I personally find that remarkable.
  - rschuetzler 10y ago
    I don't think it's discounting the research because of intuition. It's discounting the research because, while there is a statistically significant difference, the commenter above is arguing that it is not practically significant.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- nouveaux 10y ago
  The poverty level in United States is $11,880. At the top end, $500 is 4.2% and plenty of people are making less than $10,000 a year. At that rate, I think $500 is starting to look statistically significant. https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines
Kenji 10y ago
The remarkable thing that happens when the state funds rent like that is increasing rents until the original situation is reached again or the bubble bursts. We already have enough trouble with the low or even negative interest rates that launch house prices into unprecedented heights.
tonmoy 10y ago
> earn hundreds of dollars more... I don't know the exact numbers but if the mean is nearly ten thousand and the standard deviation is nearly one thousand then this is a statistically insignificant p-value
- chillydawg 10y ago
  That's not true. If you have a large enough sample, you can be confident that even a small improvement in mean, despite a large stddev is meaningful. Whether it actually matters in the real world and causes positive outcomes for people is an entirely different matter.
andrewclunn 10y ago
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg5SwyTvAHw It's not a new complaint. But I found that video more informative.
ysavir 10y ago
> Comparing the older children to their younger siblings, who will spend more time living in the project, allows the researchers to focus specifically on the effects of housing assistance as opposed to those of parenting or other factors unique to each family. That sounds like a very questionable control group...
madenine 10y ago
> "However, for black boys growing up in the very poorest projects, the benefits of housing assistance when they entered the labor force were also indistinguishable from zero." So public housing/vouchers slightly raises income and reduces the likelihood of going prison, except when it doesn't.
the_watcher 10y ago
> because there is no way to know for certain how those families would be doing without the help Not taking a side here, but this specific problem is why, no matter the research, there will almost certainly be arguments on both sides of the debate.
deleted 10y ago
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JDiculous 10y ago
In NYC, the problem is a severe shortage of low to middle income housing units, whether that be market-rate or public housing. Every new building that pops up is a luxury building - serving as an investment or pied-a-terre for rich foreigners or front for money laundering. Our mayor's plan to expand affordable housing is to have these luxury building developers set aside a percentage of these luxury units to house low income people in their luxury buildings, which obviously is an extraordinarily inefficient way to provide affordable housing and doesn't even come close to meeting the demand. Since private developers aren't building apartments catering to low income people, the government needs to step in and develop them themselves. High-rises with barebones utilitarian apartments. Get rid of this 150 square feet mandate on living rooms, living rooms are a luxury already as it is since most tenants erect makeshift walls to convert them into additional bedrooms to make the rent affordable. The units should be market-rate, but governments will prioritize applicants who are U.S. citizens, have children, don't have a criminal record, etc. If they were to sell as condos, then priority would be given to first-time homebuyers and people who actually will live in the place. A certain percentage can be allocated to low income people, but unlike current public housing, you shouldn't be able to just live there forever, especially if your income increases to a point where you're no longer low income. The main idea is that we need to increase the supply of non-luxury apartments to compensate for the failure of the private markets to do the same. This would be similar to public housing, except that it would have market-rate apartments.
owenversteeg 10y ago
Everyone here is focusing on the $500/yr, which I agree sounds like nothing although is actually substantial to many of these families. But the incarceration figures in the article are pretty interesting: an 11% smaller chance of ending up in jail sounds pretty good to me.
- tgb 10y ago
  Yeah and it was 500 per year per year of public housing. You might easily spend five or ten years there, for a very significant increase in income. (treating this as linear is reasonable since the number comes from comparing siblings and so should be an average of the effects per year over a wide range of years. Compared to a study that just investigated the first year they were there.) On the other hand, that was only for girls. Which makes me worried that they were picking out outcomes that matched their end goal.
  - mjevans 10y ago
    Even if it only helped out the girls it shows SOME correlation and a need for more family stability assistance.
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
There's a significant difference between what happens when you give an intervention to part of a population and all of it. Specifically, the overall system they're a part of will respond differently. Take education, for example. It's pretty obvious that getting a college degree will help any one individual out - everyone applies for jobs, and employers will look favorably on those with a college degree. The calculus changes when you make it way easier for everyone to get a college degree, since employers can't prefer everyone. I have a similar worry about UBI and other anti-poverty interventions. If the system is set up to squeeze the poor until they are inches away from starving or rioting, then an extra $500/yr will help any individual stuck there out by quite a lot. If you give everyone in that situation an extra $500/yr, I'm worried that what'll happen is that it gets sucked up by various landlords and rentiers. There's historical precedent for it, too - the lives of the American poor were not substantially improved by the vast amounts of excess wealth and productivity that let almost everyone off the farms.
- DougN7 10y ago
  Very well said - agree completely. It's all supply and demand. Giving everyone more of something will drive up demand. Prices will rise until equilibrium is reached again.
  - hx87 10y ago
    UBIs are presumably funded by taxes though, which take at least as much money out of circulation as it puts back in. Given the prevailing climate of weak consumption and overinvestment/savings glut that's likely to continue as long as the process of automation and outsource to low-labor-cost countries does, increasing demand isn't a bad thing at all.
    - DougN7 10y ago
      That's an interesting thought. If automation and outsourcing keep happening, that should decrease the tax base as fewer people have work. That means less money to go to UBI. That sounds like a completely separate problem.
jvm 10y ago
The claim is that Section 8 vouchers aren't better than public housing, I wonder how either would compare to the equivalent benefit granted through e.g. food stamps or cash. I was also under the impression that vouchers were cheaper to administer and provide, so for equivalent benefit might still be worthwhile.

93 points by e15ctr0n 10y ago

"...studied the effects of Section 8 and did not find evidence that vouchers were any better for children than traditional public housing..." Aside from, presumably, more direct experience with crime? Because housing projects do have higher crime rates, right? It seems there may be some context missing here. Aside from the clear title, I had difficult teasing out the value in this story.

ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
People like us that used to care just got fatigued out on these issues. We're never given the full story. The right doesn't cover these topics, and the left exaggerates and manipulates them. Leaving a large gap of information about causes and effects both long term and short term. My relatives came to America with little to nothing, they were dirt poor back home, and dirt poor when they moved here. Lived in a poor neighborhood and the first thing they did was get the hell out of there. Reason: the lack of civility of the people living there. Not all poor people are "uncivilized" but not all poor people are "just unfortunately people trying their best" either. Too many of them are where they are for a reason, defective characteristics. And it seems no one wants to be honest about that.
- elevenfist 10y ago
  > Reason: the lack of civility of the people living there. Not all poor people are "uncivilized" but not all poor people are "just unfortunately people trying their best" either. Too many of them are where they are for a reason, defective characteristics. And it seems no one wants to be honest about that. > People like us that used to care just got fatigued out on these issues. > The right doesn't cover these topics, and the left exaggerates and manipulates them. Really? Why even pretend to care? It's not difficult at all to get involved and make a difference. And this is a very right-wing attitude, but I think you know that.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Thats because there is nothing to be honest about. The obvious question become what reason are you talking about. How do you objectively define defective characteristics which cant be referensed to culture, upbringing etc without being able to point to some sort of mental illnes?
  - ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
    You don't think: laziness, anger management problems, party culture, pump & dumping women, being chronically late, not taking care of your kids, beating women and children, being on welfare with 3 kids and having a front yard full of trash, not caring about grades or good behavior. You don't think those things are defective characteristics? If you live a nice neighborhood most of your life you might not get it. When you mix with these people, work with them like I have you start to realize why they are where they are in life.
- ones_and_zeros 10y ago
  Any citation on poor people being poor because they have "defective characteristics"? That is a little unsettling, especially if you start to explore the demographics of poverty...
  - Helmet 10y ago
    My perspective: I moved to the States from an Eastern European country in the early 90's. We lived in a public housing project for about two years, before my parents saved enough money to move to the suburbs. What I remember: there was constant fighting, drug dealing, and public alcohol consumption; our apartment was broken into twice, my father was mugged once; there was trash and filth everywhere and people blasted music well into the night; very few people, sans my parents and other immigrants like them, had actual wage-paying jobs. There was just a general and very palpable feeling of social and moral decay. The behaviors that I witnessed, that my parents witnessed, cannot be explained economically, because the immigrant families that lived there (Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, and some Russians) simply didn't exhibit these same "defective characteristics" or behaviors, even though we were just as poor (and learning a new language) - it was almost exclusively from the native population that had lived there before we arrived. This indicates that the problem is either cultural, or something else. How do you fix the culture? That I don't know.
- natrius 10y ago
  "Civility" is learned behavior, and an unending history of government-imposed racial and economic segregation is bound to result in a gap in learned behaviors. Maybe we should stop allowing our governments to create exclusive neighborhoods for the wealthy. The market has no power to exclude cheaper homes.
  - ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
    Uh, we're from eastern Europe where everyone in the country is the same ethnicity. We had the extreme rich and the extreme poor and we all behaved. Money and civility are two different things. In fact we had communism which followed and really kept people out of opportunities. We didn't walk around acting like rednecks or gangsters. Same as in the USA 50 years ago. When blacks and whites used different bathrooms, and racial segregation was at its peak, still both black and white communities dressed well to go to church, authority was more respected, the family stayed in tact, sex before marriage was taboo. Now despite "integration and desegregation" culture and morality has rotted out society. Long story short, I don't agree with "government is the problem, government is the solution". Low culture and standards are the problem. High culture and standards are the solution. Regardless of neighborhood or income.
    - natrius 10y ago
      America is not integrated. I agree culture and standards are the solution. Those do not spread easily in segregated societies.
      - ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
        Culture & standards were higher during segregation, we are more integrated than we were in the past and the culture rot is even worse. Your narrative that race and separation has everything to do with it is incorrect.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  I grew up poor. I still am really. This is entirely true. Now that is not to say that it is entirely their fault, if your parents are two minimum wage, alcoholic, chain smokers who had kids at 16 what example do you have to emulate? I think we do education all wrong. 12 years of education should leave you in a position to feed and house yourself. If it can't do that, why bother with it? I say more trade schools, less focus on college prep. Example: I bought a house that is essentially right on the line between the wealthy and poor areas in my town. If you go to the Wallmart on the poor side the carts are just left everywhere but the Wegmans on the wealthy side the patrons bother to put them away.
- soundwave106 10y ago
  That's because the words "uncivilized" and "defective characteristics" are words tied to cultural, social, and moral norms that vary from person to person, so it's hard to have a quality discussion along those lines. In my book there are "uncivilized" and "defective characteristic" people among all sorts of income lines (and vice versa), up to and including the very rich. I will say that I do kind of get what you mean (in that there may be unique problems with concentrated poverty that hinder mobility -- as a theoretical, for instance, if crime was a much bigger problem in impoverished areas, that definitely would be of concern). But too much of the low quality articles written on poverty have a high tendency to fall back on stereotype... we must be careful to be more data oriented. Personally, I don't think this story was one of those political type stories you often see on this type of subject that fall back on well-worn tropes. This was a study that simply tried to examine whether subsidized housing helps out future household earnings. For many groups, it did. For a few groups, it didn't. In light of the issues with social mobility in America at present, I didn't consider the article that low quality personally. The original study probably would have been a fair bit more enlightening and hopefully had a much more thorough analysis: http://www.nber.org/papers/w22721?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ntw http://www.nber.org/papers/w22721?utm_campaign=ntw&utm_mediu... But unfortunately it's behind a paywall. :|
  - ericd 10y ago
    I would guess they mean rule following, being considerate of others, self control, the sorts of things that can help you succeed in society. But yeah, specific meaning varies from person to person, and culture to culture.
ng12 10y ago
> Because housing projects do have higher crime rates, right? I'd be surprised if they did. Landlords opt-in to the Sec 8 program, and the ones that do generally do so because it's a profitable course for a "problematic" property. As a non-Sec 8 recipient I will always shy away from Sec 8 friendly housing because it tells me a lot about the landlord, the neighborhood, and the condition of the building.
- gnopgnip 10y ago
  This depends on local laws. In many places it is illegal for landlords to deny applicants because of their source of income.
  - ng12 10y ago
    In the US? Landlords do not have to accept Sec 8 and as far as I am aware no state has a law against rejecting an applicant for lack of income/credit. On the federal level income status is not protected.
- cowpewter 10y ago
  My parents own a couple houses that they rent out. They were looking for a tenant after the previous tenant disappeared without paying several months rent, and one lady that applied had Section 8. She was a single mother, and my mom really felt for her, because she raised me as a single mom herself, and while she'd never had to live in public housing she did get assistance from WIC (or whatever it was called in the 80s). She really thought it was going to be win-win: since the government was paying the rent, they'd always get the check, and this single mom would have a nice place to live and raise her kids. Well... it was fine, for about six months. Then the lady's old boyfriend starting hanging around the house all the time, bringing his drug dealing friends around, and one day the renter just ditched the place in the middle of the night, leaving the entire place pretty much trashed. My parents had to spend weeks repairing the damage to the house and cleaning it up (my mom said the bathtub was literally black with grime). So now they are extremely reluctant to rent to a Section 8 holder again. They lost money on the deal, considering the costs of repairs and cleaning, even with all the labor for the repairs/cleaning done by them rather than hiring a service.

rayiner 10y ago

Instead of spending huge amounts of money on inner-city school districts, we should build public housing in good school districts in the suburbs. Integration is the answer to inter-generational poverty, not the highly refined "separate but equal" of our current policies.

bcx 10y ago
Part of the reason the suburban schools in good districts are so good is because they have relatively low population density and relatively high property tax revenue. So they can spend more money per student. At some point there are probably diminishing returns to the amount of $$ spent per student in a school system. But you can imagine that most suburban parents would have a hard time reducing the $$ spent on their own kids for the benefit of the greater good.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  It's a self-reinforcing cycle: High housing cost -> affluent population -> more tax revenue -> better schools -> increased home demand -> higher housing cost -> more affluent population ... ... ... The other cycle is self-reinforcing too: Low housing cost -> working class population -> less tax revenue -> worse schools -> reduced home demand -> lower housing cost -> even less affluent population ... ... ... There doesn't seem to be an obvious weakest link, but I'd start with untying school funding from LOCAL taxes and from "school performance" which is code-word for "richer students". Allocate funds state-wide or even nation-wide to those schools with the highest need. EDIT: Alternatively, let me send my kid to whatever school I want, regardless of which side of some artificial school district line I live.
  - niftich 10y ago
    Sadly the first circle is not self-reinforcing (and, sadly, the second cycle is entirely accurate). Instead, in the 'good exurban schools' case, the evolution usually goes: 1. Rural, periphery area attracts affluent folks seeking bigger houses on cheaper land. High-end residential subdivisions are developed. 2. Increased tax revenue allows for good schools, nice government amenities. 3. Good schools attract additional residents. Residential population swells, commercial and industrial population remains low. 4. Residential brings fewer tax dollars per infrastructure cost than commercial or industrial. At some point, municipal costs (roads, sewer, fire, schools) begin to approach revenue. Services are cut. Schools decline, making residents eligible to contemplate moving to another area in step #1 or step #3. Those who can't afford to move to a newer area stay; they are thus on average lower-income than those who left. At this point, there is a danger of falling into the second cycle.

newtons_bodkin 10y ago

As somebody that grew up in a poor family in the 80s this really resonates with me.

davesque 10y ago

I'm sure people have suggested this, but what's the thinking about giving people housing stipends instead of making them live in a specific building which is annexed for a housing project? Seems like this could address some of the shortcomings of housing projects such as racial segregation and concentration of crime.

RobertKerans 10y ago
They do this here in the UK, it's called housing benefit. Still get segregation due to affordability of housing, but in part it's there to get around issues suurounding ghettoised sink estates and allow people freedom to live where they need to live.
maxsilver 10y ago
We effectively already offer this in the US -- it's Section 8 "Housing Choice Voucher", as the article mentions. http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_choice_voucher_program_section_8 http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_choi...
- ch4s3 10y ago
  You will find that places accepting Section 8 vouchers are highly concentrated, poorly connected to transit, and highly segregated. Local property owners often vigorously fight zoning that allows any new, better connected, or mixed income development that accepts section 8 payments. So in effect you get privately managed projects. Its pretty tragic really.
  - ulber 10y ago
    Is there a good reason this aid is given as a voucher versus giving out money against proof of a rental contract (e.g. how it works in Finland)? Simplified bureaucracy? This would solve at least some of the discrimination problems since there wouldn't be a class of people recognizable by them holding a special form of money.

maerF0x0 10y ago

>"earn hundreds of dollars more each year " ... Uh, not worth spending millions on public housing then.. IMO the "Section 8" (housing vouchers) seems to be a market solution to housing issues and helps fight segregation (when landlords arent doing illegal things). One of the solutions to classism is to have people mix more. Live together, school together, work together, marry together.

jseliger 10y ago
IMO the "Section 8" (housing vouchers) seems to be a market solution In theory that's true, but in practice many U.S. municipalities have restricted the development of any new housing to the point that Section 8 vouchers are impractical due to costs and simple apartment availability (http://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/supply-side-of-affordable-housing-matters-most http://www.vox.com/cards/affordable-housing-explained/supply...). Without doing something about NIMBYs and local zoning processes, Section 8 vouchers will not be effective. Matthew Desmond's book Evicted is pretty good on this point (http://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/dp/0553447432?ie=UTF8&tag=thstsst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957 http://www.amazon.com/Evicted-Poverty-Profit-American-City/d...). I've written or worked on Section 8 proposals, as well HUD 811, 202, HOPE VI, and related programs (see http://seliger.com/2008/07/27/reformers-come-and-go-but-hud-abides/ http://seliger.com/2008/07/27/reformers-come-and-go-but-hud-... if you're curious); the people who run them, especially in high-cost cities like LA, SF, NYC, and Seattle are well aware of the problems that local zoning imposes on affordable housing.
twblalock 10y ago
> IMO the "Section 8" (housing vouchers) seems to be a market solution to housing issues Once any kind of government vouchers or subsidies are involved, you don't have a market solution anymore. Market solutions are solutions that the market provides all by itself. I agree that vouchers are a better solution than public housing or rent control, and probably introduce fewer distortions in the market than those policies, but it is incorrect to call vouchers a market solution. In particular, voucher programs generally require landlords to work with local housing authorities to accept rent payments, additional inspections, etc. As a result of this, many landlords don't want to accept tenants who use the vouchers.

dre85 10y ago

"Remarkable" things happen when kids grow up in projects, such as earning 500 bucks more ANNUALLY. Maybe the authors managed to p-hack their way to some statistical significance with this number, but I would think that the life significance of an extra 500$ a year in the U.S. is not something astounding.

aruss 10y ago
They also found decreased rates of incarceration, which is pretty significant.
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
Well, considering that median household income for the US is $52k/yr, $500/yr is ~1% increase in household income per person, so a ~1-2% effect per household, which isn't nothing, even if not astounding. Of course, that's if it were households which earned a median income that received the benefit. Given the correlation between poverty growing up and poverty later in life, it's likely more like a 5% increase per household on the low end of the spectrum, which I would call a fairly strong effect.
josho 10y ago
So, you discount the research because your intuition says otherwise. I personally find that remarkable.
- rschuetzler 10y ago
  I don't think it's discounting the research because of intuition. It's discounting the research because, while there is a statistically significant difference, the commenter above is arguing that it is not practically significant.
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nouveaux 10y ago
The poverty level in United States is $11,880. At the top end, $500 is 4.2% and plenty of people are making less than $10,000 a year. At that rate, I think $500 is starting to look statistically significant. https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-guidelines

Kenji 10y ago

The remarkable thing that happens when the state funds rent like that is increasing rents until the original situation is reached again or the bubble bursts. We already have enough trouble with the low or even negative interest rates that launch house prices into unprecedented heights.

tonmoy 10y ago

> earn hundreds of dollars more... I don't know the exact numbers but if the mean is nearly ten thousand and the standard deviation is nearly one thousand then this is a statistically insignificant p-value

chillydawg 10y ago
That's not true. If you have a large enough sample, you can be confident that even a small improvement in mean, despite a large stddev is meaningful. Whether it actually matters in the real world and causes positive outcomes for people is an entirely different matter.

andrewclunn 10y ago

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg5SwyTvAHw It's not a new complaint. But I found that video more informative.

ysavir 10y ago

> Comparing the older children to their younger siblings, who will spend more time living in the project, allows the researchers to focus specifically on the effects of housing assistance as opposed to those of parenting or other factors unique to each family. That sounds like a very questionable control group...

madenine 10y ago

> "However, for black boys growing up in the very poorest projects, the benefits of housing assistance when they entered the labor force were also indistinguishable from zero." So public housing/vouchers slightly raises income and reduces the likelihood of going prison, except when it doesn't.

the_watcher 10y ago

> because there is no way to know for certain how those families would be doing without the help Not taking a side here, but this specific problem is why, no matter the research, there will almost certainly be arguments on both sides of the debate.

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JDiculous 10y ago

In NYC, the problem is a severe shortage of low to middle income housing units, whether that be market-rate or public housing. Every new building that pops up is a luxury building - serving as an investment or pied-a-terre for rich foreigners or front for money laundering. Our mayor's plan to expand affordable housing is to have these luxury building developers set aside a percentage of these luxury units to house low income people in their luxury buildings, which obviously is an extraordinarily inefficient way to provide affordable housing and doesn't even come close to meeting the demand. Since private developers aren't building apartments catering to low income people, the government needs to step in and develop them themselves. High-rises with barebones utilitarian apartments. Get rid of this 150 square feet mandate on living rooms, living rooms are a luxury already as it is since most tenants erect makeshift walls to convert them into additional bedrooms to make the rent affordable. The units should be market-rate, but governments will prioritize applicants who are U.S. citizens, have children, don't have a criminal record, etc. If they were to sell as condos, then priority would be given to first-time homebuyers and people who actually will live in the place. A certain percentage can be allocated to low income people, but unlike current public housing, you shouldn't be able to just live there forever, especially if your income increases to a point where you're no longer low income. The main idea is that we need to increase the supply of non-luxury apartments to compensate for the failure of the private markets to do the same. This would be similar to public housing, except that it would have market-rate apartments.

owenversteeg 10y ago

Everyone here is focusing on the $500/yr, which I agree sounds like nothing although is actually substantial to many of these families. But the incarceration figures in the article are pretty interesting: an 11% smaller chance of ending up in jail sounds pretty good to me.

tgb 10y ago
Yeah and it was 500 per year per year of public housing. You might easily spend five or ten years there, for a very significant increase in income. (treating this as linear is reasonable since the number comes from comparing siblings and so should be an average of the effects per year over a wide range of years. Compared to a study that just investigated the first year they were there.) On the other hand, that was only for girls. Which makes me worried that they were picking out outcomes that matched their end goal.
- mjevans 10y ago
  Even if it only helped out the girls it shows SOME correlation and a need for more family stability assistance.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago

There's a significant difference between what happens when you give an intervention to part of a population and all of it. Specifically, the overall system they're a part of will respond differently. Take education, for example. It's pretty obvious that getting a college degree will help any one individual out - everyone applies for jobs, and employers will look favorably on those with a college degree. The calculus changes when you make it way easier for everyone to get a college degree, since employers can't prefer everyone. I have a similar worry about UBI and other anti-poverty interventions. If the system is set up to squeeze the poor until they are inches away from starving or rioting, then an extra $500/yr will help any individual stuck there out by quite a lot. If you give everyone in that situation an extra $500/yr, I'm worried that what'll happen is that it gets sucked up by various landlords and rentiers. There's historical precedent for it, too - the lives of the American poor were not substantially improved by the vast amounts of excess wealth and productivity that let almost everyone off the farms.

DougN7 10y ago
Very well said - agree completely. It's all supply and demand. Giving everyone more of something will drive up demand. Prices will rise until equilibrium is reached again.
- hx87 10y ago
  UBIs are presumably funded by taxes though, which take at least as much money out of circulation as it puts back in. Given the prevailing climate of weak consumption and overinvestment/savings glut that's likely to continue as long as the process of automation and outsource to low-labor-cost countries does, increasing demand isn't a bad thing at all.
  - DougN7 10y ago
    That's an interesting thought. If automation and outsourcing keep happening, that should decrease the tax base as fewer people have work. That means less money to go to UBI. That sounds like a completely separate problem.

jvm 10y ago

The claim is that Section 8 vouchers aren't better than public housing, I wonder how either would compare to the equivalent benefit granted through e.g. food stamps or cash. I was also under the impression that vouchers were cheaper to administer and provide, so for equivalent benefit might still be worthwhile.