Racial Segregation

Policies and strategies at all levels of government are increasingly associating educational outcomes with community planning and housing. Challenges remain for local officials and practitioners trying to align these policy areas, including persistent spatial inequity and rigid institutional silos. This report develops seven steps to link education and planning policy at the local level. The authors draw from a national scan of model activities, interviews with key experts and agency staff members, and the authors' experience working with local governing bodies. The report identifies practical solutions that encompass assessing the current educational environment, engaging the community, strategic planning and implementation of investment, and institutionalizing successful innovations.

There continues to be considerable interest in the potential of mixed-income housing and neighborhoods to alleviate poverty, desegregate neighborhoods in terms of household income, and revitalize neighborhoods. This annotated literature review, prepared with support from the Casey Foundation, surveys the research on mixed-income housing that focuses on the impact on low-income children and adults. The review examines definitions of mixed-income, hypothesized benefits for low-income families, evidence of benefits, and viability of mixed-income areas over time. It concludes by identifying research gaps that foundations might consider addressing through the support for future work.

This paper provides findings from a rapid scan of mobility programs, including interviews with program staff, from across the country. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research, including suggestions on how to design a demonstration program that tests the impact of mobility assistance program.

The Housing Choice Voucher Program serves nearly 2 million low-income households nationwide, the majority in urban areas. This literature review examines the empirical evidence on neighborhood location outcomes for voucher recipients, including research regarding housing and neighborhood preferences. Voucher holders live in most urban neighborhoods, and do not typically experience extremely high poverty rates. However, disparities by race persist, and the program is less effective than the LIHTC program in allowing poor households to reach low-poverty suburbs. Neighborhood quality is lower for nonwhite households compared to whites, but evidence suggests black households may benefit more from the voucher than whites. 

This testimony to the US Commission on Civil Rights discusses the Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice report prepared by the Urban Institute for the District of Columbia in 2005. The testimony highlights the key impediments to fair housing choice identified in the report and describes the recommendations made to address those impediments.

This commentary describes the need for a research demonstration that examines the impact and cost of housing mobility services.

The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative proposed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is intended to transform neighborhoods of extreme poverty and severely distressed housing into revitalized mixed-income communities. This paper considers how to effectively evaluate outcomes and measure success in comprehensive community transformation efforts like Choice Neighborhoods. It is divided into two parts: (1) a general framework for performance management in Choice Neighborhoods, including a logic model, and (2) a detailed, evidence-based approach to Choice Neighborhoods performance measurement, including proposed management reports and performance indicators.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has decided to include two key goals in all of its programs: encouraging sustainable communities and enhancing access to opportunity for lower-income people and people of color. This paper examines the relationship between these two goals through a literature review and an original empirical analysis of how these goals interact at the neighborhood and metropolitan area levels. We also offer policy recommendations for HUD.