“[U]Nited and Actuated by Some Common Impulse of Passion”¹

1 Title taken, with all apologies to Mr. Madison, from the famous passage in Federalist #10 which reads: “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

: Challenging the Dispersal Consensus in American Housing Policy Research

ABSTRACT:

A large and influential group of American scholars studying urban and low-income housing policy have coalesced around the central idea that the best way to ameliorate the plague of urban poverty in the United States is to disperse (or deconcentrate) the urban poor into wealthier (usually outlying suburban) neighborhoods. This article refers to this group of scholars as the Dispersal Consensus (or DC for short). It finds that the DC’s zeal to promote dispersal policies leads many of its members to engage in suspect and problematic practices, both in their research and policy prescription efforts. Such findings suggest that the DC’s near hegemonic influence over the academic discourse of American urban and low-income housing policy should be challenged. This challenge will help stimulate a more open and productive debate regarding how best to ameliorate urban poverty (and related social problems) in the United States.

Notes

1 Title taken, with all apologies to Mr. Madison, from the famous passage in Federalist #10 which reads: “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

2 As quoted in Bartik (Bartik, 1991: 209).

3 See Reed and Steinberg (2006); Wyly and Pearce (2006), as well as my argument below.

4 Two prominent examples of signatories whose work is more in line with Reed and Steinberg’s critique than with the petition itself are Jennifer Hochschild (see Hochschild, 2003) and Herbert Gans (see Gans, 1995).

5 The link between the problems of New Orleans and those of other large central cities, and the resulting need to implement dispersal programs throughout urban America, is made by Berube and Katz (2005).

6 This label is chosen with a clear parallel in mind to the Washington Consensus on foreign trade and other issues in international political economy.

7 Reed and Steinberg (2006: 2) identify Harvard’s William Julius Wilson, Bruce Katz of the Brookings Institution, and MIT’s Xavier Briggs as its key leaders, noting that Briggs and Wilson together posted the Katrina “Move to Opportunity” petition on the listserve of the Urban Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. They also cite Briggs’s (2005) edited volume, The Geography of Opportunity, to which Wilson penned the foreword and add that: “[b]y happy coincidence … [it] had just [been] published” around the same time the petition was circulated (although, it should be noted, not all of its essays reflect the views of the DC). While an exhaustive list of works reflecting many or most of the tenets of the DC would be too lengthy to provide, some prominent and/or representative examples include: Berube and Katz, 2005; Berube, 2006; Rubinowitz, and Rosenbaum, 2000; Fiss, 2003; Turner, 1998; Kasarda, 1992; Downs, 1994; Briggs, 2005 a,b,c; Briggs, 1997b; Rusk, 1999; Katz and Turner, 2001; Lemann, 1994; Hughes, 1987; Peterson and Williams, 1995; Rosenbaum, 1991; Massey and Denton, 1993; Dreier et al., 2004; Goering, Feins and Richardson, 2003; Squires and Kubrin, 2005; Polikoff, 1995 and 2006; Popkin et al., 2004; Orfield, 1998 and 2002; McClure, 2005; Kingsley and Pettit, 2005.

8 Reed and Steinberg (2006: 5) single out “the policy circle at Harvard.”

9 See, for example, Rosenbaum (1991 and 1995); Rosenbaum et al. (1991); Rosenbaum and Popkin, (1991); Rubinowitz and Rosenbaum (2000); Kling (2004); Kling, et al. (2006); Turney, et al. (2006); as well as the reviews of several MTO studies offered by Goering, Feins, and Richardson (2003) and Goering (2003).

10 Although this assertion itself, too, can be challenged (see below).

11 As quoted in Goering (2003: 386).

12 The Katrina petition, in a notable example, speaks of the “growing body of scientific evidence” in favor of deconcentration (Briggs et al., 2005).

13 For a parallel argument, compare Ostrom (2000: 33) who explores (and documents) “the danger of self-evident truths” in several recent academic debates surrounding public policymaking.

14 Metzger (2000) makes an excellent case that Downs’s work advocating dispersal and related policies has had a deep and pernicious influence on urban policy—as well as urban life itself—over the past half century.

15 Also see Briggs’s (2005a: 316–317) discussion of Downs’s endorsement of such a mixed strategy.

16 In fact, in an Orwellian ‘Freedom is Slavery’ type twist, some elements of the DC view improving poor neighborhoods as actually promoting unfreedom, as it anchors the poor to those areas rather than stimulating them to make a “move to opportunity” (for strong statements of this view, see Orfield, 1998; Kasarda, 1992; also see Rusk, 1999).

17 The work of the political theorist Don Herzog (1989) critiquing consent theory elucidates what is at issue here (see Imbroscio, 2004b). In this critique, Herzog posits “the principle of alternatives,” which states, “to say some action was voluntary requires that there were alternatives … [a principle] built into the syntax of consent and voluntary action” (Herzog, 1989: 225). And, he adds:
not any alternatives will do. They have to be not excessively costly, but reasonable. When the proverbial gunman issues his proverbial ultimatum and you hand over your wallet, your action isn’t voluntary. True, you had an alternative: you could have permitted him to shoot you. When you renounce that alternative, through, and adopt the other, you aren’t consenting or acting voluntarily. You’re being coerced. (Herzog, 1989: 226–227).

18 Even Goetz’s otherwise excellent study falls prey to this misunderstanding. He makes a strong distinction between those deconcentrated involuntarily (usually as a result of the demolition of project housing units) and voluntarily (usually through assisted mobility programs).

19 DeLuca and Rosenbaum (2003), however, did not find this behavior among Gautreaux participants. But for several reasons this result may not be generalizable to a larger population of the urban poor (see Popkin et al., 2000 and discussion below).

20 Interestingly, the book’s cover even reflects this stance, as the title “Choosing a Better Life” is set off in a color scheme with the words “a” and “Life” in very light tones, causing them to fade into the background and leaving only the words “Choosing Better” to appear at a glance (anyone doubting this visual effect simply needs to examine the book’s cover, an effect even more blatant on its spine). Choosing to move to low-poverty suburbia, The Better Life, thus becomes a case of making better life choices. It is of course most likely that the book’s authors had little or no control over its cover design, and hence cannot be blamed for this particular piece of visual propaganda. Nonetheless, someone (or some group of persons) with creative control in one of the DC’s house publishing outlets, the Urban Institute Press, did design and/or sign off on this biased color scheme, promoting—whether consciously or not—the idea that the so-called “Better Life” is the better choice.

21 This is to say such preferences need to be contextualized. See discussion above.

22 As White (1987: 121) explains, many see a “latent authoritarianism” lurking behind efforts to attribute these “real” interests (also see Polsby, 1980).

23 On the considerable social and cultural distance between those studying poor inner city neighborhoods and those living in them, see Wacquant (1997: 348). Reed and Steinberg (2006: 3) ask, pointedly, “How is it that this Gang of 200, from their ivory towers and gilded offices, presume to speak for the poor?”

24 In Gautreaux, “roughly three-quarters of all families were required to move to mostly white (usually suburban) areas” (Goering et al., 2003: 5). In the MTO demonstration, “families … were randomly assigned to one of three groups,” including a treatment group that received Section 8 vouchers “usable only in areas where 10% or less of residents lived below the poverty line” (Goering et al., 2003: 7).

25 See, for example, Polikoff (2006); Orfield (2002); Dreier et al. (2004).

26 The idea of suburban movers as “pioneers,” with its heroic symbolism in American culture, is also employed by James Rosenbaum, author of the influential Gautreaux studies so heralded by the DC. Rosenbaum titles his influential 1991 Housing Policy Debate article “Black Pioneers: Do their Moves to the Suburbs Increase Economic Opportunity for Mothers and Children?”

27 Similarly, Reed and Steinberg (2006: 5) link the Gang of 200’s Katrina petition to the “stereotype of the ‘urban underclass,’” arguing that such a stereotype is “insidious” because “it defines poor people’s lives as only objects for ‘our’ administration,” and they ask: “just who makes up the circle of ‘we’ anyway?” (For a similar formulation, see Bennett et al., 2006: 10).

28 See Dreier et al. (2004: 328), who offer these citations and quotes.

29 Citing the work and influence of the late John Kain (e.g., Kain and Persky, 1969), Wyly and Pearce (2006: 260) note that “aggressive moves by ‘dispersal’ theorists to discredit inner city development efforts as ‘gliding the ghetto’” have a genealogy dating back almost some 40 years. (Briggs’ new edited collection The Geography of Opportunity is dedicated to Kain’s memory). Such moves gained widespread attention with the release of the (some would claim infamous) report of President Carter’s McGill Commission in 1980 (President’s Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties, 1980). For a comprehensive critique, see Clark (1983).

30 While “community development (area-based upgrading)” can be a “cure strategy” in the mind of some key members of the DC such as Briggs (Briggs, 2005a: 330-1; 2005c: 251), a crucial part of such upgrading must include the creation of “mixed-income and mixed-tenure housing development, to attract diverse in-movers.” Therefore, many of the poor would not be helped where they live in this upgrading, because they will have to be relocated to make way for these higher income “in-movers” (on this point, also see the discussion below of HOPE VI).

31 For a sample, see Bennett and Reed (1999); Goetz (2003); Williams (2003); Crump (2002); Bennett et al. (2006).

32 Fiss’s (2003) normative vision is distorted in a similar way. The only way to achieve “racial justice” in America in his view is through dispersal; there can be no justice for most African Americans absent a move (usually to the white suburbs). Without the aggressive, large-scale, and nationwide dispersal program he champions, we “condemn a sector of the black community to suffer in perpetuity from the devastating effects of our racial history” (Fiss, 2003: 6). For a similar view of the needed corrective for racial injustice, see Massey and Denton (1993). Thompson (1998 and 2003) provides an excellent critique of both of these views.

33 For two recent primers on alternatives, see Williamson et al. (2002) and DeFilippis (2004).

34 The key concept of the DC is “access,” with its implied notion of movement from (exit) and movement to (enter). For example, it is the challenge of “how to create access to communities of opportunity by expanding housing choices … that define[s] the focus” of Briggs’ recent edited volume (Briggs et al., 2005b: 4).