Early Resident Experiences at a New Mixed-Income Development in Chicago

ABSTRACT:

Mixed-income development is an increasingly popular poverty deconcentration strategy in the United States but there have been few in-depth studies about the experiences of residents once they move in to the new housing developments. This article explores the early experiences of residents of all income levels who have moved into a new mixed-income development on the south side of Chicago. In-depth interviews have been conducted with 46 residents of the development, including 23 former public housing residents. Interviews were also conducted with a comparison group of 69 public housing residents who did not move to the development. I find that public housing movers appear to be a substantially different group than non-movers. I find that overall satisfaction with the new development is quite high among residents of all income levels. Early social relations are limited, particularly across income levels, and there are key barriers to interaction, such as physical design, stigma and assumptions based on class and housing status, and segregated associational structures.

Notes

1 “Mixed-income development” ranges from private-sector, market-rate developments that include a small percentage of affordable housing to developments built exclusively for moderate- and low-income families. I use Brophy and Smith’s definition: any development or community initiative where the mixing of income groups is a “fundamental part of (the) financial and operating plans” (1997, p. 5).

2 A legal desegregation consent decree for the North Kenwood–Oakland neighborhood requires that 15 of the 30 public housing residents at Jazz have incomes between 50% and 60% of area median income. The appropriate language with which to describe the residents of the new mixed-income developments is evolving and differs across developments. At Jazz, the term “former public housing residents” is used by the service provider contracted to work with residents relocated from CHA developments in order to signify that the residents are no longer living in units managed by the public housing authority and that they have made a transition away from the negative connotations of being a “public housing resident.”

3 Pattillo’s (2007) ethnography is focused on North Kenwood–Oakland, the neighborhood in which Jazz on the Boulevard is located.

4 Due to the timing of move-ins and delays in getting contact information for homeowners, while most of the former public housing residents had been living in the development for less than three months, the homeowners were interviewed after having been there for four to eight months and a few had been in the development for over a year.

5 While there are nine rental units at the development that have a subsidy financed with low-income housing tax credits, the 30 units for former public housing residents are also technically rental units with a subsidy from the federal government, the residents pay a third of their income in rent. However, to distinguish these two subgroups of residents in this article, I refer to the former as subsidized renters and the latter as former public housing residents.

6 All residents of Chicago Housing Authority units in October 1, 1999, were given a choice of a Housing Choice Voucher with which they could move permanently into the private rental market or retain the option to return to a unit in one of the new mixed-income developments once they were completed. Almost 90% elected to retain their “right to return” (Metropolitan Planning Council, 2003). Those families were assigned a lottery number that designated the order in which they would be offered a newly constructed unit in a mixed-income development that met their household size requirements.

7 There is a provision that allows a household to be designated “working to meet” the selection criteria by the property management team responsible for selecting residents for the new development. The household then has one year to meet the criteria.

8 When discussing the fieldwork, I use the term “we” to acknowledge the team of researchers who conducted interviews.