HOPE VI–a viable strategy for improving neighborhood conditions and resident self-sufficiency? The case of Maverick Gardens in Boston

Abstract

This article considers whether the HOPE VI program has achieved two of its key goals: improving neighborhood conditions and increasing resident self-sufficiency. Findings from the Maverick Gardens HOPE VI program in Boston, Massachusetts are presented and discussed in the context of other research on HOPE VI and other relocation initiatives.

Evidence from the Boston site affirms that the combination of relocation and redevelopment can lead to dramatic improvements in neighborhood quality for many – but not all – residents. Self-sufficiency outcomes, on the other hand, were not achieved: employment did not change, job networks were not expanded to new neighbors, and some residents experienced a decline in economic stability as a result of the program. Why HOPE VI has failed to improve neighborhood conditions for all residents and why it has failed to impact resident self-sufficiency is discussed, and how program goals and strategies might be adjusted to make it more effective is considered.

Keywords:

• HOPE VI
• neighborhood conditions
• self-sufficiency
• mobility

Notes

¹The Section 8 program, also known by its new name – the Housing Choice Voucher Program, was created in 1974 to assist “very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market.” This portable voucher program enables such households to select their own units in the private market. “The housing voucher family must pay 30% of its monthly adjusted gross income for rent and utilities, and if the unit rent is greater than the payment standard the family is required to pay the additional amount” (US Department of Housing and Urban Development 2008b). The original program name is used here since that is what most residents know the program as.

²GED is also known as general educational development or general equivalency diploma. Individuals who do not earn a high school diploma can prove high school level skills by passing a GED test.

³For example, HUD does not require all housing authorities to collect the same information on program outcomes, making comparisons across sites difficult (Popkin, Katz et al. 2004).

⁴For example, a 1995 bill eliminated the one-for-one replacement requirement, authorizing housing authorities to demolish units without replacing them. HUD's Historical and Baseline Assessment of HOPE VI points out that: “ … HOPE VI offers the PHA a great degree of flexibility in determining the approach most likely to be successful in treating the targeted development. … Under HOPE VI, the approach taken by the PHA must be consistent with the overall mandate of providing modestly designed construction and cost-effectiveness in the management of housing for low-income persons. However, HUD has urged the PHAs to “incorporate boldness and creativity” in their plans as they address such difficult problems as high density, crime, poor original design, and oppressive social and economic conditions“ (Fosburg, Popkin, and Locke 1996, 1–8, 1–28).

⁵The HOPE VI Panel Study sites include Shore Park/Shore Terrace, Atlantic City, New Jersey; Ida B. Wells Homes/Wells Extension/Madden Park Homes, Chicago, Illinois; Few Gardens, Durham, North Carolina; Easter Hill, Richmond, California; and East Capitol Dwellings, Washington, DC.

⁶The HOPE VI Tracking Study sites include Quigg Newton, Denver, Colorado; Archbishop Walsh, Newark, New Jersey; John Hay Homes, Springfield, Illinois; Hayes Valley, San Francisco, California; Cotter and Lang Homes, Louisville, Kentucky; Connie Chambers, Tucson, Arizona; Christopher Columbus Homes, Paterson, New Jersey; and Edwin Corning, Albany, New York.

⁷Despite the improvements in neighborhood conditions, the relocation environments were often still more distressed than the average community in their metropolitan area (see Fraser et al. 2008).

⁸For example, while all residents lived in neighborhoods with poverty rates of 20% or more prior to HOPE VI relocation, 47% of residents who moved with vouchers lived in areas with poverty rates below 20%, compared to 12% of public housing movers. In terms of safety, there was a 64% drop in voucher holders reporting that drug trafficking as a big problem in their neighborhood (from 80% prior to relocation to 16% after relocation) (Buron, Levy, and Gallagher 2007, 4).

⁹Gautreaux was a court-ordered desegregation initiative that, between 1976 and 1998, moved approximately 7,000 low-income black households living in or on waiting lists for Chicago's public housing developments with portable vouchers to primarily white suburban communities (Rosenbaum 1995).

¹⁰MTO is an experimental initiative that was launched by HUD in 1994. Public housing residents from five urban areas (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York) volunteered to participate and were randomly placed into one of three groups: an experimental group which received extra housing counseling and vouchers restricted to low-poverty areas (less than 10%); a Section 8 group that received basic counseling and unrestricted vouchers; and a control group that received no vouchers (Orr et al. 2003).

¹¹Although some HOPE VI households move back to the redeveloped sites when they are completed, the majority do not return, remaining primarily in the private market with vouchers or in other traditional public housing developments (Popkin 2007).

¹²Some evaluation studies lack pre-program employment data and are not able to test program impacts (for example see Planning Council for Health & Human Services 2000).

¹³This study was based on a small sample (69) of households (see Popkin et al. 2000).

¹⁴Another change in relocates networks can be a reduction in “draining” ties – ties to neighbors who drain resources and energy from one's household (see Curley 2009).

¹⁵There was a positive trend for boys who moved with vouchers, but improvements in behavior were not statistically significant.

¹⁶Possible explanations for gender differences are discussed in Kling, Liebman, and Katz (2007). Despite expectations that moves to better neighborhoods would translate into substantial educational improvements for youth, MTO relocation has had little impact on educational outcomes, likely due to the fact that the schools in the relocation neighborhoods were not dramatically better, some parents kept their children in their old inner-city schools, and many households moved multiple times (Briggs et al. 2008).

¹⁷For further discussion of the lack of large employment effects among MTO residents, see Briggs et al. 2007 and Cove et al. 2008.

¹⁸For example, Maverick had 413 units and no high rise buildings, compared to Chicago's Cabrini-Green development which at one time housed 15,000 people or Robert Taylor Homes which housed 27,000 people (see http://www.thecha.org).

¹⁹According to Comey, Briggs, and Weismann (2008), vacancy rates were about 3% for the greater Boston area in the year 2000 compared to the national average of 7%.

²⁰Replacement rates vary from a low of 9% at one site in Miami to 100% at a site in San Francisco, for example (Sard and Staub 2008).

²¹Earlier HOPE VI grants were awarded to the Boston Housing Authority in 1993 to redevelop Mission Main and in 1995 to redevelop Orchard Park.

²²Maverick Landing earned LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, with new units that are 40% more energy efficient than those built to standard Boston building code (Anderson 2006).

²³The new units built on the original site include a mix of subsidized rental units for households earning up to 60% of the area median income and market rate rentals. The new units built on the adjacent lot include a mix of subsidized rental units and condominium units sold to households earning between 80 and 120% of the area median income (Boston Housing Authority 2008).

²⁴As part of their HOPE VI grant from HUD, BHA was required to provide 50 homeownership units. To fulfill this requirement BHA staff developed the Maverick Loan-to-Purchaser program with $1 million in HOPE VI funds. The goal was to provide 50 low to moderate income households with $20,000 loans to put towards a down payment of a single-family home or condominium. These down payment loans are fully forgivable after six years. If a home buyer refinances or sells the home before the six years, any profit made goes back to BHA as repayment of the loan (up to the loan amount of $20,000). By September 2006, the Maverick Loan-to-Purchaser program had reached its goal and helped 51 households purchase homes with the down payment loans of about $20,000 each. Of the 51 households who purchased homes through this program, 3 were Maverick households (priority 1), 15 were BHA Section 8 voucher holders (priority 2), 8 were residents of other BHA public rental housing (priority 3), and 25 were income-eligible Boston residents (priority 4) (see Curley and Fitzgerald 2006).

²⁵Beginning in 2000, HOPE VI grantees were required by HUD to hire an independent party to conduct an evaluation of the project.

²⁶Findings from this data source are not the main focus of this paper, but have been discussed in evaluation reports (see Curley and Fitzgerald 2006).

²⁷See Appendix A for the post-HOPE VI survey, for example.

²⁸Participants were asked to provide one or two contact people – someone who did not live with them and whom we could contact in order to get in touch with them if they moved or changed phone numbers in the future.

²⁹97 of whom also completed the interim survey.

³⁰Pre-HOPE VI resident data was collected by BHA.

³¹This qualitative component of the research was also part of a dissertation study that focused particularly on changes in social networks, economic stability, and health; and was funded in part with a HUD Doctoral Dissertation Grant (see Curley 2006, 2009).

³²During the first phase of relocation (in which 116 households relocated) 41% of residents moved on-site (to older units that were scheduled for redevelopment in a later phase of the program), 39% moved to other public housing, 18% moved with Section 8 vouchers, and 2% moved out of subsidized housing altogether.

³³The response rate per interview ranged from 93% for the first three interviews, 83% for the fourth interview, and 80% for the fifth interview.

³⁴The Census is a decennial survey of households, organized by “tracts,” which sometimes (but not always) coincide with neighborhood, administrative, or natural boundaries. The 2000 poverty threshold for a single parent family with two children under the age of 18 was $13,874. (US Census Bureau 2008). “[T]he Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty. If a family's total income is less than the family's threshold, then that family and every individual in it is considered in poverty. The official poverty thresholds do not vary geographically, but they are updated for inflation using Consumer Price Index (CPI-U). The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps)” (US Census Bureau 2008, 1).

³⁵See http://factfinder.census.gov

³⁶Throughout this paper, “Maverick Gardens” refers to the old community and “Maverick Landing” refers to the newly named redeveloped community.

³⁷Section 8 residents were the least likely of all relocation groups to return to the rebuilt Maverick Landing, with only eight of the 70 voucher holders returning.

³⁸Only seven original Maverick residents did not meet the “good standing” criteria (having no lease violations and being current with rent payments) and were ineligible to return to Maverick Landing. These included both Section 8 and public housing movers. Five of these residents received bad landlord references (landlords reported outstanding rent balances or were in the process of eviction). (Relocation staff reached out to these residents, but they were not interested in support services.) Two residents were deemed “over-income.” Because they earned 60% to 80% of the area median income (AMI), they earned too much to be eligible for subsidized units, but they did not earn enough to afford the market rate units at Maverick Landing. Program staff noted that one lesson to be learned from the Maverick HOPE VI program is that the 60–80% AMI group can easily get left out. At Maverick, only two residents seeking to return to Maverick Landing fell into this group and extra effort was made to accommodate them. One was encouraged to participate in the Maverick Loan-to-Purchaser program and was successful in purchasing a home; and the other was able to use a Section 8 voucher to rent a market rate unit at Maverick Landing after negotiations between BHA, Housing Opportunities Unlimited (HOU, the relocation agency), and Winn, the new management company.

³⁹Differences were statistically significant at the p < 0.001 level (F = 136.87).

⁴⁰According to Kingsley and Pettit's (2008) analysis of cities where MTO was implemented, 90% of metro-Boston's census tracts had poverty rates below 20%, compared to New York (63%), Los Angeles (67%), Chicago (85%), and Baltimore (86%).

⁴¹It should be noted that within the non-white population there is often much ethnic diversity.

⁴²P < 0.001, F = 11.73.

⁴³N = 128; p < 0.001; t = −5.35.

⁴⁴N = 194; p < 0.001; F = 23.84.

⁴⁵Note that these percentages are those reporting issues were “a big problem,” whereas the figures presented in Table 4 include both “some problem” or “a big problem.”

⁴⁶It is possible that with a larger sample these differences may be significant.

⁴⁷Again, with a larger sample size it is possible that decreases in other problems might be statistically significant.

⁴⁸For example, citywide shootings increased from 267 in 2004 to 377 in 2006 (Boston Police Department 2007).

⁴⁹Pseudonyms are used to protect the identity of respondents.

⁵⁰For example, Panel Study voucher holders reporting a big problem with drug sales in their neighborhood dropped 64% after moving out of their original public housing developments (from 80 to 16%) (Popkin and Cove, 3).

⁵¹The Maverick Homeownership Program staff noted that many low-income families eligible for homeownership assistance through the program (not just Maverick residents) were gravely disappointed when they realized they could not afford a house in their ideal neighborhood (see Curley and Fitzgerald 2006). Staff said they spent a significant amount of time getting prospective home buyers over this hurdle. Resident interviews and surveys indicate that Maverick residents who purchased homes during the HOPE VI program (with or without the program's assistance) came to see their first home purchase as a stepping stone for their future.

⁵²66% of Maverick Baseline survey respondents who reported income (N = 80) were earning less than $15,500, as were 66% of the entire post-HOPE VI survey respondents who reported income (N = 190). The proportion of Maverick respondents who were earning $15,500 or more (34%) was slightly greater than the respondents from the Panel Study (21%) (Popkin et al. 2002).

⁵³Low response to this survey question was likely due to residents' fear that their income would be reported to the housing authority and affect their housing subsidy. Subsequent surveys yielded better response, likely due to evaluation staff rather than CSS staff conducting interviews, the project gaining more rapport with residents, as well as the fact that respondents were provided income ranges to choose from, rather than being asked an open ended question requesting their exact household income.

⁵⁴χ² = 10.95, p < 0.05.

⁵⁵χ² = 8.90, p < 0.05.

⁵⁶χ² = 7.57, p < 0.10.

⁵⁷In the Panel Study, for example, 62% of voucher holders reported financial difficulties paying for food (compared to 47% of public housing residents) (Buron, Levy, and Gallagher 2007).

⁵⁸ http://www.liveworkthrive.org/docs/fess2006/2006%20FESS%20Boston.pdf

⁵⁹χ² = 11.87, p < 0.01.

⁶⁰N = 34, p < 0.05; Note that results should be interpreted cautiously due to low cell counts.

⁶¹The contract was for $1,147,210. For a full description of the Maverick CSS program see Fitzgerald and Curley (2003) and Curley and Fitzgerald (2006).

⁶²For example, there is a shady area between the lag time when a program is trying to get up and running and when a program is deemed unsuccessful. In retrospect, some CSS partners thought that the BHA should have held the original case management provider more accountable or terminated their contract sooner. But the BHA wanted to give the program enough time to work out its kinks before ending it altogether.

⁶³These included Maverick Works, HOU, the Maverick Tenant's Organization (MTO), and Maverick Family Support Services (MFSS). While Maverick Works and HOU were contracted through the CSS program, MTO is the tenants' organization that provides referrals and support to tenants, and MFSS is a counseling program procured by MTO.

⁶⁴Maverick Works is an umbrella organization of Mission Works, an agency that provided services to residents of Boston's other HOPE VI communities, Mission Main and Orchard Gardens.

⁶⁵Early in the Maverick HOPE VI redevelopment process, the BHA created a clause in their contract with the developers that required any cost savings from construction to be put in an endowment fund that could then be used for services after the HOPE VI CSS funds were gone.

⁶⁶Though differences across groups were not statistically significant.

⁶⁷Some homeowners and Section 8 relocatees, for example, talked about how difficult it was to get to know their neighbors. Many lived in communities where everyone had their own space (i.e. back yard) and there was little shared space where repeated encounters occurred the way they did in public housing (i.e. in shared entrances, hallways, and mail rooms). Other factors that influenced relocatees ability and interest in forming ties with their neighbors included the level of collective efficacy they observed in their communities (see Curley 2009).

⁶⁸For more on career ladders see Fitzgerald (2006).

⁶⁹Although PHAs are allowed to spend up to 15% of HOPE VI funds on CSS programming and relocation assistance, they spend on average 8.5% on CSS programming (Sard and Staub 2008).