During the 1990s, many poor people left the worst ghettos. Most ended up living in areas that were only somewhat better, although hardly stable middle-class neighborhoods. Some of the poor who left the worst urban ghettoes moved to suburban areas, typically to older neighborhoods adjacent to inner city areas, often referred to as the “inner suburbs.” Since the 1970s, in fact, the number and proportion of poor Americans living in suburbs has grown dramatically. In 1970, 5.2 million poor people — 20.5 percent of the nation’s 25.4 million poor — lived in suburbs. But by 2000, 11.4 million poor people — 36 percent of the nation’s 31.6 million poor — were suburbanites. And that growth has continued in the current decade. By 2003, 13.8 million poor Americans — 38.5 percent of all 35.8 million poor people — lived in suburbia, but typically in neighborhoods that were only somewhat better off than the urban areas they’d left behind. (The poverty rate also increased modestly in the Memphis suburbs, from 9.9 percent to 11.2 percent, between 2000 and 2005.) Meanwhile, crime dropped in most cities and rose in some suburban areas, thanks to new stresses.
Why was housing policy a small factor in the decline of extreme poverty concentration? Because the programs designed to dismantle public housing projects and promote “mobility” out of ghettoes involved a small proportion of the poor — across the country and in Memphis — and because, again, much larger forces drove the pattern. During the 1970s and 1980s, for example, as America shed industrial jobs and neighborhoods that had been home to high-wage union workers were hardest hit, the number of high poverty neighborhoods and the number of people living in these neighborhoods grew dramatically. The 1990s saw a partial reversal of that trend, as suburbs became more economically diverse and many urban neighborhoods got safer and gentrified. But the main point is that that deconcentration wasn’t “accomplished” by reforms in low-income housing.
An Exaggerated View of Housing Subsidies and Their Impact
Contrary to the portrait in Rosin’s article, very few of the “migratory” poor had any government subsidies to help them pay the rent, because federal housing programs provide subsidies for very few poor people. Only one-quarter of all eligible low-income households in America get any federal housing subsidy — a housing voucher or an apartment in a subsidized building. In the U.S., housing subsidy for the poor is a lottery, not an entitlement. The 2 million poor and near-poor families who get Section 8 vouchers constitute a fraction of the nation’s poor.
Most poor families are forced to find apartments in the private rental marketplace or double up with other families. In almost every region in the country, but especially in economically healthy metro areas, rents have been rising much faster than incomes, especially for the poor. Not surprisingly, the proportion of household income that the poor pay for rent has been spiraling. In 2006, 35 percent of all American households, and 55 percent of those on the bottom half of the income ladder, paid over 30 percent of their income for housing, according to the State of the Nation’s Housing report released in June by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Beyond confusing relocation by the poor with relatively small-scale housing reforms, Rosin exaggerates the potential threat that these programs pose for “good” neighborhoods.
Both the Section 8 voucher program and the HOPE VI program to raze distressed public housing projects serve to “deconcentrate” the poor out of the worst ghetto areas. But do they result in higher crime rates in the new neighborhoods to which clients of these programs move? Rosin thinks they do, but she provides absolutely no evidence to demonstrate that she’s correct. She offers a few anecdotes of violent crimes and gang activity in Memphis neighborhoods outside the inner city. She has no proof that any of those crimes were committed by individuals, including gang members, who live in apartments with Section 8 subsidies.
She cites no court records, for example, showing that the people who perpetrated their crimes paid their rent in private apartments with Section 8 vouchers. If there are, say, 10 families with Section 8 vouchers in a 100-unit building, can we attribute any violent crimes in or near that building to someone in one of those families with rent subsidies? Of course not. All Rosin offers are the fears — some would say stereotypes — of police officers who believe that the families relocated out of demolished housing projects are the culprits.
Of course, some of the criminals may well live in subsidized, low-income housing, and distressed public housing projects are particularly infamous as drug selling hot spots used by dealers. But there’s no evidence that former residents of public housing are responsible for Memphis’ spike in violent crime. Moreover, criminologists know that a sizable proportion of all violent crimes are committed by a very small number of people. Even in the poorest neighborhoods, a few people commit multiple crimes, preying on the rest of the population.
In fact, crime has been shifting to areas outside the worst ghetto neighborhoods for many years — since long before HUD began dismantling some public housing projects under HOPE VI. And tighter housing laws, including “zero tolerance” policies promoted in the 1990s by both the Clinton Administration and the then-Republican-controlled Congress, compelled many housing agencies to evict tenants linked, even by association — a boyfriend, say, or a sibling — to drug dealing and other crime. Memphis may or may not be enforcing these rules effectively — a question Rosin might have pursued but didn’t — but the point is that tenants on government housing assistance are even more at risk of eviction, if they misbehave, than poor tenants generally. They also risk losing vital assistance altogether.
About the Author
Tags
Comments
2 thoughts on “Memphis Murder Mystery? No, Just Mistaken Identity”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
HI MY NAME IS JACQUELIN SHERRELL AND I WOUJLD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR NEW ORLEANS LA THE KATRINA VICTIMS AND THERE DISPOSITION WITH THEIR HOUSING WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE UNDER THE BRIDGES AND THE LIMIT SHELTER SPACES THOSE PEOPLE SUFFER AS WELL I THINK YOU SHOULD DO AN ARTICLE ON NEWORLEANS AND PLEASE RESPOND TO MY COMMENT
THANK YOU JACQUELIN SHERRELL
On page 4 of 5 the following excerpt appeared:
In 1990, Memphis was a city of 618,652. The city’s poverty rate was 22.9 percent—139,767 people lived below poverty. By 2000, Memphis had grown to 650,100. Along with the rest of the nation, its poverty rate had declined—to 20.6 percent—or 133,920 people. By 2005, however, while the city’s population fell to 642,251, its poverty rate spiked to 23.6 percent—or 151,571 people. While the overall number of poor people increased by about 12 percent, the number of poor adolescents (12-17) increased by about 45 percent.
How many individuals does that 45% represent? And where can I find the statistics that are being used for the numbers shown above? Thanks Carl Awsumb