Abstract
The academics in housing and community development policy tend to divide themselves into two camps. One camp holds that the end goal of government interventions should be racial and economic integration as the means to achieve long-term economic equality. This approach usually favors programs that disperse poor households, especially poor minority households, into nonpoor integrated neighborhoods. The other camp holds that the end goal should be the preservation and revitalization of neighborhoods even, and perhaps especially, if these neighborhoods contain concentrations of poor and minority households. This preservation and revitalization approach usually favors programs that enhance the capacity of neighborhood residents to determine the future of their neighborhood even if this means continued concentration of the poor and minorities. Ed Goetz directly addresses these two camps in his most recent book. He calls the proponents of the former the fair housing advocates or integrationists; he calls the proponents of the latter the community developers. Goetz is firmly in the camp of the community developers.
The title of the book derives from the notion promoted by the integrationists that if a black household is to have a decent house or gain access to high-quality education, the household must move into a predominantly white neighborhood and send the children to a predominantly white school. The proponents of this mobility strategy generally contend that the community development approach is not successful in making high-poverty, minority-concentrated communities into viable and desirable places to live. Goetz calls this notion the false premise of a “one-way street to integration,” leading poor minority households out of their neighborhoods. He states, “While I agree with fair housing advocates about the need for more affordable housing in white, suburban areas, I disagree strongly with the notion of some in that movement that CDCs [community development corporations] are ineffectual in the neighborhoods in which they operate and that their efforts are harmful” (p. vii). He contends that fair housing advocates have mounted systematic and far-reaching challenges to community development efforts.
The book is a critical examination of both empirical and theoretical research generated over decades; it does not present new empirical research by the author. It is organized into seven brief chapters. Following an introductory chapter outlining the issues, chapter 1 addresses the “integration imperative.” This chapter argues that fair housing advocates assert that to be critical of integration and mobility strategies is to accept the inequities of segregation. Goetz holds that integration strategies compel minority households to accommodate majority dominance in ways that community development does not. He counters that if integration can somehow alter existing power dynamics in American society, then it can be considered a more robust solution to urban and racial inequalities. Short of that, community development is the preferred strategy.
Chapter 2 examines the extent to which either minority or majority households seek to live in integrated settings. Goetz argues that it is not clear that low-income people of color hold integration in high regard. Rather, he finds that minority households favor a different vision of racial justice, one focused on renewing black neighborhoods from within and building a base of political power and community that is not dependent on integration. He distills a great deal of mobility research, saying, “Regardless of their impact on segregated communities, one must acknowledge that integration programs that force mobility have done an exceedingly poor job of achieving integration in white middle-class neighborhoods. Indeed, the more common outcome for low-income people of color participating in mobility programs, voluntary or involuntary, has been reconcentration and no change” (p. 60).
Chapter 3 traces the history of the black power and the civil rights movements, demonstrating that the debate between integration and community development has a long heritage. Goetz links this debate to the creation of community development corporations with their evolving roles in housing and antipoverty efforts. Goetz questions whether the correct path forward is to open up exclusionary housing markets, possibly diluting the political power of the black community.
Chapter 4 describes what Goetz calls “The Three Stations of Fair Housing Spatial Strategy” that the nation has followed over the decades to the present tension between fair housing and community development. Station 1 had the objective of equal access to housing with no inherent spatial implications through the elimination of discrimination. Station 2 added a specific spatial objective, which is opening up the suburbs to minorities and the poor. Finally, in station 3, housing and community development policy purposefully dismantled communities that integrationists find unacceptable.
Chapter 5 examines the widening debate about the need to move people out of concentrated poverty. Goetz concludes that the mobility strategy has come to dominate housing policy. He calls it the “model of the moment” (p. 121) and reviews past and recent mobility initiatives from Gautreaux, to Moving to Opportunity, to Choice Neighborhoods.
The concluding chapter argues that everyone deserves to live in a high-opportunity neighborhood. The opposing sides of fair housing and community development should be allies but act like competitors because limited resources will always create competition. Goetz states, “The way forward depends on a common commitment across the two movements on the issues of choice and burden. The two movements need not be ‘converted’ to the objectives of the other. Instead, the pursuit of objectives that increase the housing choice of members of the protected classes, as they themselves express them, without placing the burden for those outcomes on the shoulders of those same classes, allows community development and fair housing to coexist and to produce complementary benefits” (p. 147).
This book is a courageous work in that Goetz confronts a difficult debate head on. He asks whether assisted housing should be removed from areas of concentrated poverty and concentrated minorities. Instead, should we build or make available assisted housing in core neighborhoods because the need remains so great? Goetz offers that “the easy and ultimately unacceptable answer, of course, is that we need to pursue both agendas—more affordable housing and greater integration” (p. 5). However, Goetz states that this response is insufficient. He argues that government has never devoted enough resources to affordable housing. Given scarcity, choices need to be made. Goetz contends that integrationist strategies accommodate majority dominance, reducing the political power of minorities, and that community development builds economic and political self-reliance, self-determination, and power for all groups.
As an unabashed believer that we need to pursue both fair housing and community development, doing both well, the book does not make a compelling case for why community development generates better outcomes, making it superior to mobility strategies. There is little doubt that community development can maintain the spatial proximity of communities of color, serving the purpose of sustaining the political power of that community. Yet it is unclear that building political power relationships is an important factor in determining life outcomes. Superior education, rather than superior political power, seems to be a more likely path to raising standards of living and wealth accumulation. If community development perpetuates the chronic poverty of generations of minorities and if integration can break that cycle of poverty by lifting children to a new and better life, it is not clear that community development is, in fact, the better approach. Political cohesion may not be worth the price of perpetuating poverty and exclusion.
Yet Goetz gives clear guidance about what he believes to be the way forward, and his guidance seems to embrace the aspirations of both camps. The approach should be that
all communities should be inclusive, ensuring access for all;
poor people and people of color who want to move voluntarily should be supported; and
poor people and people of color who want to stay should be supported.
He states that everyone deserves to live in a high-opportunity neighborhood, not just those fortunate enough to get a mobility voucher or those who happen to live in a neighborhood with a successful community development corporation.