The Spatial Concentration of Subsidized Housing - Poverty & Race ...

This finding is consistent with prior studies that find that older public housingprojects concentrated poverty more than more recent construction (Holloway et al1998). Public housing concentrates by poverty but has become less concentrated overtime. A comparison of results of this study with a similar study conducted in the earlymid1990’s (Newman and Schnare 1997) indicates that there may have been a decreasein public housing units in the highest poverty tracts. This would be consistent withHOPE VI and local demolition program goals and could indicate some success indeconcentration of poverty in the highest poverty neighborhoods. It could help toexplain why some studies find a decrease in concentrated poverty in the 1990’s(Jargowsky 2005b).The cluster analysis also finds two distinct LIHTC clusters, one with moderatepoverty and the other higher poverty. The high poverty type is co-located withvouchers. This finding is evident in the descriptive statistics but is made clearer in thecluster analysis. This indicates there are two different development patterns andpotentially two separate neighborhood impacts.The findings of this study are consistent with prior studies that find LIHTCunits are relatively less concentrated than other subsidy types (Abt Associates 2006 14 ,Freeman 2004, and McClure 2006). Although LIHTC may reach into lower poverty14 Abt Associate (2006) found 33 percent of LIHTC units in census tracts under 10percent which is almost exactly the same as this study (31.0 percent).121