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

Housing Policy Changes in the 1990’sThere were several changes in federal housing policy during the 1990’s thatencouraged greater deconcentration of poverty and as a result there could be changesin the spatial distribution of subsidized housing between 1990 and 2000. Housingvouchers became a major component of housing policy with an increase of 11 percentduring the 1990’s. Although the problem of distressed public housing was well knownduring the 1980’s, it wasn’t until the 1990’s that a serious effort was made to addressthe problems through the HOPE VI program with a reduction in 22 percent of thatstock. The LIHTC program became the primary production program in the 1990’sincreasing by 167 percent during the 1990’s bringing the program from 8 percent ofunits in 1993 to 20 percent of federally subsidized rental units in 2000.“In 1992, the Commission on Severely Distressed Pubic Housing reported thatapproximately 86,000, or 6 percent of the nation’s public housing units were severelydistressed – characterized by physical deterioration and uninhabitable livingconditions; high levels of poverty; inadequate and fragmented services; institutionalabandonment; and location in neighborhoods often as blighted as the sites themselves”(GAO, 2003, p. 1). As a result there were a number of poverty deconcentration effortsimplemented in the 1990’s that included Moving to Opportunity (MTO) and HOPEVI. Overall there was a housing policy shift from site-based to tenant-based housingsubsidies which were believed to provide tenants with greater opportunity to move tolower poverty and more integrated neighborhoods.34