"An important new study suggests that there's a highly effective way to overcome one of the most intractable problems in 21st-century America intergenerational poverty. We like to think of ourselves as a land of opportunity, but researchers find that today the American dream of upward mobility is actually more alive in other advanced countries. The new study highlights a powerful way to boost opportunity. It doesn't involve handing out money, and it appears to pretty much pay for itself."
"Beginning in 1993, Hope VI invested $17 billion to replace 262 high-poverty public housing projects around America. Remember the high-crime, dysfunctional Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor housing projects in Chicago that the government emptied and then demolished? That was Hope VI, which replaced them with mixed-income homes meaning fewer housing units for the poor, something that was controversial. Critics protested that the resulting gentrification, as more affluent people moved into what had been exclusively low-income neighborhoods, was harming the most vulnerable."
A large neighborhood revitalization program, Hope VI, invested $17 billion beginning in 1993 to replace 262 high-poverty public housing projects with mixed-income homes, reducing the number of units for the poor. Adults who lived in the new public housing units did not experience economic gains. Children who moved into the redeveloped mixed-income neighborhoods stayed an average of five years and experienced a 17% higher likelihood of attending college. The policy spared cash transfers yet produced substantial educational mobility for children by exposing them to peers from higher-income backgrounds, leveraging peer influence to boost opportunity.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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