The Changing Face of Public Housing
IPR helps students to understand the challenges facing residents

Summer 2003, Volume 25, Number 1

Alexander Polikoff shares his insight with students on the Gautreaux housing suit.

It was a bitter-gray Chicago morning when about 30 Northwestern students got a first-hand glimpse of what daily life in public housing was like. The daylong tour took them through some of Chicago’s notorious public housing sites, including Cabrini-Green, Robert Lathrop Homes, and Stateway Gardens.

Accompanying the students on their tour, IPR Faculty Fellow Dan A. Lewis, professor of education and social policy, likened what they were seeing to remnants of an urban civilization that represent a tragic, but significant, period in American civilization. “It’s one thing to read about these sites in books and quite another to come down here and talk with the residents,” he said. “Putting these two together makes an incredibly strong learning experience.”

The public-housing tour capped off the second event in the Inaugural Undergraduate Series, “The Changing Face of Public Housing: Lessons from Chicago,” in February. It covered the topic from a variety of viewpoints, including those of academics, students, activists, and residents. IPR was one of the event’s cosponsors.

Dr. Susan Popkin, senior research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., gave the keynote lecture on Hope VI, the $5 billion, 1992 federal program, which is funding the demolition and replacement of severely distressed public housing. In two studies of more than 1,600 public housing residents in 13 cities, Popkin and her colleagues found evidence that the residents who move do end up in better housing in better neighborhoods, but many of these families are still struggling to adjust to the private market. Others face barriers that may prevent them from making a successful transition out of dilapidated public housing. Solutions to help these residents, such as transitional housing, are costly, but without them, the program will leave many behind in precarious conditions, she advised.

The lead lawyer in the original Gautreaux housing suit, Alexander Polikoff, spoke about his experiences and gave a historical overview in “Waiting for Gautreaux: Reflections and Conundrums about Chicago's Long-Running Public Housing Desegregation Case.” Polikoff is Senior Staff Counsel with Business and Professional People for the Public Interest.

Three IPR faculty fellows, sociologist James Rosenbaum, ethnographer Kathryn Edin, and economist Greg Duncan, have also studied the challenges that low-income public housing residents face in moving out of decaying, crime-ridden projects into low- and middle-income communities: program inefficiencies, a tight housing market, and predatory landlords to name a few. In their study of Gautreaux families, they found that the barriers they face in relocating are large, but not insurmountable.

Northwestern undergraduates Laurie Jaeckel and Dale Vieregge started the series to encourage undergraduates to engage policymakers and to understand the importance of social policy.