The Spillover Effects of HOPE VI Redevelopment on Neighborhood Income and Racial Composition

Allison Dwyer Emory, Cornell University

The federal HOPE VI program targeted distressed public housing projects for demolition and redevelopment between 1993 and 2010. HOPE VI aimed to improve the physical quality of housing, deconcentrate poverty, and revitalize neighborhoods. This paper asks whether HOPE VI spurred broader neighborhood change by using difference-in-difference and propensity score methods to examine changes in the racial and income composition of neighborhoods surrounding housing projects. Our preliminary results suggest that, on average, HOPE VI redevelopment resulted in statistically significant declines in poverty rates and growth in income diversity. It also resulted in a smaller share of non-Hispanic Blacks but little change in neighborhood racial diversity. We also identify considerable heterogeneity in the impact of HOPE VI across sites and seek to explain this heterogeneity. We discuss implications for affordable housing policy and the spatial clustering of racial and economic inequality in metropolitan areas.