Ghettos of the Mind

Ghettos of the Mind is a line from this article about the redeveloped Regent Park in Toronto. 

Across North America, dysfunctional public-housing projects are being razed and redeveloped in hopes of cutting crime. In Chicago, the last residents of the infamous Cabrini-Green have finally been forced out to make way for the bulldozers. Like Regent Park, the new, improved Cabrini-Green will include mixed-income private housing with better lighting, better street patterns, more amenities and better ties to the city. The idea is to transform these blighted ghettos into “normal” neighbourhoods.

Many people view it as “if you change the neighbourhood, you change what happens in the neighbourhood" which, I think, has some truth. But it's not that simple.  Take people who used to live in housing surrounded by others living in the same circumstances-concentrated poverty- and place them into a mixed-income housing, and some will have difficulty making the transition to a "new normal" as evidenced by the fact that there have been four homicides in Regent Park in two months.  But there are efforts.

The most successful “normalization” project ever launched in Regent Park has nothing to do with bricks and mortar. It’s an all-encompassing program called Pathways to Education, which mentors and coaches secondary-school kids through graduation and beyond, and guarantees them a bursary (college scholarship) if they graduate.

To their credit, the Housing Authority of City of Milwaukee also seems to have recognized that this is not a bricks & mortar effort alone.  I previously discussed some of the programs and services they have for their tenants. 

I have been an advocate for more mixed-income housing, although for a different reason. Mixed-income housing makes for more integrated housing for persons with disabilities.

Update:  Someone pointed out that I may be scaring some people by talking about crime in public housing and mixed-income housing.  I should clarify that this type of dysfunction that was in Toronto and Chicago are extreme examples.  Those are in neighborhoods in census tracts of concentrated poverty; the problem is largely related to the additional social ills that come with concentrated poverty.  Brookings Institute summarizes concentrated poverty as thus:

Poor individuals and families are not evenly distributed across communities or throughout the country. Instead, they tend to live near one another, clustering in certain neighborhoods and regions. This concentration of poverty results in higher crime rates, underperforming public schools, poor housing and health conditions, as well as limited access to private services and job opportunities

The point I was hoping to make was that it is not realistic to believe that shiny new buildings are the answer; there has to be programs and services for people as well.