Poverty is Not a Contagious Disease

I am a proponent of more integrated approaches to housing, believing that integrating people with disabilities is beneficial to them and to society as people get to live near their families, friends, etc. as well as having better outcomes. For instance, studies have shown that people with mental illness have better recovery and stability when integrated in the community. 

I also extend this belief of integration and inclusion to people with low income, regardless of disability status. Creating "ghettos" of concentrated low-income populations is never good policy.  This results in what is called concentrated poverty with additional problems.

I was pleased to read yesterday of a study that apparently came out last fall regarding the benefits of integrating low-income population into higher income areas, rather than deliberately using policies that exclude them such as zoning requirements.

The study in Montgomery County (MD) looked at two approaches taken by the county and the resulting educational impact on the children.  Montgomery County poured resources into some of the elementary schools in high-poverty areas, resulting in smaller classrooms, specialized instruction, etc. in an attempt to improve them.  But at the same time, Montgomery County also took advantage of the inclusionary zoning policies that were passed in 1970s to offer housing options for low-income families in higher-income neighborhoods.

The result?

• By the end of elementary school, students in public housing who attend more-affluent green zone schools through the inclusionary housing program cut the achievement gap with non-poor students in the district by one-half in math, and by by one-third in reading.

• Despite the district’s extra investments in its most disadvantaged (red zone) schools, by the end of elementary school, children living in public housing who attended lower poverty (green zone) schools far outperformed their public housing peers in red zone schools. The size of the effect from attending a low-poverty (green zone) school for children living in public housing in math was 0.4 compared with attending a higher-poverty (red zone) school. This low-poverty effect is quite large relative to other educational interventions, where research has often identified an effect of approximately 0.1 on student test scores.

• The educational benefits of socioeconomic integration are significant, but they take time. Only after four years in the district did public housing children in low-poverty schools notably outperform public housing children in the district’s moderate-poverty schools.

Now think about the metropolitan area in Milwaukee.  There is a stunning economic disparity as a short drive along North Avenue will bring you from some of the worst parts of the city to some of the best neighborhoods in the metropolitan area. There are numerous census tracts with very high poverty levels and a struggling school district located in the City of Milwaukee resulting from the economic and racial segregation in the metropolitan area.

From Washington Post:

"Today, 95 percent of education reform is about trying to make high-poverty schools work," said Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank based in New York that published the report. "This research suggests there is a much more effective way to help close the achievement gap. And that is to give low-income students a chance to attend middle-class schools."

Ideally, there would be policies which allows families to more easily move into higher-income census tracts even as the high-poverty areas undergo some degree of gentrification as higher-income households move into the neighborhoods. 

We see the latter approach used by the City of Milwaukee and community development groups as part of an effort to revitalize neighborhoods, particularly with the use of tax credits to provide moderate income and mixed-income housing.

But it's the first part that is lacking.  There are zoning policies in many communities that make it difficult to create affordable housing, especially without some sort of assistance to the occupant or to the developer.  Neighbors banding together to fight proposed affordable housing developments.  Poverty is regarded as a contagious disease by many, subject to quarantine and isolation.

The region has to see poverty as a solvable problem.  But instead, there seems to be a state conspiracy to increase Milwaukee's woes and to take away tools that are available to the city.