Since the explosion of community outrage in Over-the-Rhine in April, the drive to “get something done” to solve Cincinnati’s problems is palpable. Mayor Charlie Luken mobilized Cincinnati Action Now (CAN) with the charge to have recommendations for action by the end of summer. The Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee voted by a slim margin just after the uprising to move the plan’s completion date up from November to September. Even CityBeat, lamenting this summer as the “season of waiting,” has offered its own nine-point program— Cincinnati Must— to jumpstart the languishing CAN process.
There are real systemic problems in Cincinnati, as in many cities, and we understand the desire to do something, to get results, to not appear unconcerned. Still, we’re troubled by proposals that seem to rush to identify the key causes of Cincinnati’s troubles and to fix those problems in sweeping terms. Rushes to judgment might be motivated by the best intentions but, as the old adage goes, the road to hell is often paved with the best of intentions.
Case in point: Freshman Democratic City Councilman John Cranley’s Motion to create an “Impaction Ordinance.” Introduced on June 20, Cranley’s motion identifies the concentration of subsidized housing in certain “impacted” neighborhoods in the city as the core problem and proposes to deal with it by “forbid(ding) the City of Cincinnati from spending, approving or in any way condoning more subsidized low-income development in those areas deemed impacted.”
His motion also directs the city to “identify the neighborhoods that are impacted by an over-saturation of low-income residents” to “require the new Zoning Code to facilitate owner occupied units” and to “require that CDBG (Federal Community Development Block Grant) monies that are designated for new low-income development not be spent inside of the City of Cincinnati until there is more equitable regional affordable housing.”
Why should the city do this? What problem, precisely, is being addressed here? “One of the biggest problems facing the city,” Cranley claims, “is a housing pattern that overly concentrates low-income development in the City.” This in turn creates a “domino effect of declining property values,” increases “social ills” and taxes “too strongly city services.” Then comes the punch line: “Studies have long shown that over-saturation of low-income residences are often correlated with higher crime, litter, less economic opportunity for social mobility, blight, and an overall lower quality of life.”
We acknowledge that to many, Cranley’s motion to place a moratorium on new low-income housing in the city and to promote its development outside city limits seems like “common sense.” Yet we’re convinced that his proposal will do more harm than good because it reduces the complex issues that cause poverty and neighborhood decline to one singular point: housing. Cranley’s exclusive focus on low-income housing rests on faulty assumptions about its causes and implications, and consequently his solution would treat only symptoms of deeper trends at the expense of the (mostly black) poor.
We believe this to be true even if Cranley backs off his proposal to eliminate all city-administered funding for new low-income housing development. As his motion is translated into an ordinance, rumors are that Cranley might propose that the city spend no more than 20 percent or 30 percent of its housing funds on low-income housing. Any arbitrary limitation of city funding for low-income housing is still grounded on faulty assumptions and make the poor pay to solve problems not of their making. The following analysis and critique, therefore, focuses on Cranley’s proposed moratorium as written.
Assumptions
Three significant assumptions lurk behind Cranley’s text that we would like to pull out for closer analysis: 1) that concentrations of low-income housing cause neighborhood decline; 2) that such housing deters investment and keeps such “impacted” neighborhoods poor; and 3) that there are no differences between the intentions and affects of non-profit and for-profit low-income housing developers. Our research has been principally in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and we use it as an illustrative case in examining these assumptions.
Assumption No. 1: Neighborhood decline results from concentrations of low-income housing.
This assumption is Cincinnati’s new mantra. One hears time and again in the local media about urban planning studies “that indicate whenever an area has more than 30 percent low-income housing, it begins an economic and social decline” (Cincinnati Post, June 28, 2000). It’s interesting to note that no such studies are ever cited, and a recent search by city planning staff to find any came up empty. Yet this appeal to uncited, and perhaps non-existent, studies is being used to buttress the view that subsidized low-income housing caused the decline of poor neighborhoods and OTR in particular. On this basis, denying more low-income housing appears to be common sense.
One short polemical essay — which in no way can be considered a study — that supports this assumption is “Over-the-Rhine: A Permanent Ghetto?” by Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME), a fair housing organization that has a venerable history of pushing outlying communities to accept more low-income housing. Circulated in 1991, HOME considers the over-concentration of low-income housing in OTR as the “primary contributor” to decline and argues that city efforts to support low-income housing in OTR will turn it into a “stagnant, decaying ‘reservation’ for the poor at the doorstep of downtown.”
HOME’s report presents a distorted picture. It conveniently begins its statistical presentation of population and income decline in OTR in 1970 in order to establish a correlation between the rise in subsidized housing and concentrated poverty. The distortion? Over-the-Rhine lost most of its income and population in the 1960s before much subsidized housing existed in OTR.
According to census figures, white households began to move from OTR starting in the 1950s and reached a critical mass in the 1960s when an amazing 63 percent of the white households left the neighborhood. Thus, from 1950 to 1970, the white population in OTR fell from roughly 30,000 to just over 9,000 while the proportion of households considered poor increased from 38 percent to over 50 percent.
Clearly the real story of Over-the-Rhine’s population and income decline, as has been true for many inner city neighborhoods all across the country, is white middle- and working-class flight to the suburbs. This exodus was facilitated by FHA’s liberalization of the mortgage market as well as its regulations favoring new construction (over rehab), the single-family detached house (over apartments) and a neighborhood appraisal process that amounted to redlining, which ensured a segregated landscape by race and class.
In contrast, subsidized housing, especially the Section 8 buildings owned by Hart Realty that constitute the vast majority of low-income housing in OTR, increased dramatically in the 1970s after the sharp declines in population and rise in poverty in OTR. The common sense assumption that neighborhoods decline because of concentrations of low-income housing, on which Cranley’s motion rests, has it backwards. Had HOME’s statistical analysis begun in 1950, it would have been obvious that the biggest absolute population loss occurred before 1970 and that the increase in low-income housing followed from these urban dislocations.
In OTR, population decline continued in the ’70s and ’80s, but clearly the problems of poverty, building abandonment and deterioration can’t be traced to an increase in subsidized housing. After the boom in Section 8 subsidized housing in the 1970s, most new low income housing has been built by small community based non-profit organizations that have been responding to the serious problem of deterioration and poverty in OTR. Such housing and community building, as we shall see, does not deter private investment at all.
Assumption No. 2: Low-income housing in Over-the-Rhine has destroyed the housing market and more low-income housing will deter private investment of all kinds.
First, as in Assumption No. 1, virtually no evidence is ever offered for this claim. If this were true, the movement back to older poor neighborhoods by more affluent folks that typically leads to the displacement of the poor (gentrification) wouldn’t ever occur.
In point of fact, the private market for housing is far from dead in OTR. According to Francis Wagner, then acting director of Neighborhood Services, in his memo to the city’s Finance Committee (October 10, 2000), quite a bit of private development is happening in the lower Vine Street area in particular. Further, as development on Main Street attests, low-income housing has not deterred private investment in OTR.
Cranley’s motion seems to assume that the city fosters only low-income housing in poor neighborhoods, when in fact city support of market rate housing in Over-the-Rhine over the last five to six years has been vigorous. According to city officials, the records show that between January 1995 and the first quarter of 2000 63 percent of that invested by the Department of Neighborhood Services for all housing programs in Over-the-Rhine has supported market-rate development. This is almost a 2-1 margin.
To turn to the lower Vine Street area in particular, and again to refer to Wagner’s memo, much of the development there is supported by city money and future projections show an even larger public commitment.
Far from deterring new investment, recent studies that look at community controlled non-profit housing development conclude that the value of property near such development typically increases. Far from hurting local property values, non-profit development — by taking abandoned buildings, rehabbing them and filling them with regular tenants — often improves the social and economic climate in the surrounding areas.
The research is very clear on this point. For example, a study by the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs in Minneapolis shows clearly that “nonprofit developed subsidized housing does not depress property values, it does not increase crime, it does not concentrate poverty by attracting more poor families to the central city. Thus, the dispersal of subsidized housing is not necessary for the sake of inner-city neighborhoods.”
Those who are able to move into apartments in non-profit developed buildings are significantly better off than before. Further, the construction of such housing doesn’t attract poverty from elsewhere in the city or region but tends to fill the need of those already living in the area.
One deterrent to private investment is the abandonment of buildings that leads to vacancies and physical deterioration of the public space. The irony of Cranley’s motion is that it will consign many buildings owned by the area’s non-profits to vacancy. By eliminating the funding that community based non-profits depend upon to develop housing in the area, Cranley’s proposal will ensure that more buildings stand idle and will contribute to the forces that deter private investment.
Assumption No. 3: There are no differences in intentions and affects between non-profit and for-profit low-income housing developers.
Cranley’s proposal, in calling for a complete moratorium on new low-income housing development, treats all low-income housing development the same. He fails to distinguish between community controlled, non-profit housing development and the for-profit Section 8, project-based properties (now switching to vouchers) that are spread throughout the neighborhood.
Non-profit housing developers are community based organizations whose work has different affects on the community than does for-profit development. The non-profits involve themselves in more than just housing development: They’re community-building tools trying to help people move out of poverty.
The non-profits resist becoming standard housing development corporations that merely collect monthly rents and evict people when necessary. Their mission is deeper and multi-dimensional — whether through artistic projects, gardening, the development of play spaces and after-school programs, to name a few, the intention is to address tenants’ everyday needs and to help them gain access to alternative economic options such as homeownership, land trusts or cooperatives. We doubt that for-profit Section 8 landlords are interested in such matters.
In contrast to the widespread view that much housing in OTR is controlled by non-profits such as ReSTOC, among others, the fact is that only 8 percent of the existing housing stock in OTR is actually owned by the non-profits. Non-profit housing development organizations and the institutions they rest upon would be eviscerated by Cranley’s proposed ordinance. To pull the plug on new financing for non-profit housing development in Cincinnati’s poorest neighborhoods would effectively destroy the community-based institutions that have been laboring for years, at extremely low levels of compensation, to meet the needs of Cincinnati’s poorest citizens.
Further, community-based, non-profit ownership is the only guarantee against the possible waves of gentrification and abandonment to ensure that economic mix has any purchase.
Without an active non-profit housing sector, Cranley’s motion implies that a full range of housing options will be provided by the market alone. This isn’t true. The unregulated private market has no track record of providing low-income housing within our public standards of health, safety, and welfare.
Our examination of the assumptions implicit in Cranley’s proposal leads us to conclude that he is taking aim at the wrong target in general — housing — and the wrong housing providers in particular — non-profits. Non-profit housing organizations have been the bulwark of investment and social work in Cincinnati’s poorest neighborhoods for 30 years. These are the very institutions we should support.
Lack of Social Analysis
No social analysis of any kind accompanies Cranley’s motion to help us understand in any complexity what he considers to be the problem. The association between low-income housing and neighborhood decline is not supported by evidence and mistakes outcomes for causes.
He’s certainly clear about what he identifies as the problem: low-income housing and its over-concentration in impacted neighborhoods. Return for a moment to Cranley’s punch line: “Studies have long shown that over-saturation of low-income residences are often correlated with higher crime, litter, less economic opportunity for social mobility, blight, and an overall lower quality of life.” Notice that the proposal fails to identify what we believe are the more fundamental issues: the disappearance of jobs with actual futures for low-skilled workers, declining wages, poor education, persistent patterns of racial discrimination in all walks of life, government rollbacks in social service supports (including “welfare reform”) and the list can go on.
In short, housing has become the identified issue, while the broader causes of poverty and its concentration remain repressed and therefore unaddressed.
The causes of concentrated poverty in inner cities in the United States are many — consider the systematic (first legal, then informal) exclusion of the poor and especially black residents from middle class communities in this country, the outward movement of jobs, deindustrialization, transportation dispersal. In short, the creation of the American suburb. Federal housing policy aided this process.
Cranley mistakes housing itself for the broader social problems of suburbanization and urban disinvestment and thereby wrongly targets the funding for low income housing as the solution.
For us the primary issue isn’t concentrated low-income housing. It’s not even concentrated poverty. It is poverty itself. And it is a poverty that’s drastically different and horrifically more punishing today as compared to that which families experienced in the 1950s and 60s.
Back then families might have been poor, but they were working. Back then families could live on the minimum wage, manufacturing jobs were available, housing was more affordable and wage earnings for the bottom two-fifths of the population grew the most over that time. Such cannot be said today.
Now the reality is what many sociologists term “jobless poverty,” a phrase emphasizing the fact that labor force participation in the poorest neighborhoods isn’t what it used to be. To be sure, many of the poor work (recent statistics from Cincinnati’s Coalition for the Homeless show that 60 percent of homeless men in Cincinnati hold at least a part-time job). But the work is intermittent, and many are caught in dead-end jobs with low pay, no healthcare coverage and no future.
If any of this were on Cranley’s radar, why would he single out low-income housing as the culprit in inner city decline? Where are the motions and ordinances to address the new forms of poverty? Where are the motions and ordinances to address unemployment and underemployment, job training, homelessness, education for lifelong learning, artistic and cultural production, livable wages, relief from chemical addiction and access to affordable healthcare?
Class and Race Effects
As if this weren’t enough, matters get worse when we adjust our lens to focus on the reality of race. Today’s poverty disproportionately afflicts the urban black population specifically and people of color more generally. Does Cranley understand the class and race implications of his motion?
Cranley’s motion, by singling out low-income housing, discriminates against a particular user: poor people in need of housing. Moratoria are allowable, of course, on specific kinds of land uses that pertain to specific zoning categories, such as multi-family housing or even single family housing. But this motion doesn’t try to control a land use category, but tries to control development by targeting a specific income class and therefore discriminates against the poor.
This motion also discriminates against people of color. This might not be the intention, but the impact is clear. Insofar as the majority of lower income folks in OTR are of color, this motion disproportionately affects poor black Cincinnatians. It becomes racist by default.
Perhaps most damning about Cranley’s motion is the concept of dispersion. His motion accomplishes this by restricting all new low-income housing in the city and by urging outlying communities to create more such housing. Clearly the logic that drives this motion is that the city will improve if poor black residents can be moved out of the city by manipulating the housing market.
This message reinforces three other fallacious, mainstream assumptions about Over-the-Rhine and its residents: (1) that there is no true community in OTR (i.e., all that exists is the urban pioneering effort of some dedicated white business owners on Main Street and at Findlay Market who are struggling against all odds in a wilderness of drugs, crime, dives and prostitutes); (2) that all residents desire to “escape” OTR; and (3) that black folks will become better people if they move to white, middle-class environments. Here the standard of evaluation for measuring the good life is white society, which is another form of racism.
Why do blacks have to move? Is this their fate in life — to be moved around at the behest of white society for purposes that might not be in their best interest?
Notice that the charge is not for white folks to stop living in the suburbs and begin moving to Over-the-Rhine. The hope might be that affluent whites will be attracted to Over-the-Rhine, but the charge is phrased the other way around — in order for Over-the-Rhine to be a better place, blacks must move out.
To us, Cranley’s motion constitutes the latest episode in white society’s long and sad historical saga to destroy black civil space and to mold it to its own purposes. Think of slavery, the original dispersion; Jim Crow legislation that “legally” enforced segregation; “urban renewal” that came to be called “Negro Removal” because it razed many black neighborhoods to make way for freeways, sports arenas, and corporate redevelopment, all the while displacing blacks to other (often slum) neighborhoods and into high-rise public housing projects; and now more recently gentrification, which exhibits the full, displacing power of urban renewal, only now exercised mostly through the private sector.
We suspect that these aren’t Cranley’s intentions, but we believe these are likely to be the results of his proposal.
Ways Forward
To solve a problem, it must be properly identified. As we’ve shown, the assumptions as well as the lack of a social analysis that underlie Cranley’s motion mistakes symptoms for causes, with debilitating racial effects. Such a narrow and drastic approach to solving complex social problems amounts to a meat-axe approach and is likely to produce new and even worse problems.
In order to develop a long-term strategy to promote strong local neighborhoods, residents of poor neighborhoods need real housing options. Further, we believe that the long-term causes of segregation and the patterns of poverty are the result of region-wide patterns of housing, employment and social policy.
Therefore, solutions must entail providing residents of poor neighborhoods with opportunity on a variety of fronts, including housing, employment, education, as well as returning both public and private investment to poor communities. This is a tall order, and we won’t propose a grand integrated strategy here. But we do want to close with a few general points that we believe are good guidelines for solutions based on equity and dignity for people in poor neighborhoods.
First, solutions must not make an end-run around ongoing community based planning efforts. With regards to Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati City Council needs to respect the Comprehensive Planning process and link its motions and timelines to that being developed in that process.
Cranley’s motion clashes with provisions of the Over-the-Rhine Comprehensive Planning process that’s been going on for months. What is the point of an inclusive planning process if council passes legislation that contradicts its conclusions? Worse, as some members of the OTR planning process have been told by Cranley, some council members regard the Comprehensive Planning process as ineffective and a “waste of time.”
Obviously, these sentiments work contrary to the building of trust and dialogue within Over-the-Rhine and between OTR and the city administration and will not inspire confidence in other poor communities. Residents and leaders who have been active in Over-the-Rhine for decades — think of the 30-plus year history of the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement — will rightly see these sentiments as part of the city’s continuing pattern of neglect and ineffective leadership towards Over-the-Rhine.
Second, Over-the-Rhine and other so-called impacted neighborhoods need motions and ordinances that address the systemic circumstances of jobless poverty. The city should consider ordinances that address the need for livable wages, job production and training, art and cultural development, continuing education, community gardens and alternative food production systems as forms of economic development, and so on. Cranley’s motion touches on none of this.
Isolating one issue — low-income housing — then distorting it and further failing to understand the racial ramifications of its possible implementation isn’t going to move us forward intelligently. Non-profit, community-controlled low-income housing development did not cause the decline of Over-the-Rhine, does not lower property values or deter private investment nor is it in itself harmful for the residents of OTR. The city should avoid the false tradeoff that pits such development against private development.
Third, regional solutions should be sought. As planners such as Michael Gallis, Myron Orfield and other regional voices such as the Sierra Club have been emphasizing in their analyses of Cincinnati, regional parts are linked and long-term solutions cannot be applied to pieces in isolation.
We’re glad that Cranley’s proposal seeks to create more low-income housing in outlying districts, though we disagree with his top-down declarations on the subject. Outlying areas have reaped the benefits of subsidized roads, sewers and schools and have isolated themselves from social problems.
While some claim that as their “choice,” we believe that all communities are ethically obliged to participate in funding solutions for dire urban problems. Creating more low-income housing throughout the metropolis is one means to that end, but there are others. For example, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have created a widely lauded tax-sharing system in which outlying areas pay taxes to the city center to insure adequate public services for the poor in a way that strengthens the relationship between the two.
Fourth, the city and region should take the lead modeled by Over-the-Rhine residents and leaders to distinguish between gentrification and development. Gentrification entails displacement; development is inclusive.
The mainstream buzz now is “economic mix.” We assert with neighborhood leaders and residents that economic mix has to be carefully planned for and monitored. It doesn’t come about naturally, certainly not through the market that tends to produce single income enclaves.
While mainstream rhetoric about investment in Over-the-Rhine seems to favor the inclusive development model, it is especially incumbent on the powers that be — corporate, commercial and city — to proffer concrete financial mechanisms and strategies to ensure, without doubt, low and moderate income tenure into the future. To date, no such mechanisms or strategies have been offered for consideration. Until this happens, there can be no trust, because good intentions never get beyond the level of mere rhetoric.
Fifth, in this effort to coordinate market forces with the ongoing efforts to provide housing and to establish clear mechanisms that will curb displacement in the face of possible, runaway gentrification, the strategy must build upon the rootedness and experience of the community based, non-profits to ensure that balance. Even though the city’s own Consolidated Plan still spells out a citywide need for 30,000 affordable housing units and the non-profits are doing their best to address that need (which the private sector needs to address as well), they’re not merely development corporations.
Because of their close ties to the tenant base, the non-profits address the many circumstances that affect residents’ daily lives. Often these efforts run only on goodwill, because there’s no budget. Hence, local non-profits must be supported, not gutted.
These institutions have been the principal sources of new low-income housing and other vital services for the very poor since the mid-1970s. They are crucial resources of social capital, knowledge, trust and human relationships that must be built upon as more comprehensive solutions to urban poverty are worked out. The community-building non-profits need much more operating support.
Sixth, the city must not worship markets above all. The poor simply cannot afford decent housing in our society, and there will be a need for private as well as public investment to fund adequate long term solutions.
The city must not be afraid to spend money to foster solutions, and it must be creative in its approach to housing issues in Over-the-Rhine and other poor neighborhoods. The declaration of bankruptcy by Thomas Denhart and his near-1,000 units in OTR should be seen as an opportunity for the city to experiment. Cleveland, for example, regularly buys property in poor neighborhoods in order to regulate development against the swings of the market.
The city could buy Denhart’s properties and sell them to tenants, creating wealth for tenants, community stability and increased homeownership — things the city claims to want. Such thinking seems anathema to those city council members who seem bent on letting the market sort out the mess.
But as we’ve argued, the market will not provide housing (nor many other services) for the poor without transfers or subsidies. The market can reach only to a certain level — and below that level is where American society subjugates too many of its citizens of color. Hence, relying on market forces to solve the problems we have discussed here will likely reinforce racist patterns.
Lastly, if the city is still intent in pursuing Cranley’s motion, it should submit the motion to the fullest extent of public hearings in order to foster a truly democratic process. As has already been called for by several neighborhood groups, public hearings should take place at least in the neighborhoods deemed impacted as well as in the communities under consideration for relocation. Such a democratic process is the only way to counter the proposal’s paternalism.
By simultaneously telling outlying communities they must host more low-income housing as well as telling low-income residents of “impacted” neighborhoods they must move to improve their lives, Cranley totally ignores the important aspects of community that knit people together, even in the poorest communities. We don’t wish to romanticize poverty, but we likewise believe it isn’t Cranley’s place to be telling the poor what is good for them without any genuine dialogue nor a basis of evidence and research for his assertions.
We believe that Cranley can best serve Cincinnati by withdrawing his motion. By not rushing to judgment, we have faith that citizens and leaders can overcome the rancorous end-run that Cranley has so hurriedly proposed and craft anti-poverty and housing affordability strategies that are principled, inclusive and build on community strengths.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS: This essay is a working paper of the Miami University Center for Community Advocacy in Over-the Rhine. Tom Dutton is a Professor of Architecture at Miami University and Director of the Center for Community Advocacy in Over-the Rhine. Jonathan Diskin is an Associate Professor of Economics at Earlham College and an affiliated scholar of the Center.
This article appears in Oct 10-16, 2001.
