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A New City-Suburbs Hookup Plans to move the poor to upscale locales are gaining ground Copyright, July 18, 1994, U.S. News & World Report Reprinted by permission. |
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By Paul Glastris Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros has long talked passionately, if generally, about the need to help public-housing residents escape neighborhoods of "concentrated poverty." This spring, he got specific. In a hearing room in downtown Chicago, the housing chief unveiled a plan to lend up to $4 billion to local housing agencies to tear down high-rises and help at least some tenants relocate in affluent suburbs. "We've got to decide whether or not we believe that the idea of integration is a valid American idea," he proclaimed. The last federal official to try to force public housing on the suburbs was George Romney, HUD secretary under Richard Nixon. For his efforts, Romney was reviled by suburbanites and dumped from the cabinet; black urban politicians were also cool to the proposal, which they saw as a way to disperse black voters. Cisneros's plan, too, elicited howls of outrage from some black Chicago politicians and white suburban mayors. Yet, it sailed through a Senate committee and is on the Senate docket this month. A new era. Cisneros has three things going for him that Romney didn't. First is the support of Chicago Housing Authority Chairman Vince Lane, who cooked up the scheme. Lane has been lobbying it all over Washington, the same way he successfully pushed another controversial idea: "security sweeps" of high-rise projects. Second is the successful reputation of a smaller program called Gautreaux, which since 1976 has used federal rent vouchers to move 5,000 low-income Chicago families to the suburbs. Studies show that Gautreaux children are twice as likely to go to college and get good jobs as are comparable citybound kids. Two years ago, Congress approved a modest expansion of the concept, set to begin this summer in five cities. Third, and perhaps most important, is a potent new political coalition between central cities and older suburbs. Over the past two decades, these "inner ring" suburbs have been losing jobs and higher-income families and attracting lower-income residents fleeing inner-city chaos. Meanwhile, more-affluent suburbs farther out have been getting the lion's share of office parks and higher-income residents, becoming what journalist Joel Garreau calls "edge cities." As a result, the political interests of inner-ring suburbs are drifting closer to those of the central cities, though inner-ring suburban mayors are usually loath to admit it. Some of that reticence disappeared in Chicago this April, when Cisneros and Lane spoke of the need for affluent suburbs northwest of the city to accept public-housing tenants. "That's where the jobs are," cheered Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. His father opposed citywide scatter-site housing when he was mayor 20 years ago, but the younger Daley understands the fiscal advantages of helping poor blacks move out of Chicago. Equally pleased were the mayors of the blue-collar suburbs south of the city who feel deluged by the poor. "We used to have an elitist attitude toward Chicago," said Country Club Hills Mayor Dwight Welch to an approving crowd. "Now we're going to have to be a mutual admiration society and solve these problems on a regional basis." That's just what State Rep. Myron Orfield has been promoting in Minnesota. For two years, the freshman Democrat has roamed the blue-collar suburbs north of Minneapolis-St. Paul, explaining to local politicians how strict zoning ordinances in wealthier southwest suburbs, like bans on multifamily dwellings, effectively keep out lower-income workers and the nonworking poor. Such people are forced to concentrate in central cities and less affluent suburbs, where they strain municipal services and sometimes make those communities undesirable to businesses and middle-income residents. Meanwhile, wealthier suburbs fuel their own growth with state and federal infrastructure funding, money poorer communities could use to lure businesses back. With this message, Orfield has built support for plans that would, in effect, redistribute lower-income families. Orfield first won passage of a bill that would empower an existing regional agency to cut off state road and sewer grants to suburbs that refuse to lower barriers to affordable housing, but it was vetoed by Gov. Arne Carlson, a Republican tied to the wealthier suburbs. Next, he won passage of a less draconian bill, but it was vetoed, too. Connections. Orfield's arguments are supported by research showing that suburbs suffer if they let their central cities deteriorate. In his book Cities Without Suburbs, former Albuquerque Mayor David Rusk argues that "elastic" cities (those that capture suburban growth within their boundaries) generate more metrowide jobs and less racial segregation. In Citistates, Neal Peirce and his colleagues argue that the main combatants in the global marketplace are not cities or nations but metropolitan areas, and that only metro areas that create flexible governance structures will win. A less aggressive wing of reformers shies away from helping the poor move to the suburbs. Instead, these "soft regionalists" focus on policies that appeal to the economic self-interest of affluent suburbanites. For decades, soft regionalists have encouraged city and suburban politicians to consolidate services like sewage treatment and solid-waste disposal. They have also persuaded suburbanites to support downtown projects -- art museums, sports stadiums and convention centers -- that benefit the region as a whole. Their latest notion is metrowide job training and reverse-commuting programs to take inner-city workers to suburban jobs. Such programs boost the wages of inner-city residents while being acceptable -- indeed desirable -- to suburban corporations, which have lots of unfilled low-wage jobs. The problem is that they do little to address the ever increasing concentrations of poverty in the inner cities and poorer suburbs. Ironically, Orfield's plan -- cutting off infrastructure dollars to exclusionary suburbs -- was just what George Romney proposed two decades ago. But back then, Romney and his ilk were seen as rich elites pushing poor blacks on working-to-middle-class whites. In the changed metro sociology of the '90s, Orfield is seen as pushing poor blacks on the rich -- to the benefit of working-to-middle-class whites and blacks. That doesn't mean Orfield's policies -- or Cisneros's -- will prevail. But if urban/suburban coalitions can be created in two such different metro areas, there's reason to think they may emerge elsewhere. Copyright, July 18, 1994, U.S. News & World Report Reprinted by permission. << Back to Press Clippings |
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