Editorial

Abstract

Since its inception three decades ago, Housing Policy Debate has distinguished itself from other scholarly journals by publishing explicit debates on current topics related to housing, neighborhoods and community development. This month’s issue offers an exemplar of this forum format: “Beyond Opportunity Hoarding.” David Imbroscio engages deeply with one of the core conventional wisdoms of contemporary housing policy in both the U.S. and Western Europe: We can make substantial gains in socioeconomic opportunity by opening up affluent neighborhoods to less-advantaged households and achieving a stable “social mix.” He raises a host of important challenges that advocates for this position (me included) will ignore at their peril. Five members of our Editorial Board—Lisa Bates, Casey Dawkins, Ingrid Ellen, Andrew Greenlee, and Mike Lens—offer a tantalizing variety of responses. On behalf of Housing Policy Debate, I thank all the Forum authors for their thoughtful and thought-provoking comments. From an historical perspective, the arguments and counterarguments raised in this Forum resonate with those first advanced over a half-century ago. In the context of widespread urban civil unrest in the mid-1960s triggered by longstanding race/class injustices, housing and community development scholars, policymakers, and advocates squared off along comparable lines to those drawn here (cf. Downs, 1968). On one side were those who argued for desegregation; this view was sometimes labelled “dispersing the ghetto” or “opening up the suburbs” (Downs, 1973; Grier & Grier, 1966; Kain & Persky, 1969; National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968). On the other side were those who advocated economic development of disadvantaged, disproportionately minority-occupied urban neighborhoods (Edel, 1972; Harrison, 1974; Vietorisz & Harrison, 1970), often called by opponents “gilding the ghetto.” Some explicitly framed their community development proposals within a broader, structural critique of capitalism (Harvey, 1973; Tabb, 1970), as Imbroscio does here. This Forum makes clear that this longstanding debate is far from over, and in doing so offers fresh, fascinating perspectives. Alongside the Forum, this issue gathers together nine articles that deal with themes of racial and spatial integration. Salim Furth and MaryJo Webster’s “Single-Family Zoning and Race: Evidence from the Twin Cities” presents evidence that rezoning single-family neighborhoods to allow for denser housing can promote racial integration. Denser, and especially affordable multifamily, housing faces staunch opposition in many places, however, and a common refrain is that it will depress the values of existing single-family homes. Even those identifying as political liberals feel conflicted about new housing development, finds Michael Manville in “Liberals and Housing: A Study in Ambivalence.” In “Yes or Not in My Backyard (YIMBY vs. NIMBY)?,” Jean Dub e, François des Rosiers, and Nicolas Devaux use subsidized affordable housing project and home sales data from Quebec City, Canada, to investigate the basis for these fears. They find a complex relationship whereby proximity to new social housing is generally positive, but depends on the size of the project and proximity to the city center. Asking a similar question in a very different location, Michael Craw (“Effects of Promixity to Multifamily Housing on Property Values in Little Rock, Arkanasas, 2000–2016”) finds that most forms of multifamily housing have no effect on, or positively affect, the sales prices of single-family homes in the vicinity.