Atlantic Exchange: Case Studies of Housing and Community Redevelopment in the US and the UK

Atlantic Exchange: Case Studies of Housing and Community Redevelopment in the United States and the United Kingdom Diane K. Levy (Urban Institute), Harris Beider (Institute of Community Cohesion), Susan Popkin, and David Price (Urban Institute) With Aurélie Broeckerhoff (Institute of Community Cohesion) February 2010 Report to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Birmingham City Council Prepared by: The Urban Institute 2100 M Street, NW ● Washington, DC 20037 2 Acknowledgements We would like to thank the MacArthur Foundation, Herman Brewer and Spruiell White in particular, and the Birmingham City Council, especially Councillor Alan Rudge and Dr. Mashuq Ally, for funding this project. While we met with more people than we can name, we would like to extend special thanks to Felicia Dawson and her colleagues from The Community Builders at Oakwood Shores, and Veronica Coatham from the Castle Vale Community Housing Association. Ms. Dawson and Coatham went above and beyond in arranging meetings, interviews, and sharing their own experiences with our group. Ms. Kellie O’Connell-Miller from the Chicago Housing Authority arranged tours of sites in Chicago. David Price of the Urban Institute and Aurélie Broeckerhoff of the Institute of Community Cohesion expertly organized the study trips in addition to participating in the site visits. Finally, we thank the community residents, leaders, housing management and community development staff, and other people who kindly offered their time and insights to help us understand the Oakwood Shores and Castle Vale communities, past and present. 3 I. Introduction Providers of publicly subsidized housing in both the United States and the United Kingdom have partnered with private sector entities to provide affordable housing for a number of years now. Though the policy contexts differ considerably between the two countries, as discussed in our first report, Community Revitalization in the United States and the United Kingdom, the problems that housing and community redevelopment efforts seek to address are similar, as are the approaches taken to address them. Both countries are attempting to address a range of problems, including deteriorating housing stock, lack of services and amenities, crime, and resident populations with high rates of unemployment, dropping out of school, and single parenthood. In the United States, the problems are compounded by the long history of racial segregation and discrimination—the majority of the households in communities targeted for redevelopment are African-American or Hispanic. U.S. cities have used the HOPE VI program to transform some of their most troubled communities—distressed public housing—into mixed-income developments intended both to attract higher-income households and spur economic development. The United Kingdom is facing rapid demographic changes marked by a growing immigrant population. The government is seeking to avoid creating the kinds of racial and economic isolation seen in the United States, and has developed a model similar to HOPE VI that will transform its assisted housing into mixed-income, mixed-tenure communities. The New Deal for Communities (NDC) program, the focus of the U.K. exchange in Phase I of this project, is the centerpiece of the United Kingdom’s effort to shift social housing to the private, nonprofit sector. Much like HOPE VI program, the NDC process involves rebuilding large tracts of once-publicly owned properties into more diverse communities with greater privatization of management of rental units and eventually higher levels of homeownership. Other initiatives share NDC’s goals, such as Housing Action Trusts (HAT), which were enabled by the Housing Act of 1988 to “regenerate some of the most deprived local authority estates in England.”1 HATs are managed by a board comprised of estate residents and members of the local authority. Objectives are to “repair and improve [HAT] housing; to manage their housing effectively; to encourage diversity of tenure; and to improve the social, environmental and living conditions of their areas.” To examine the respective housing and community revitalization approaches and see what lessons might be drawn from them, a team of researchers from the United States and United Kingdom organized a series of community visits. In this report, we build on the first phase of our comparative study by focusing on two cities, Birmingham in England and Chicago in the United States, and one housing development in each city. We examine the challenges and success of two community redevelopment initiatives, place both case studies in the context of larger citywide and national redevelopment policies, and consider lessons that can be drawn from these cases for similar efforts elsewhere. For the second phase of the exchange, supported by the MacArthur Found