Program Profile: HUD's HOPE VI Initiative (Milwaukee, WI)

This program is a federal initiative under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which began in 1992, to eradicate severely distressed public housing and to reconstruct sites with more livable housing. The program is rated Promising. The target sites experienced a statistically significant decrease in crime during the stability period (after redevelopment had taken place and most residents had moved into new units), compared with the comparison sites.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

Program Goals

HOPE VI is a federal initiative under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that began in 1992 to eradicate severely distressed public housing and reconstruct sites with more livable housing. The program also aims to disperse the poverty that is typically concentrated in such neglected housing sites by providing current residents of the redeveloping sites the opportunity to move into other housing on the private market through a voucher system. In addition to revitalizing housing projects, HOPE VI seeks to provide community and social services to the new residents.

Program Eligibility

Any Public Housing Authority that has severely distressed public housing units in its inventory is eligible to apply to the HOPE VI program. However, Indian Housing Authorities and Public Housing Authorities that only administer Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8) are not eligible to apply. Individuals are also not eligible.

Program Components

The Public Housing Authorities who receive the funding all face different challenges in the revitalization of their unique sites. The funding monies generally address redesigning and constructing the physical features of the new housing structures; demolition of severely distressed housing; encouraging resident self-sufficiency through comprehensive service provision, especially for those relocated due to the revitalization efforts; and using HOPE VI funds to leverage support from other sources, including nonprofits, government agencies, and local organizations (HUD 2013).

While there is a great deal of discretion used by the grantees, there has been a trend to design the new buildings according to New Urbanism principles, which outlines “compact, pedestrian-friendly, and mixed-use” development, mixed income residential areas, and designs that encourage social interactions (as referenced in Cahill, Lowry, and Downey 2012).

Target Sites

Once home to vibrant middle-class neighborhoods, Milwaukee’s (WI) North Side suffered from the concurrent decline in the manufacturing sector and the rise of the crack cocaine epidemic in the 1980s. Violence and declining housing stock made the area suitable for redevelopment. The Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM) targeted the area for improvement and revitalization efforts.

The HACM received HOPE VI funds to rebuild economically depleted sites in Milwaukee’s North Side, including Highland Park, and scattered homes clustered around various public housing developments in the city’s Midtown neighborhood. Highland Park had a “superblock” public housing development that included two high-rise towers and 56 family units in barracks-style multifamily buildings. The “scattered sites” consisted of both single and multifamily homes that immersed into privately owned neighborhoods.

Sensitive to the difficulties of relocation for the residents, the HACM prioritized making the transition for residents as easy as possible. As general rules, the HACM strove to keep the number of moves to two (move in and move out), and when moving out the residents, to offer temporary housing in the same neighborhood.

Program Theory

HUD’s HOPE VI initiative can be traced to two main schools of thought: crime and space approaches, which include ideas from Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) and defensible space theory, and social disorganization theory. Both of these schools of thought emphasize the importance of informal social controls.

Newman (1996) provided the foundation for the defensible space theory, suggesting that the physical design of public housing was essential to preventing crime. Popkin and colleagues (2004) later expanded on that notion by pointing out a few common features in public housing that makes these structures more prone to criminal activity. They noted that crime is more likely in buildings where many individuals share only one entry point and dwelling units are the only private spaces, creating a highly anonymous environment; where residents are far from the street due to the high rise structure, limiting their ability to informally control the premises; and where there are few streets that connect to the public housing development, creating difficulties for law enforcement to patrol the area.

Without access to resources necessary to make changes, residents often become disengaged from the community, weakening the ties of informal controls and causing social disorganization. Furthermore, the pervasive poverty in public housing developments alienates residents from mainstream society, which further limits their ability to control deviance and may even encourage it (Morenoff, Sampson, and Raudenbush, 2001).

Study 1

Cahill, Lowry, and Downey (2012) used three different methodologies (point pattern analysis, weighted displacement quotient, and time series analysis) to evaluate the displacement of crime and the diffusion of benefits of HUD’s Hope VI initiative in Milwaukee’s (WI) North Side. The research team worked closely with the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM) to select three sites in Milwaukee’s North Side based on the timing of the relocation of residents (e.g., some sites were empty for years prior to redevelopment), the progress of each site at the start of the current research project, the number of residents residing in the development at the point of analysis, and the elapsed time since the start of the redevelopment process. The target sites included Highland Park and scattered public housing sites in the city’s Midtown neighborhood. Based on interviews with HACM staff and comparable characteristics with the HOPE VI target sites, the Westlawn area of the city was chosen as the comparison site.

While the HACM was unable to provide the project staff with information on where residents of the target sites moved, they were able to provide the documents of the HOPE VI applications and awards, allowing the project staff to build a timeline for pre-, during, and post-intervention periods for use in the analyses. They ultimately created a timeline between 2002 and 2010, and collected address level incident data from the Milwaukee Police Department from January 2002 to February 2010. Incident data included all “Group A” offenses classified under the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS). The offenses were classified into personal (violent) offenses and property offenses. Offenses were aggregated into monthly counts, resulting in 110 months of data with which to conduct statistical analyses.

Three different methodologies were used in the study. First, point pattern analysis was used to examine the geographic distribution of crime points in the select study area at one time period and compare that to the geographic distributions of crime points in the same area in a later time period. Next, the Weighted Displacement Quotient (WDQ) was calculated to determine whether displacement occurred as a result of the rebuilding intervention or if the changes in crime were attributable to larger city crime trends. The researchers employed two mutually exclusive concentric buffer zones around the targets to use in their WDQ analysis—one that was 1,000 feet and one that was 2,000 feet to prevent overlap in displacement measures—and sought to measure the change in crime at the target sites and the change in crime in the nearby buffer zones compared to the changes in the comparison site. The WDQ was calculated for all crimes, personal crimes, and property crimes. Finally, a single series Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model was used to quantify the change in crime at the target sites suggested from the WDQ model. This model allowed the intervention to be broken up into different periods (e.g., move out, site construction, move in) through the use of dummy variables. Vector Autoregressive models were also used to account for displacement and diffusion effects from the target sites. This CrimeSolutions review examined the impact of the intervention that was examined using a time series analysis. The study authors also conducted an analysis to determine the diffusion of benefits from the target sites to the surrounding buffer zones.

For more information about the HOPE VI Initiative, please see the Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) website.

Diffusion and Displacement

Cahill, Lowrey and Downey (2012) conducted analyses to determine the potential diffusion of benefits from the target sites to the surrounding buffer zones. They found that the 2,000-foot buffer zone experienced a decrease in crime that was similar to the decrease in the target sites. This difference was statistically significant.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: