This paper offers a mixed-method analysis of the municipal-level consequences of an affordable housing development built in suburban New Jersey. Opponents of affordable housing development often suggest that creating affordable housing will harm surrounding communities. Feared consequences include increases in crime, declining property values, and rising taxes. To evaluate these claims, the paper uses the case of Mt. Laurel, NJ – the site of a landmark affordable housing legal case and subsequent affordable housing development. Employing a multiple time series group control design, we compare crime rates, property values, and property taxes in Mt. Laurel to outcomes in similar nearby municipalities that do not contain comparable affordable housing developments. We find that the opening of the affordable housing development was not associated with trends in crime, property values, or taxes, and discuss management practices and design features that may have mitigated potential negative externalities.
This chapter reviews the foregoing results and traces out their implications for public policy and for social theory. It argues that neighborhood circumstances do indeed have profound consequences for individual and family well-being and that housing mobility programs constitute an efficacious way both to reduce poverty and to lower levels of racial and class segregation in metropolitan America. Whatever the precise reason for its success, the Ethel Lawrence Homes (EHL) offers a proof of concept for the further development of affordable family housing, both as a social policy for promoting racial and class integration in metropolitan America and as a practical program for achieving poverty alleviation and economic mobility in society at large. Results very clearly show that affordable housing for low- and moderate-income minority families can be built within an affluent white suburban environment without imposing significant costs on the host community or its residents, while simultaneously increasing the economic independence of project residents and improving educational achievement among their children, all with little or no cost to taxpayers in general. It is a win-win prospect for all concerned.
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This chapter describes in great detail the Mount Laurel court case and the controversy it generated. It takes a closer look at the emotion and controversy surrounding Mount Laurel's opposition to the Ethel Lawrence Homes as a prelude to the systematic study on the effects of neighbors, the community, and tenants. In 1967 Ethel Lawrence joined with other local residents to form the Springville Community Action Committee, which was established with the explicit goal of bringing subsidized housing to Mount Laurel. The non-profit obtained seed money from the State of New Jersey and in 1968 optioned a 32-acre parcel in Springville, along Hartford Road, and began drawing up plans to build thirty-six two- and three-bedroom garden apartments affordable to low-income renters. This was the genesis of the suburban showdown that became regional and then national news and led to the landmark New Jersey Supreme Court ruling establishing what became known as “the Mount Laurel Doctrine.”
This chapter talks about the importance of location in human affairs. Naturally the quality of a dwelling has direct implications for the health, comfort, security, and well-being of the people who inhabit it, and matching the attributes of housing with the needs and resources of families has long been a principal reason for residential mobility in the United States. When people purchase or rent a home, however, they not only buy into a particular dwelling and its amenities but also into a surrounding neighborhood and its qualities, for good or for ill. In contemporary urban society, opportunities and resources tend to be distributed unevenly in space, and in the United States spatial inequalities have widened substantially in recent decades. Where one lives is probably more important now than ever in determining one's life chances. In selecting a place to live, a family does much more than simply choose a dwelling to inhabit; it also selects a neighborhood to occupy.
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