How Self-Segregation Works

http://www.the atlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/where-the-white-people-live/390153/?utm_source=btn-email-pin

Suburban house
RedJar/Flickr
theatlantic.com

Hello Everyone:

The recent civil unrest in Baltimore, Maryland and other cities have brought the issue of segregation and concentrated affluence in the United States.  The civil unrest in Baltimore highlighted the fact that there seems to be two Baltimores: one for the affluent and one riddled with poverty, pollution, and despair. This is an issue that blogger believes will loom large in the next presidential election and how each candidate will address it will be a deciding factor.  While no solution is absolutely perfect, what is important is the conversation.  Specifically, the fact that we are talking about it.  Alana Semuels lends her voice to the conversation with the article, "Where the White People Live," for The Atlantic.  Ms. Semuels focuses her story on the affluent Michigan suburb of Grosse Pointe Park but has resonance for other places.

Detroit-Grosse Pointe border
michiganradio.org

Last summer, the City of Grosse Pointe Park built a farmer's market in the middle of one of the last roadways between the moneyed suburb and the more urban Detroit neighborhood on its frontier.  A farmer's market sounds like a very benign idea but this was the latest attempt by the Grosse Pointe Park residents to seal the roads and limit traffic between the predominantly white well-to-do community and poorer, urban next door neighbor.  There were protests and Grosse Pointe Park promised to tear down the market and re-open the road. However, this incident highlighted the segregation that exists in the Motor City and the growing tensions.

Farmer's Market barrier
Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan
Alana Semuels
theatlantic.com

The closeness of the two areas is unique-Ms. Semuels writes, "the border between Grosse Pointe Park and the city of Detroit is the only place in any of America's biggest cities where a very wealthy, predominantly-white area abuts a very a very poor, black one, according to research from a new working paper from the University of Minnesota" (http://www.lincolninst.edu)  However, a self-segregated wealthy Caucasian community next to low-income minority ones is as unique as one would think.  The researchers in Minnesota sifted through the census tracts of fifteen of the twenty biggest American cities; sorting them into "racially concentrated areas of affluence" and "racially concentrated areas of poverty," finding that many cities of more places of segregated affluence than poverty.

Gated mansion
Graham Prentice/Shutterstock
planetizen.com

The Minnesota researchers defined racially concentrated areas of affluence as, "census tracts where 90 percent or more of the population is white and the median income is at least four times the federal poverty level, adjust for the cost of living in each city."  By contrast, a racially concentrated areas of poverty are, "census tracts where more than 50 percent of the population is non-white, and more than 40 percent live in poverty."  In the case of Detroit, the city has 55 racially concentrated areas of affluence and 147 racially concentrated areas of poverty, according to researchers Ed Goetz, Tony Damiano, and Jason Hicks.  Statistically, in Detroit's racially concentrated areas of affluence, 1.1 percent of the population are African-American.  On the opposite end of spectrum, the population of the city's racially concentrated areas of poverty is 76 percent African-American.  The numbers are most definitely very lopsided and do not seem to take into account the factors that contribute to self-segregation-i.e. lack of transportation options, employment and educational opportunities.

Detroit's Northeast Side (2010)
davejordano.com

Other cities such as: St. Louis, Boston, Baltimore, and Minneapolis have more RCAAs than RCAPs.  Of the listed cities, Boston has the most RCAAs of all the cities in the study-with 77.  St. Louis, Missouri is a little more evenly divided, tilting more toward RCAAs (44); 36 RCAPs.  Other cities with large numbers of RCAAs include Philadelphia (70), Chicago (58), and Minneapolis (56).  In Boston, nearly half the Caucasian population-43.5 percent-reside in census tracts that are overwhelmingly white with a median income of four times the poverty level.  This number rises to 54.4 percent in St. Louis.

Oddly, it is the low-income areas, not the affluent communities that are self-segregated and have gotten the most attention from policymakers who have tried to improve the situation by introducing some form of integration.  Alana Semuels writes, "Beginning in 1989, the federal government started dismantling housing projects, spending billions to retool the type of housing available to low-income people in urban cores."  Ms. Semuels offers her observations. "Programs many still integrate schools between white and black areas...and they may move black families to white neighborhoods...But government programs don't-and probably shouldn't move white families from wealthy areas to somewhere else."  This may sound strange but there are tax incentives available to home buyers and builders to (re)locate in certain low-income neighborhood, which lays down the foundation for gentrification.

"Racially Concentrated Areas of Affluence and Poverty"
Goetz, Damiano, and Hicks/University of Minnesota
finance.yahoo.com

According to Ed Goetz, the director of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at Minnesota,  public policy

has focused on the concentration of poverty and residential segregation.  This has problematized non-white and high-poverty neighborhoods.  

In presenting his findings to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Mr. Goetz said,

It's shielded the other end of the spectrum from scrutiny-to the point where we think segregation of whites is normal.

Mr. Goetz and his team are still analyzing the effects of Caucasian self-segregation but he speculates "that a high number of RCAAs may be a negative factor for cities."  Mr. Goetz told Ms. Semuels,

Some people argue that when whites and affluent people segregate themselves, it can erode empathy, and it can inhibit the pursuit of region-wide remedies...It can inhibit a sense of shared destiny within a metropolitan area.

"RCAAs and RCAPS in the Detroit Metro Area"

Goetz, Damiano, and Hicks/University of Minnesota

finance.yahoo.com

Alana Semuels recalls the metropolitan area of Detroit, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2014 and was "characterized by a poor and segregated urban core and wealthy white suburbs that did not contribute to the city's revenue."  To wit the executive of Oakland County, on Detroit's northern edge and one of the whitest places in the country, publicly declared "he doesn't feel any incentive to help the city of Detroit."  Sort of a let them bread cake sentiment.

Ed Goetz and his fellow researchers also examined the RCAAs and RCAPs distance from downtown. They discovered that affluent areas are located, on average, 21.1 miles from downtown.  In Detroit, that distance is lengthened by about three miles to 24.2 away.  This distance is even further in Washington D.C., where, on average, RCAAs are 25.1 miles from downtown; in Chicago, the RCAAs are a little closer-22.1 miles.  Yet, the RCAPs are closer-on average of 6.6 miles from downtown in the cities of Baltimore, St. Louis, and Philadelphia.

Out west, the metropolitan areas experienced less self-segregation: "San Francisco and Houston have just five racially concentrated areas of affluence each, Seattle has nine, Los Angeles 11.  Seattle has just six racially concentrated areas of poverty and San Francisco has 12."  The difference is that western cities have larger concentrations of affluent minorities and are, on the whole, more diverse.  Alana Semuels writes, "Only 1.1 percent of affluent households live in RCAAs in San Francisco and only 3.1 percent do in Seattle, but in St. Louis, by contrast 23.1 percent of affluent households live in racially  concentrated areas of affluence."  Why the  disparity between East and West; North and South?  The northern and eastern United States are still reeling from the effects of housing policies that enforced minority families from buying homes in certain areas.

"RCAAs in the Boston area"

Goetz, Damiano, and Hicks/University of Minnesota

theatlantic.com

 Another element of self segregation is the racial makeup of focused areas of poverty differs from region to region.  The RCAPs are predominantly black in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Washington.  In Houston and Los Angeles, they are mostly Latino; mixed in Boston, Minneapolis and San Francisco.  Ed Goetz and his team's next step is studying the reasons why these areas form in specific cities and places; whether people pay a steeper price to live in more segregated affluent areas as opposed to more diverse areas of affluence.

Alana Semuels reports, "Some of their further research has already generated interesting results. They looked into how federal housing dollars are spent in areas of poverty and areas of affluence in the Twin Cities, and found something surprising: The government spends just as many housing dollars in areas of poverty as it does in areas of affluence."  The question that comes immediately to blogger's mind is what is being done with those federal dollars in RCAPs?  It seems that in RCAAs the federal moneys materialize in the form of mortgage-interest deductions while in RCAPs they appear in the form of vouchers and subsidized housing units.  Ms. Semuels cites, "In the Twin Cities, the total federal investment in the form of housing dollars in RCAAs was three times larger than investment than the investment in RCAPs.  On a per capita basis, it was about equal."  Ed Goetz sums this up nicely, saying that federal money is being used to "subsidize racially concentrated areas of affluence."