Let's Get Ready to Crumble: Black Municipal Leadership and Public Housing Transformation in the United States

U.S. cities transform public housing. Black municipal leadership (BML) may influence the scale and character of public housing removal and redevelopment. Informed by the Black urban regime literature, this study assesses whether presence and duration of BML, coupled with other factors, explains variation in public housing transformation for a sample of large cities. Its findings suggest that, controlling for other factors, BML is associated with moderately greater scales of public housing removal in the 1990s and 2000s, but BML is not associated with the rate of return by former public housing residents or new residence by public housing eligible households in Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) communities as of 2016. The findings invite further research on the intraracial dynamics and policy consequences of BML. They build, too, on public housing transformation scholarship, raising new questions about how municipal politics shape public housing and other sites of subsidized residence for low-income denizens of cities.

Automated summary

The presence of Black municipal leadership appears to have influenced the scale of public housing removal in U.S. cities in the 1990s and 2000s, but does not seem to have an impact on the return rate of former residents or the housing placement for eligible households. Further research is needed to explore the intraracial dynamics and policy consequences of Black municipal leadership in public housing transformation.