Study: Tax credits to house poor reinforce racial divisions

Opposition often meets projects in upscale areas

HOUSTON — A mural on the wall of an elementary school here proclaimed, “All the world is all of us,” but the hundreds of people packing the auditorium one night were determined to stop a low-income housing project from coming to their upscale neighborhood.

The proposed 233-unit building, which was to be funded with federal tax credits, would burden their overcrowded elementary school with new children, many people argued during a lively meeting last year. Some urged the Houston Housing Authority to pursue cheaper sites elsewhere.

As cheers rang out over nearly three hours for every objection raised, Chrishelle Palay, a fair-housing advocate, confronted the mostly white crowd.

“It’s time to face your fears,” Palay said as boos rang out. “Stop succumbing to misleading rhetoric, and begin practicing the inclusive lifestyles that many of you claim to lead.”

The outcome was familiar. Elected officials sided with the opposition. And an effort to bring affordable housing to an affluent, majority white neighborhood failed in Houston, where low-income housing is overwhelmingly confined to poor, predominantly black and Latino communities.

A review of federal data by The New York Times found that in the United States’ biggest metropolitan areas, low-income housing projects that use federal tax credits — the nation’s biggest source of funding for affordable housing — are disproportionately built in majority nonwhite communities.

What this means, fair-housing advocates say, is that the government is essentially helping to maintain entrenched racial divides, even though federal law requires government agencies to promote integration.

The nearly $8-billion-a-year tax credit program allows private developers to apply for credits they can use to help finance new housing or the rehabilitation of existing units.

The program offers developers larger credits for building in poorer communities, which tend to need affordable housing the most but also have large minority populations. That has meant that even in a place like Houston, one of the country’s most diverse cities, racial divides can run deep.

When she got a federal housing voucher many years ago, Tonya Mckinney said, she searched far and wide for an apartment but ended up in Houston’s Fifth Ward, a neighborhood she was not happy with. Founded by former slaves, the community, just east of downtown, has a long history of blight but has undergone significant redevelopment in recent years.

Her three children want change, she said. “They talk about this all the time, about us moving into a better area,” said Mckinney, 46, who used to work in retail but is now disabled. “They’re actually tired of living in what they call the ghetto.”

The proposed Houston housing, known as the Fountain View Drive project, would be built in the Galleria district, which sits a few miles west of downtown and features shiny office towers and stores. And at 87 percent white, it is an unlikely site for low-income tax-credit housing.

While only about one-third of census tracts in the nation’s hundred largest metropolitan areas have a majority nonwhite population,