Talking With the Experts: An Interview With Dr. Matthew Kachura

Baltimore Neighborhoods Indicatory Alliance Program Manager Matthew Kachura (Image Source: University of Baltimore)

Today, we Talk To St. Ambrose have posted our second interview of our “Talking with the Experts Series,” and we are honored to host Program Manager for the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicator Alliance-Jacob france Institute, Dr. Matthew Kachura.  As many of you already know, Dr. Kachura is a hugely respected community member and activist on behalf of Baltimore City.  He is likewise a pre-eminent scholar in the areas of housing, community economic and workforce development, and other issues affecting urban communities.  Dr. Kachura recently conducted an innovative study examining the effects of foreclosure on Baltimore’s schoolchildren, which gained much deserved local and national attention, as it remains one of the only empirically-backed projects studying the residual, far-removed affects of the foreclosure crisis.  Dr. Kachura has also conducted influential research on the Baltimore Empowerment Zone, the earned income tax credit, and commuter issues, among many others.

Again, we are honored to host such an important and distinguished scholar and community member.  My interview with Professor Kachura is below.

Harsha Sekar: It was fascinating to read the results of Phase I of your study on the effects of foreclosures on Baltimore’s schoolchildren. For me, one of the study’s most salient implications concerned the interrelationship of social problems.  It appears that public policies that encourage affordable housing will not be effective without the implementation of a broader welfare state, as widespread access to decent housing seemingly cannot materialize without strong neighborhoods, schools, and access to healthcare.  Given the findings of your study, can policymakers effectively curtail the problem of inadequate housing without simultaneously addressing the needs of other, related social institutions?

Matthew Kachura: The short answer is no.  I believe that urban issues, whether it is affordable housing, high unemployment, social ills such as crime, or issues relating to education, are all interconnected and that policies that take into account this interdependency need to be created and implemented.  Trying to address one issue without recognizing that there are a host of other issues related to it will not lead to sustainable or long-term improvement.

HS: Following up on the last question, what are some of the other, less obvious residual effects of foreclosure that you have noticed in your work?

MK: I think a non-obvious issue is exactly what we set out to identify.  Little attention has been paid to the smallest victims of foreclosure – children.  It is not just that children are also victims of foreclosure, but that the increased mobility resulting from foreclosure can have lasting, long-term effects on their social and personal development and educational performance.  These negative impacts might not occur in the year following the foreclosure, but research has shown that missing days of school as a result of having to move can lead to an increased chance of a student dropping out of school, not completing their degree and in the long run earning less income.

HS: Your study also catalogues the disproportionate effect of foreclosures on minorities.  While many commentators have discussed this issue, few academic studies document this phenomenon with empirical data.  How has the foreclosure crisis functioned to reinforce systemic racism?

MK: We found several interesting findings as a result of this analysis, including the largest numbers of students who were affected by foreclosure in Baltimore City were African American.  This was not surprising though since two thirds of the residents of Baltimore City are African American.  There were two other important findings.  First, the share of Hispanic students impacted by foreclosure had been increasing to a point where the share of students impacted by foreclosure was the same as the total percentage of students attending the City public schools.  Second, we believe the share of white students impacted by foreclosure was not accurately counted, potentially being significantly undercounted.  According to American Community Survey data, nearly a quarter of the children in Baltimore City are white but only 8% of children that attend the City public schools are white.  This means that these students are attending other schools – most likely private schools – and were not included in the analysis.  Overall though, the fact that African American residents and their children were affected by foreclosures in such large numbers supports the facts that predatory lending policies and sub-prime loans were targeted to those persons who could least afford to lose their home.  The loss of the home, the primary vehicle to building wealth for many of these families, only perpetuates a vicious cycle of poverty.

HS: At Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s recent Vacants to Values Summit, the market-drive notion of “Code Enforcement” was promulgated a means to reduce blight in the city, which would impose sheriff sales on properties that do not meet the city’s code.  How do you feel about this tactic, and what other policies do you advocate to incentivize property owners to invest in Baltimore’s underserved neighborhoods?

MK: I believe that the Mayor’s plan has merit and there have been a variety of other strategies taken in an effort to reduce blight and to turn vacant housing into occupied housing.  There are issues with using code enforcement including identifying and locating individuals to serve them with the necessary paperwork, issues relating to selling the properties at Sherriff sales, and then trying to turn them into occupied properties.  Many of these properties are so beyond being able to be lived in, they will require significant repairs and persons willing to take the time and expense in making the repairs before anyone can live in the property.

I also believe that there are already a number of policies that are making strides in having residents invest within Baltimore’s neighborhoods.  Among these are live where you work programs, which also encourages employment, Healthy Neighborhoods, and the Neighborhood Stabilization Tax Credit.  I also believe that the City’s use of data and its Housing Typology model supports the use of strategic investment – targeting neighborhoods with the types of interventions that are needed most within those neighborhoods instead of spreading resources too thinly across a variety of neighborhood types.  Most of all, I believe that residents living in Baltimore’s neighborhoods are the best means to encourage other residents to invest and live in Baltimore City.

HS: Much of your scholarly work examines economic development in urban areas.  How have established NGOs like St. Ambrose contributed to economic development and vibrancy in the Baltimore area over the past few decades?  What do you feel is the role of NGOs in stimulating economic activity relative to that of the city government and the private sector?

MK: NGOs are a critical component to the overall continued health, vitality, and improvement to Baltimore City and its neighborhoods.  NGOs have been recognized as an important partner in economic development strategies that cities, such as Baltimore City, rely on for their ability to produce results and make an impact.  With fiscal constraints and the need to provide the same if not improved services for a shrinking residential base, NGOs have become a more important partner that the City has embraced to push economic and workforce development.  NGOs typically can operate without the bureaucracy and red tape that government agencies have in place, making them, in many cases, more effective and efficient in creating job opportunities and in neighborhood vitality.

Take Back the Land: A Human Rights Approach to Housing

Image Source: Take Back the Land

This week, we take a divergence from the dense, policy-based reporting of the last several posts to focus on a small, little known social movement, the Take Back the Land Movement.  Take Back the Land, an intentionally designed social movement that emerged via the work of diligent community organizers, possesses one central theme: to elevate the issue of Housing as a Human Right.

On it’s face, it’s easy to conflate the Miami-based organization with the countless other housing non-profits throughout the country, whose work is often challenged by bureaucracy and whose funding is likewise handcuffed by strictly regulated government grants.  But Take Back the Land is different.  It’s a grass roots movement that advocates on behalf of the homeless, with the goal of housing longtime homeless individuals and families as well as folks who’ve been displaced during the foreclosure crisis.  And unlike the stereotypical “social movement,” which often encounter criticism for being “too much talk, not enough action,” Take Back the Land has succeeded in finding houses for displaced individuals through a creative yet simplistic technique: moving people into foreclosed properties.

It’s easy to wonder how this is accomplishable and why the movement is yet to come across serious issues with law enforcement. In an ABC News segment, Max Rameau, a spokesperson for the movement, offers a good reason: “this [foreclosed house] is a complete waste.  This is not benefitting anyone.  It’s not benefitting the bank, it’s not benefitting the community, it’s not benefiting the families.  There’s no reason this house is empty.” (Rameau also wrote a book about developing a homeless village in an effort to provide affordable housing for low-income people, “Take Back the Land: Land, Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown”).   Furthermore, rather than face trouble with the law, the movement, at least in Miami, is gaining the police’s support.  ABC spoke with the city’s Chief of Police, who expressed a refusal to enforce eviction notices, stating, “what Social Good would be served by arresting this mother, taking her away from her children?”

The movement has gained traction in several parts of the country, and while it’s not officially a non-profit, it’s website indicates that it has networked with “Local Action Groups” in cities coast to coast, ranging from Atlanta to Madison to Portland to Rochester.  While not a policy-promoting organization, Take Back the Land’s approach mirrors a policy alternative discussed both in our blog as well as at Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s recent Vacant’s to Values summit, Code Enforcement.

The theory behind Code Enforcement involves heavily cracking down on delinquent property owners to ensure that they meet the city’s code; if they do not, the government, in one step, can turn the property back to the market, where it will be sold in a competitive auction.  The idea behind the notion is that it would give property owners a strong incentive to maintain their homes while redirecting properties to a better owner if they do not.  Similarly, by putting families back into vacant homes, Take Back the Land helps ensure that the homes are once again properly maintained and meeting code, keeping neighborhood property values up and benefitting the broader community.  Their residents pay utilities, giving added business to companies that provide these services.

There are thousands of foreclosed properties in Baltimore and millions in the nation, the effect of which, in addition to harming families, encumber neighborhoods and by extension, capital markets and economies.  Rather than high-minded policies, Take Back the Land provides a plainspoken way to mitigate this crisis, and rather than sitting back and spouting out ideas, they are acting. By doing so, they begin to make progress towards their stated objectives of encouraging the perception of housing as a human right, local control over housing, community-based leadership, and direct action campaigns.  To be sure, plenty of their operations are illegal. However, policymakers and activists alike can benefit from the organization’s can-do spirit and human rights oriented strategy.

Talking With the Experts: A Conversation with David Marcello

Professor David Marcello

Welcome to the second portion of yesterday’s interview with New Orleans housing expert David Marcello. In the following conversation, Professor Marcello discusses strategies to curtail blight and encourage racially and socio-economically diverse neighborhoods:

Harsha Sekar: Like New Orleans, Baltimore faces tremendous problems with urban blight.  There’s a commonly held (yet perhaps unfounded) belief that Charm City contains “more row homes than people.”  True or not, it’s undeniable that blight is a huge problem in Baltimore, and any casual observer driving through one of the city’s more under-resourced neighborhoods could pick up on this in a heartbeat.  What strategies to curtail urban blight have you advocated?  What has worked in New Orleans, and what has failed?

David Marcello: I’ve relentlessly recommended for years that the city employ one of the most conventional weapons in the municipal arsenal: code enforcement. Code Enforcement has been a core function of cities since the 1901 Tenement House Act in New York City. We’ve created an exemplary administrative process in Louisiana for health, housing, and environmental code enforcement hearings that can lead in extreme circumstances to a sheriff’s sale, moving blighted property away from a negligent owner and into the hands of a new, more responsible owner. That transition in ownership takes place in a competitive public auction that shifts the property from one private owner to another without the necessity of intervening public ownership.

This last feature of the recommended “code enforcement” strategy stands in stark contrast to the outcome of an expropriation process, which was for many years the favored strategy of our local redevelopment agency, the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, or NORA. I never thought NORA’s strategy of using expropriation as a blight remediation tool had much chance of success. In a city with tens of thousands of blighted properties, expropriation is simply too expensive and too time consuming to get the job done. Even worse, at the end of an expropriation proceeding, you’ve put the blighted property into the hands of a governmental entity that’s then confronted with the challenge of doing something with the property. Far better, I believe, is to use code enforcement as an incentive for people to fix up their own property or, failing that, using sheriff’s sales to move ownership from one private party directly to another, taking intermediate governmental ownership out of the equation.

HS: Both New Orleans and Baltimore are intensely segregated cities, and, as you know, segregated housing has led to segregated neighborhoods, schools, and other public institutions, with devastating consequences for underprivileged, often ethnic minority urban residents.  Do you propose or advocate any ideas to alleviate the crippling reality of residential segregation in New Orleans and other urban areas?

DM: New Orleans certainly has its share of segregated housing problems, but it’s worth noting that this was not historically the way things were in New Orleans, where humble shotgun housing existed in close proximity to grand mansions, providing a mix of income and racial diversity with which other cities were unfamiliar. In recent years, we’ve seen a lot of our humble housing “gentrified” into middle and upper income housing, and that’s certainly fostered greater income and racial segregation of the city’s residents. We should look for ways to diminish that effect by subsidizing rental and rehabilitation programs aimed at putting more of the city’s resource-limited residents into those types of existing housing units.

Our older neighborhoods reflect the diversity of housing structures that were built over many decades or even centuries. We need to restore within those older neighborhoods the income and racial diversity that characterized them in an earlier era. New Orleans had many healthy neighborhoods of mixed-income housing long before that concept took flight in the late 20th Century.

HS: It seems like the hottest new trend in urban planning nowadays are so-called “Mixed-Income Communities,” which, from my understanding, usually emerge as the result of public-private partnerships.  Policy-makers believe that intentionally designed mixed-income neighborhoods are the key to preventing gang violence, blight, and drug abuse, some of the most palpable problems that plagued the public housing projects constructed in the fifties and sixties. New Orleans, Baltimore, and most other major cities have developed such communities and are likely in the process of contracting for more.  How have these developments fared in mitigating the aforementioned problems?  What do you think about this potential new paradigm of urban housing?

DM: I think it’s too early to tell how well or poorly the post-Katrina mixed-income housing developments will fare. We’ll probably see mixed results, with some properties maintaining a balance of mixed incomes while some others acquire a disproportionate share of low-income residents. Still others may be challenged to survive financially, and we’re likely to confront the problem of what to do with a failed multiunit apartment complex.

I don’t feel quite the same level of enthusiasm that some people do for the model of Government as producer of a utopian “City on a Hill.” Here in Louisiana, we’ve seen how badly-managed government programs like The Road Home can first raise and then bitterly disappoint expectations. So when I hear references to “intentionally designed” neighborhoods, I tend to think, “Nice idea for new towns or beachside communities; maybe not so great for New Orleans?” At a charrette held two months after Katrina, I said, “I’d rather see people given some latitude to build back properties on their own initiative, even if it means that some of those properties turn out to be ugly, rather than inflict on this unique city some cookie-cutter pastel-colored vision of ‘our town’.” I still feel that way. What makes New Orleans New Orleans is the rich diversity of its neighborhoods. That’s true not only of its housing stock but also of the diverse cultures nurtured within those neighborhoods.

I would prefer to see Incentives built into the zoning ordinance and housing finance programs that empower individuals to make their own decisions about how to build back New Orleans. I trust this process of “accretion” more than I trust one agency’s single-minded vision of “intentionally redesigned” neighborhoods. We’ll keep our city’s cultural and architectural diversity intact by keeping our diverse residents fully engaged in the rebuilding process.

BNIA Study’s of Effect of Foreclosures on Baltimore Schoolchildren

Image Source: Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance

In the past week, the University of Baltimore’s Baltimore Neighborhoods Indicator Alliance (BNIA) released an analysis, possibly the first since the onset of the foreclosure crisis, that examines the effects of the foreclosures on children in Baltimore.  I first came across the study by way of Jamie Smith Hopkins’ excellent “Real Estate Wonk” blog, where Ms. Hopkins provides an enlightening commentary on the study and its implications.

University of Baltimore Professor Matthew Kachura conducted the study; he received ample funding from various arms of the Open Society Institute.  The study is premised on the notion that while the foreclosure crisis has prompted much examination of related matters, like the impact on property values and the housing market, little if any research exists on the foreclosure crisis’s impact on schoolchildren.  From there, Kachura’s study proceeds to dissect itself into two phases: phase one identifies the students affected by foreclosure and delineates a broad set of demographic characteristics, while the second phase, which is yet to be published, will look at the school performance of the affected students.  The published phase exhaustively utilizes hard data, including publically available foreclosure statistics and other metrics provided by the Baltimore Public Schools; the second phase will look at test scores.

While one cannot make assumptions about the negative impact that foreclosures will have on students’ performances just yet, Ms. Hopkins, on her blog, points out that a University of Baltimore press release has stated that affected students “may have to switch schools, move in with relatives, or leave the city altogether,” shedding light on the outcomes of the second phase of the study.

Kachura’s study proffers further evidence for the interrelationship between housing policies and systemic racism and poverty.  In a previous post, my colleague Will Flagle covered the recent Brandeis University study on the enormous impact that possessing equity in a home has had on intergenerational wealth over the past several decades, which, it turns out, has greatly contributed to inequality between African-Americans and White Americans nowadays.  Here, Kachura documents the disproportionate impact that foreclosures in Baltimore have had on minorities, conveyed in the graphs below:

Perhaps most insightful, Kachura’s data, coupled with that of the Brandeis study and others, gives us a clearer indication of the less salient, less tangible meaning of these foreclosures.  Minorities disproportionately are victims of foreclosure in part because, for systemic reasons, they have access to less capital and family wealth, in part because they are frequently targeted with predatory, non-prime loans, and in part because by and large they do not benefit from the sort of white privilege that would enable one to walk away from a million dollar mortgage and face hardly any repercussions.  As Barbara Eirenreich and others have pointed out, while the foreclosure crisis translates to a recession for some, in the African-American community it has meant a depression.  Kachura’s research suggests that because of foreclosures, minority children will face educational setbacks, and in turn lower college matriculation rates, access to decent jobs, affordable housing, and respect.  In short, the foreclosure crisis, as silly as it may sound, is reinforcing systemic racism, weakening the resources of minorities, and curtailing the rise of diverse neighborhoods and communities.

Housing, White Privilege, and Wealth Inequality

As a social justice issue, housing seems simple and relatively bland: people need shelter, what else is there to talk about?

A lot, actually.

Housing issues are related to a complex web of social justice concerns. Two related concerns that are particularly relevant to housing are white privilege and wealth inequality. In fact,  understanding the history of discrimination in America—particularly housing discrimination—is indispensable to understanding contemporary economic inequality.  What’s the connection between housing,  white privilege, and wealth inequality? Here’s a statistic that might surprise you:

The Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration financed more than $120 billion worth of new housing between 1934 and 1962, but less than 2% of this real estate was available to nonwhite families—and most of that small amount was located in segregated communities.[1]

In other words, for almost three decades the U.S. government backed $120 billion worth of home loans and 98% (!) of those loans went to whites.

How did this institutionalized racism become possible?

Spurred on by massive mortgage foreclosures during the Great Depression, the federal government […] began underwriting mortgages in an effort to enable citizens to become homeowners. But the mortgage program was selectively administered by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and urban neighborhoods considered poor risks were redlined—an action that excluded virtually all the black neighborhoods and many neighborhoods with a considerable number of European immigrants. [2]

More important than this shocking history, however, is the relationship between home ownership, wealth, and opportunity—a relationship that links past discrimination to economic inequality today. To begin with, a home is one of the most important assets that a family can own. As Dalton Conley—associate professor in the Department of Sociology at New York University—explains in the PBS documentary Race—the Power of an Illusion, “The majority of Americans hold most of their wealth in the form of home equity.”[3] Therefore, because of the significance of housing as an asset, discrimination in housing directly contributed to inequality in wealth accumulation.

Wealth, in turn, is an important determinate of the opportunities that a family can provide for their children. As Larry Adelman has written, “a family’s net worth is not simply the finish line, it’s also the starting line for the next generation.”[4] A family can take out a second mortgage on their home, for instance, to finance their child’s college education or job search. Actions such as these can significantly affect a child’s life trajectory.  Indeed, because of the way that wealth creates opportunity, “Economists have shown that about 50-80% of our lifetime wealth accumulation is really attributable, in one way or another, to past generations,” writes Conley. Wealth, in other words, provides a mechanism that transfers opportunity, or the absence of opportunity, from one generation to the next. It is this intergenerational link between wealth and opportunity that explains why the effects of long past institutionalized racism—such as FHA housing discrimination—are still felt today.  [*]

How are the effects of historic discrimination still felt? Take the “wealth gap,” for example. Thomas Shapiro, in The Hidden Cost of Being African American, writes that “The net worth of typical white families is $81,000 compared to $8,000 for black families.”[6] That’s a 10:1 difference! This present day racial inequality in wealth, however, must be understood in light of the history of institutionalized racism and privilege. And housing discrimination is a fundamental part of that history. As previously mentioned, a home is often a family’s most important asset or source of wealth. Housing discrimination, therefore, created inequality in the accumulation of wealth. Moreover, wealth has two distinct characteristics: 1) it creates opportunity and 2) is it inheritable. The combination of these characteristics produced a dynamic whereby inequality in wealth—initially bolstered by discriminatory practices—was often passed down and maintained from one generation to the next. So long past discrimination in housing affected the wealth and opportunities of later generations. In short, past housing discrimination is an important factor in explaining economic inequality today. Conley writes:

Today, the average Black family has only one-eighth the net worth or assets of the average white family. That difference has seemingly grown since the 1960s, since the Civil Rights triumphs, and is not explained by other factors like education, earnings rates or savings rates. It is really the legacy of racial inequality from generations past. No other measure captures the legacy – the cumulative disadvantage of race for minorities or cumulative advantage of race for whites – than net worth or wealth.[7]

Thus, the reverberations of long past institutionalized racism are still felt today. As a primary example, housing discrimination creates inequality in wealth and opportunity that is often inherited by succeeding generations. Tracing back the linkages between present day inequalities in wealth and past housing discrimination demonstrates that—as a social justice issue—housing isn’t simple. Yet these linkages also show that, in spite of their complexity, contemporary housing issues remain as important as ever.

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[1] George Lipsitz. 1998. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. Philadelphia:Temple University Press.

[2] William Julius Wilson. (2005 [1996]) “When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor,” in Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology. ed. by Susan Ferguson. New York: McGraw Hill.

[3] Dalton Conley. 2003. Interviewed in Race the Power of an Illusion. PBS Transcript available at http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-03.htm.

[4] Larry Adelman. 2003. A Long History of Racial Preferences – For Whites . http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-02.htm.

[*] Note that wealth, not income, has been the touchstone for economic status throughout this discussion. This is no accident. For wealth, not income, is a much better indicator of opportunity: “Even when families of the same income are compared,” explains Adelman, “white families have more than twice the wealth of Black families. Much of that wealth difference can be attributed to the value of one’s home, and how much one inherited from parents.”

[6] Thomas M. Shapiro. 2004. The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press.

[7] Dalton Conley. 2003. Interviewed in Race the Power of an Illusion. PBS Transcript available at http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-03-03.htm.