When: Noon-1:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 16

Where: L-110 Carlson School of Management, 321 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis

Contact: Mike Greco, Communications Coordinator, CURA, 612-625-7501, curaweb@umn.edu; Edward Goetz, Center for Urban and Regional Affairs, (612) 624-5003, egoetz@umn.edu

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (7/15/02) — A new study documents how Minneapolis public housing changes have impacted families since the 1992 Hollman v. Cisneros lawsuit against the city. Study author Edward Goetz will release the findings by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban Regional Affairs (CURA) at noon Tuesday, July 16, in room L-110, Carlson School of Management, 321 19th Ave. S., Minneapolis. Goetz is a research associate at CURA and associate professor at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

The eight-volume report concludes that the consent decree has produced mixed results in the construction of replacement housing units, the reduction of race and poverty concentration in public housing in the Twin Cities, and the use of special mobility certificates.

“Most families we spoke with said they felt they lived in safer neighborhoods after their move,” said Goetz. “Other cities around the nation can look to Minneapolis as a model for how to successfully build replacement housing on a metropolitan-wide scale.”

The original Hollman lawsuit--which named the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, the Minneapolis Community Development Agency, the Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as codefendants--alleged that public housing and Section 8 programs in Minneapolis created and perpetuated racial segregation. The 1995 consent decree committing the codefendants to a series of dramatic policy changes aimed to deconcentrate family public housing in the city of Minneapolis. In 1998 CURA was contracted by the Family Housing Fund and by the state of Minnesota to conduct an evaluation of the implementation of the consent decree.

The Hollman experience in Minneapolis is the first large-scale opportunity in the nation to compare voluntary and involuntary relocation efforts in the same housing market. The court ruling also tested many federal housing policy assumptions and reflected significant shifts in public housing policy underway at the time.

Key Findings:

• Of the 440 families relocated as a result of the Hollman consent decree, seven out of eight remained in the central city and more than half (59 percent) remained within three miles of the original Hollman site. (Report 5)

• Sixteen percent of families who relocated purchased homes after moving from north side public housing, with Southeast Asian families most likely to purchase homes (25 percent compared to 4 percent of black relocatees and 6 percent of white relocatees). (Report 5)

• Most relocated families moved to neighborhoods where median incomes were higher, more residents were employed, fewer received public assistance, and the degree of poverty was lower. However, one-half of the families moved to neighborhoods that still met the consent decree’s threshold as a poverty or minority-concentrated neighborhood, and one-third moved to neighborhoods that were both poverty- and minority- concentrated. (Report 5)

• When compared to other public housing families, Hollman relocatees reported being more satisfied with the cost, size, and quality of their new homes. Among the Hollman families, voluntary participants were more satisfied with the cost and quality of their new homes than involuntary (displaced) families. (Report 6)

• Both voluntary and involuntary Hollman relocatees reported less graffiti, public drunkenness, drug use, abandoned buildings, crime, and fear of crime in their new neighborhoods, compared both to their old neighborhoods and to public housing comparison groups. (Report 6)

• Hollman relocatees are no more likely to be employed, have higher wages, work more hours, or have greater opportunity for moving up in their jobs than they were before they moved. (Report 6)

• When controlling for other attributes such as age and race, there was no difference between the Hollman relocatees and public housing comparison groups in neighbors’ behaviors or social interaction with neighbors. (Report 6)

• Based on questions concerning eight neighborhood characteristics, on the whole, Hollman families expressed no more satisfaction with their new neighborhoods than did comparison public housing groups. (Report 6) • More than 700 Section 8 vouchers and certificates were made available each year between 1996 and 2002 through the Hollman Special Mobility Program. Although MPHA contacted between 4,300 and 5,000 families about the program during this period, only 285 families (roughly 6 percent) were interested enough to contact the program and begin to search for a home, and only 80 families have successfully leased a unit through the program (a 29 percent lease-up rate). (Report 7)

• Of those who successfully leased a new unit through the Hollman Special Mobility Program, more than half (54 percent) moved to a unit in Minneapolis. Of the remainder, 14 percent moved to the northern inner-ring suburbs, 10 percent to the southern inner-ring, and 13 percent to various developing suburbs. (Report 7) • As of April 2002, MPHA had development commitments in place for all 770 units of replacement housing required by the 1995 consent decree. Most of the progress made in producing these units has occurred since 1999. (Report 8)

• As of February 2002, 429 replacement units had been built and were in use across the region, with Woodbury and Shakopee having the most units outside of Minneapolis. None of the units are located in Dakota County, which has refused to participate in the program. (Report 8)

• The average neighborhood with a replacement unit has a median income (in 1990 figures) of $40,290, greater than the metropolitan median at the time. Replacement neighborhoods compare favorably with the region average on a range of characteristics, including employment rate, poverty rate, and home value. (Report 8).

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