In July 1992, attorneys for the Minnesota Legal Aid Society and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit in federal district court on behalf of a group of plaintiffs living in public housing in Minneapolis alleging that the public housing and Section 8 programs in the city perpetuated racial and low-income segregation. The co-defendants in the Hollman v. Cisneros lawsuit offered to enter into settlement negotiations with the plaintiffs, and in April 1995, a consent decree was signed that committed the co-defendants to a series of dramatic policy changes aimed at deconcentrating family public housing in Minneapolis. In 1999, CURA was contracted by the nonprofit Family Housing Fund and the State of Minnesota to conduct an evaluation of the implementation of the Hollman consent decree. The findings of the three-year evaluation are presented in a series of eight reports, which conclude that the implementation of the consent decree produced mixed results with respect to the construction of replacement housing units, the reductions of race and poverty concentration in public housing in the Twin Cities, and the use of special mobility certificates made available by the decree. This report, the sixth in the series, examines the experiences of Hollman families in their new neighborhoods. Five categories of families were interviewed: (1) families relocated from the north side, (2) families living in the replacement housing built throughout the region, (3) families who used the special mobility certificates to move to nonconcentrated neighborhoods, (4) a comparison group of regular Section 8 participants in Minneapolis, and (5) another comparison group of public housing residents living in concentrated neighborhoods. The findings show a mix of outcomes for Hollman families when compared to other public housing families. On issues related to crime and neighborhood incivility, they reported consistently positive outcomes from their moves. There seem to be no positive impacts on employment or social interactions, and mixed outcomes for housing and neighborhood satisfaction.

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