Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Margery Austin Turner on Housing

Americans change residences frequently. Residential mobility can reflect positive changes in a family's circumstances or be a symptom of instability and insecurity. Mobility may also change neighborhoods as a whole. To shed light on these challenges, this report uses a unique survey conducted for the Making Connections initiative. The first component measures how mobility contributed to changes in neighborhoods' composition and characteristics. The second component identifies groups of households that reflect different reasons for moving or staying in place. The final component introduces five stylized models of neighborhood performance: each has implications for low-income families' well-being and for community-change efforts.

High poverty rates, especially among African Americans and Latinos, threaten the well-being of neighborhoods as well as families. We can anticipate that the number of neighborhoods with dangerously high poverty rates is higher today than in 2000, representing a tragic reversal of the downward trend between 1990 and 2000. Historically, public policies played a central role in establishing and enforcing patterns of racial segregation, alongside discriminatory practices by the private sector and individuals. But no single causal process explains the persistence of residential segregation in America today. To ensure the well-being and sustainability of all neighborhoods, public policies must intervene to break the cycle.

Despite substantial progress since passage of the Fair Housing Act four decades ago, neighborhoods remain highly segregated by race and ethnicity. This paper summarizes existing research evidence on both the costs of segregation and the potential benefits of neighborhood diversity. It uses decennial census data to show that a growing share of US neighborhoods are racially and ethnically diverse, but that low-income African Americans in particular remain highly concentrated in predominantly minority neighborhoods. Because the dynamics that sustain segregation today are complex, strategies for overcoming them must address not only discrimination, but information gaps, affordability constraints, prejudice, and fear.

Every parent recognizes the inextricable connections between where we live and the quality of our children’s education. Although public policies have historically contributed to disparities in both neighborhood affordability and school quality, federal programs focused on affordable housing rarely take public schools into account and school officials typically assume that they have no influence over housing patterns. This paper focuses on four principles regarding the vitality and performance of schools and communities, discussing opportunities for constructive policy interventions, summarizing what we know about their likely effectiveness, and recommending next steps for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education.

Three big themes animate the Obama Administration's emerging urban policy framework: competitiveness, equity of opportunity, and sustainability. These themes recognize that the well-being of urban places and the welfare of people are inextricably linked. To achieve the new Administration's urban policy vision, enormous challenges must be overcome including jurisdictional balkanization, federal budget pressures, and macro trends whose long-term impacts can't be fully anticipated. In the face of these challenges, the research community has an opportunity to contribute hugely to the realization of the new urban agenda, but only if we are prepared to make our work genuinely useful to policymakers.

The District of Columbia's leaders have committed to capitalizing on the city's many assets and taking advantage of its recent growth and prosperity to tackle persistent challenges of inequality and exclusion. This report, prepared for the D.C. Office of Planning, seeks to aid the city's leaders and citizens through tracking and measuring major economic and social indicators. The report provides a baseline assessment of the current situation in the city and its neighborhoods in nine subject categories: demographics; jobs and income; housing; education; health; family, youth, and seniors; safety and security; public investment; and environment.

Housing costs constitute the single biggest expenditure in most family budgets, and many low-income families have difficulty finding housing they can reasonably afford. Although most family-strengthening and community change initiatives recognize the urgency of the housing problems facing low-income families, they often have difficulty figuring out how to constructively address them. Federal housing programs are numerous and confusing, implementation is balkanized, funding falls woefully short of needs, and policy debates often focus on narrow technical issues. This primer demystifies federal rental assistance programs and provides the most current information available on how many (and who) they serve and how their scale is changing. It also summarizes key challenges facing housing policy today and in the coming years—challenges that may create opportunities for federal, state, and local engagement and innovation.

Over the last decade, the District of Columbia implemented bold steps to improve its public schools while also experiencing population growth, property value increases, and strong city fiscal health. But its child population (0-17 years old) remained essentially the same and a dwindling share of the city's children was attending the public schools. This policy report summarizes analysis from the Quality Schools and Healthy Neighborhoods: Research Report that describes the relationships between education, housing, and neighborhood development in the District, as well as provides policy recommendations for how to make the District of Columbia a more family-friendly city.

Over the last decade, the District of Columbia implemented bold steps to improve its public schools while also experiencing population growth, property value increases, and strong city fiscal health. But its child population (0-17 years old) remained essentially the same and a dwindling share of the city’s children was attending the public schools. This research report describes in-depth the relationships between education, housing, and neighborhood development in the District of Columbia, and it is the basis for the subsequent policy research report, Quality Schools, Healthy Neighborhoods, and the Future of DC, which outlines recommended policies to make the District a more family-friendly city.

The Census Bureau released its annual report on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage for the U.S. population on August 26, 2008. According to the report, median household income increased by 1.3 percent in 2007, while the overall poverty rate dipped slightly and the number and percentage of people without health insurance decreased. While the overall numbers were positive, not everyone shared in the economic gains. The number and percentage of children in poverty increased, and households in the lowest 40 percent of the income distribution had no significant income gains.