Resilient Children

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INTRODUCTION

The HOPE VI program targets the nation's most distressed public housing-impoverished communities with substandard housing and extreme levels of drug trafficking and violent crime. Created by Congress in 1992, the HOPE VI program was designed to address not only the bricks-and-mortar problems in distressed public housing, but also the social and economic needs of the residents and the health of surrounding neighborhoods.¹ The program's major objectives are

• to improve the living environment for residents of severely distressed public housing by demolishing, rehabilitating, reconfiguring, or replacing obsolete projects in part or whole;
• to revitalize the sites of public housing projects and help improve the surrounding neighborhood;
• to provide housing in ways that avoid or decrease the concentration of very low-income families; and
• to build sustainable communities.

The HOPE VI Panel Study addresses the questions of whether the HOPE VI program has met its goal of providing residents with an improved living environment and how HOPE VI families have fared as relocation and revitalization have proceeded. The study tracks outcomes for original residents at five sites where redevelopment activities began in 2001. At baseline in summer 2001, we surveyed a sample of 887 heads of households across five sites and conducted in-depth interviews with 39 adult-child dyads. We conducted a follow-up survey of 736 households and interviews with 29 adult-child dyads in 2003, 24 months after baseline.² The Panel Study sites are Shore Park/Shore Terrace (Atlantic City, NJ); Ida B. Wells Homes/Wells Extension/Madden Park Homes (Chicago, IL); Few Gardens (Durham, NC); Easter Hill (Richmond, CA); and East Capitol Dwellings (Washington, D.C.).³

The HOPE VI program can profoundly affect the lives of children, who are the most vulnerable residents of distressed public housing and particularly likely to suffer from stress of relocation (Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn 2001). Children growing up in these distressed developments confront many obstacles, all of which place them at risk for serious consequences including developmental delays, behavior problems, and poor school outcomes (Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, and Aber 1997; Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn 2000). These include the dangers of their physical environment, a social world dominated by the drug economy, bad schools, and, frequently, parents coping with problems of their own. Children in HOPE VI sites face the additional hurdle of involuntary relocation, which has the potential to disrupt academic achievement and increase behavior problems, especially if they are forced to change schools mid-year (Leventhal and Brooks-Gunn 2001; Hartmann 2002).

At baseline in 2001, we documented many ways at which the HOPE VI Panel Study children appeared to be at risk. But we also found that some children were doing surprisingly well and seemed to be able to cope effectively with the challenges in their environment. These children may not develop the delays, academic problems, and behavior problems that affect so many of their peers. However, we had little information about the factors that made some children seem more resilient than others faced with the same stresses.

At follow-up in 2003, we added items to the survey that would allow us to explore resiliency among HOPE VI children, including children's school engagement, measures of school quality, and measures of parental involvement in education. The purpose of this exploration was to develop a better understanding of the factors that might serve to protect children from the hazards of their environment. It is important to note that the HOPE VI Panel Study is a policy research study, and our purpose was not to explore the psychology of resiliency in depth. Rather, our goal was to identify factors related to resilient outcomes that could help guide policymakers and practitioners in developing interventions to help protect more children from the negative consequences of living in distressed communities and the stresses of involuntary relocation.

In this report, we first review existing research from a range of social science disciplines to identify key factors that seem to be related to resiliency and understand the ways in which these factors act to protect children from negative outcomes. Then, using data from the HOPE VI Panel Study, we explore which of these factors are related to resiliency in our sample of children from HOPE VI developments. Finally, we discuss the potential implications of this research for policy. An annotated bibliography on resiliency is included in appendix A.

Notes from this section of the report

1 Under the $5 billion HOPE VI program, HUD has awarded 446 HOPE VI grants in 166 cities. To date, 63,100 severely distressed units have been demolished and another 20,300 units are slated for redevelopment. Housing authorities that receive HOPE VI grants must also develop supportive services to help both original and new residents attain self-sufficiency. HOPE VI funds will support the construction of 95,100 replacement units, but just 48,800 will be deeply subsidized public housing units. The rest will receive shallower subsidies or serve market-rate tenants or homebuyers.

2 The final round of surveys and interviews will occur in 2005, 48 months after baseline.

3 For a full description of the HOPE VI Panel Study methodology, see Popkin et al. (2002).

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

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