Integration and Exclusion

Much contemporary policy seeking to address the problems of urban poverty and the failures of public housing focuses on deconcentrating poverty through the relocation of public housing residents to less-poor neighborhoods or by replacing large public housing complexes with mixed-income developments. Lying behind these efforts is a set of generally integrationist goals, aiming to remove public housing residents from contexts of isolation and concentrated disadvantage and settle them in safer, healthier, and more supportive environments that better connect them to resources, relationships, and opportunities. Although some of the goals of these efforts are being met, the broader integrationist goals are proving elusive. Focusing on the mixed-income component of Chicago’s Plan for Transformation—the most ambitious effort to remake public housing in the country—this article argues that a range of institutional actors (including developers, property management, community-based organizations, and the housing authority) and organizational behaviors (around design, service provision, intervention, deliberation, and representation) shape dynamics that reproduce exclusion and work against the integrationist goals of these policies.