Is it all in the eye of the beholder? Benefits of living in mixed-income neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles
Résumé
Scholarly attention to mixed-income neighborhoods has come predomi- nantly from studying the effects of federally funded housing policies, such as Empowerment Zone programs and the HOPE VI Urban Demonstration program, which was replaced by the Choice Neighborhoods program. These programs operate on the assumption that economic integration is beneficial to lower income residents. We believe that it is important to learn more about the already existing mixed-income neighborhoods, for which empirical evidence is lacking. We address 2 research questions: Do mixed- income neighborhoods create a beneficial context? Have mixed-income neighborhoods fared better during the mortgage foreclosure crisis? Applying 2 independent empirical criteria in identifying mixed-income neighborhoods, we find that these communities do create a more advanta- geous context compared to lower income communities and less advanta- geous context compared to higher income communities.