After two decades of building affordable housing and studying the impacts of segregation on Chicago, my conviction remains that you cannot build affordable housing only where it’s cheapest, or only where people will protest the least. You have to build it where it’s needed, which is everywhere.
Not convinced? Don’t take my word for it — look to Chicago as a living case study. For decades, government and private actors treated the placement of affordable housing as a racist containment strategy, and the results are clear: in June, Brown University reaffirmed Chicago as the country’s most segregated city. A 2017 Metropolitan Planning Council study found that if the Chicago region lowered its racial and economic segregation to the national median, it would reap the benefits of $4 billion more in African American income, $8 billion in GDP, 30% fewer homicides and 120,000 more bachelor’s degrees.
