Housing vouchers allow the federal government to offer quality homes to low-income families. Allocation of the vouchers has expanded tremendously in the post-public housing landscape. Research shows, however, that in cities including New Orleans, vouchers have mostly reshuffled poor families to other impoverished neighborhoods.
A report from The Data Center of New Orleans last year showed that most families currently using housing vouchers in the city live in highly racially segregated, low-income neighborhoods, as was the case even before Hurricane Katrina. The vouchers have seemingly done little to improve the lives of the poorest households.
A new report from the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center shows something additionally troubling: Children living in these homes of modest means continue to experience heavy exposure to violence. Fewer than 2 percent of children in voucher-assisted families live in one of the 13 New Orleans neighborhoods that has averaged zero shootings between 2011 and 2015. Meanwhile, 55 percent of kids living in voucher-assisted households live among the 12 neighborhoods that have averaged more than 10 shootings annually during that same time period.
[For more of this story, written by Brentin Mock, go to http://www.citylab.com/housing...gun-violence/426660/]
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