Place-Based Policies In Chicago: A Case Study

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Place-based policies are crucial if we want to improve the lives of Chicago citizens in a long-term way. People-based policies, such as job training and housing vouchers, can help individual people, but they do nothing to improve entire communities by themselves and can actually leave a community worse off than it was before. In order to truly transform communities in Chicago that are facing disinvestment and substandard living conditions, we must use a combination of people-based and place-based policies. However, there needs to be more of an emphasis on place-based policies. On their own, people-based policies cannot have a long-term effect on living conditions in Chicago. Housing vouchers may improve the lives of the people who get them, …show more content…

According to the U.S. Department of Education (2012), “Communities that face underperforming schools, rundown housing, neighborhood violence, and poor health know that these are interconnected challenges and that they perpetuate each other” (p. 5). It is not enough to only target education, jobs, or mobility programs. These alone do not attack the root cause of substandard living, as this quote indicates. Instead, the city must implement place-based policies with a “cradle-to-career continuum of services” (U.S. Department of Education, 2012, p. 5). An example of this kind of policy is the Harlem Children’s Zone, a program based in Central Harlem that offers a holistic approach to community development. This program focuses not only on improving education, but also on “social services, family support, health, and community-building programs” (Harlem Children’s Zone) all the way from early childhood through college graduation. The HCZ, which addresses issues both in and outside of the classroom, can serve as a model for programs in the most struggling Chicago …show more content…

The Urban Institute (2005) found that “CDC investments in affordable housing and commercial retail facilities have led to increases in property values…that are sometimes as great as 69 percent higher than they would have been in the absence of the investment” (p. 1). More affordable housing in low-income communities would allow poor residents to continue living there, while also having access to suitable and safe housing. This ties into the idea of choice, which is discussed

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