Mixed-Income Housing in Detroit

 

The task: For my English Argumentative Writing class, I was asked to compose a 3000-word essay for a popular audience that uses academic sources and methods of argumentation to support a unique and specific thesis about how the city of Detroit should proceed in the years following its bankruptcy. The essay will explain how recent developments in a paricular academic discipline can help the city's citizens and leaders in their efforts to make Detroit a symbol of urban success in a postindustrial America. 

 

ABSTRACT:

 

The urban planning redevelopment strategy, mixed-income housing is a solution to Detroit’s hyper-concentrated neighborhood poverty that involves public housing that integrates both subsidized housing units for low-income families and market-rate units to “attract higher income residents” (Levy et al. 15). The design of mixed-income housing communities, including an equal number of market-rate and subsidized housing units and dispersal of these units throughout the developments, combined with the community building efforts of social service providers will offer a social “space of opportunity” (Levy et al. 24) for lower-income residents to broaden their social capital through interaction with middle-income residents (Chaskin & Joseph 303). With effective public-private partnerships, tax incentives for developers, public housing subsidies, and federal grants, mixed-income housing is monetarily feasible. In this paper I will explain the historic patterns that have led to hyper-concentrated poverty in Detroit, rely on past precedent in order to suggest reform through mixed-income housing and explain the financial viability of such a redevelopment strategy.  

 

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