The New York Times, July 16, 2019: What the city didn’t want the public to know: Its policy deepens segregation
For more than two years, lawyers for New York City have fought to keep secret a report on the city’s affordable housing lotteries, arguing that its release would insert an unfavorable and “potentially incorrect analysis into the public conversation.”
The report was finally released on Monday, following a federal court ruling, and its findings were stark: The city’s policy of giving preference to local residents for new affordable housing helps perpetuate racial segregation.
White neighborhoods stay white, black neighborhoods black, the report found.
The report looked at 168 city-administered lotteries along with demographic and other information about applicants, comparing that to census data for the areas surrounding the affordable housing apartments being offered.
In each case, Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College, found that the majority group — whether white, black, Hispanic or Asian — enjoyed a strong advantage over the other racial groups because of the city’s policy.
Moreover, because it is a first-come-first-served system, by the time applicants from other areas of the city might want to move into an area, the apartments that they would qualify for have sometimes already been taken by local residents, he found in the 31-page report, a preliminary version of which was first filed in 2017.
