Atlanta’s Last Demolitions and Relocations: The Relationship Between Neighborhood Characteristics and Resident Satisfaction DEIRDRE OAKLEY, ERIN RUEL & LESLEY REID Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA (Received March 2012; revised December 2012) ABSTRACT Using data from an Atlanta-based longitudinal study following 311 public housing residents relocated between 2009 and 2010 as the city’s housing authority demolished its remaining public housing, the purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between changes in relocated residents’ satisfaction with home and neighborhood and the socioeconomic, racial composition, and crime characteristics of their destination neighborhood. Consistent with previous research, we find that residents moved to somewhat safer neighborhoods with less poverty than those of the public housing. In addition, we find that residents view their new homes and neighborhoods as improvements over public housing. However, subjective pre- to postmove changes in satisfaction are not driven by changes in neighborhood characteristics (i.e., reductions in poverty and crime), but rather by decreases in perceived social disorder and increases in community attachment. Thus, our findings challenge some of the assumptions of poverty deconcentration. Policy implications are discussed. KEY WORDS: Public housing demolition, housing choice vouchers, USA, relocation, Atlanta Introduction For almost two decades now, much of federal low-income housing policy has been framed around issues of concentrated poverty related to public housing (Goetz, 2010). Between 1993 and 2010, the Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE VI) program sought to transform public housing by demolishing large, spatially concentrated—and in many cases deteriorating—developments and replacing them with mixed-income housing (Goetz, 2000, 2010; Popkin et al., 2009; Smith, 2002). The objectives of these public housing – transformation efforts have been to improve the quality of former public housing neighborhoods, as well as former public housing residents’ lives by deconcentrating q 2013 Taylor & Francis Correspondence Address: Deirdre Oakley, Department of Sociology, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 5020, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA. Tel.: þ1 404 413 6511; Email: doakley1@gsu.edu Housing Studies, 2013 Vol. 28, No. 2, 205–234, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2013.767887 Downloaded by ["University at Buffalo Libraries"] at 06:54 22 March 2013