Social Networks 33 (2011) 152–165 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Social Networks journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/socnet Integrated or isolated? The impact of public housing redevelopment on social network homophily Rachel Garshick Kleit a,∗ , Nicole Bohme Carnegie b,1 a Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington, 209C Parrington Hall, Box 353055, Seattle, WA 98195-3055, USA b Department of Humanities and Social Sciences in the Professions, New York University, Kimball Hall, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10003, USA article info Keywords: Low-income Social networks Mixed-income housing Public housing HOPE VI Seattle, WA abstract Do mixed income housing programs increase the poor’s social network diversity? Using unique, longi- tudinal, egocentric social network data, this research investigates changes in social network homophily for both Vietnamese and English-speaking original residents of a public housing redevelopment site. Changes in mixing occur for both those who return and those who moved away, but only increases in ethnic mixing were associated with returning to the new site. Thus, changes in social networks may be associated with disruption rather moving to a mixed-income site. Vietnamese residents also experienced increases in ethnic diversity compared to English-speaking respondents. The results raise questions about the social mixing intent of such programs. The high expectations for social network benefits of income mixing housing programs should be tempered. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since the early 1990s, income mixing and the dispersal of low income populations has been the main thrust of housing for the poor in the United States. This focus arises out of concerns most famously highlighted in William Julius Wilson’s (1987) The Truly Disadvantaged, which outlined the isolation of the urban poor in Chicago and other cities. Over time, a large literature grew to focus on the isolation of these inner city neighbourhoods and the neighbourhood effects on the life chances of individuals (Ellen and Turner, 1997; Jencks and Mayer, 1990). The response from policymakers was to emphasize the creation of low-income housing in situations that dispersed poverty in order to overcome the lack of access to social and economic opportunity (Briggs, 1997; Imbroscio, 2008; Joseph, 2006). Generally, there are three basic types of these programs: (1) small clusters of housing units (Hogan, 1996); (2) dispersal programs: usually through hous- ing vouchers, such as the Moving to Opportunity Program (Goering and Feins, 2003; Orr et al., 2003) or Chicago’s Gautreaux Program (Mendenhall et al., 2006; Rubinowitz and Rosenbaum, 2000); and (3) place-based solutions that create mixed income housing most frequently through the HOPE 2 VI public housing redevelopment program (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development). ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 206 221 3063; fax: +1 206 685 9044. E-mail addresses: Kleit@u.washington.edu (R.G. Kleit), nicole.carnegie@nyu.edu (N.B. Carnegie). 1 Tel.: + 1 212 998 5407. 2 HOPE: Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere; HUD: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; SHA: Seattle Housing Authority. One goal of these efforts is to alter the economic social oppor- tunities available to low-income people in their neighbourhoods. In an effort to understand the impact of these efforts on social net- works, Briggs (1998) and Kleit (2001b) suggest the policy impact may be that the structure and use of social ties change as the neigh- bourhood becomes more diverse. That is, the economic mix on site brings with it the possibility of structural changes in the social net- works of residents that relieve the social isolation discussed in the neighbourhood effects literature (for a summary of this literature, see Joseph, 2006) as well as potential changes in the instrumental use of social ties (Joseph et al., 2007). It is hoped that mixed- income housing will increase the diversity and range of social networks and these networks will enhance economic opportunity (for a detailed discussion within a mixed income setting, see Kleit, 2001b). Briggs (1998) characterizes types of social relationships that might change as being either those that help one to get along (social support) or those that help one to get ahead (social leverage). Yet, for those who move away from redeveloped sites, it is unclear what the social network impacts might be (Curley, 2009). Addition- ally, people’s social networks tend toward homogeneity (Marsden, 1987; McPherson et al., 2001; Wellman and Potter, 1999), and neighbourhoods are also usually quite homogeneous with respect to socio-economic status. Therefore, the question is what might be the impact of such programs on social network homophily, overall and among ties associated with either getting along or getting ahead? To answer this question, this research focuses social network outcomes for one such intervention, the High Point HOPE VI pub- lic housing redevelopment site in Seattle, WA. The redevelopment 0378-8733/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.socnet.2011.01.001