Mixed-Income Living: Anticipated and Realized Benefits for Low-Income Households

Diane K. Levy
Zach McDade
Kassie Bertumen

Urban Institute

The basic elements of a mixed-income housing strategy—redeveloping public housing developments and poor neighborhoods to attract higher income residents and relocating lower income households to less poor areas—continue to inform federal and local housing policies in the United States and a number of other countries. Mixed-income strategies usually begin with the hypothesis that mixing incomes will address a number of problems associated with poverty concentration and neighborhood disinvestment. To set the stage for other articles in the symposium of this issue of Cityscape, this article defines terms and then reviews the hypothesized benefits of mixed-income environments for low-income adults and children and examines evidence of benefits. It concludes with a literature-based consideration of how practice might best address the goals of economic desegregation and poverty alleviation that income mixing has yet to achieve.