A study on employment of HOPE VI projects: Examining the impact of neighborhood disadvantage, housing type diversity, and supportive services

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe present study tested the associations of housing type diversity, neighborhood disadvantage, and employment-related community supportive services with new job placements in 257 HOPE VI projects. This study used a merged data from quarterly reports by HOPE VI revitalization grantees, 2010–2014 American Community Survey, and the entropy index on housing type diversity of each HOPE VI site. This study first described the patterns of housing type diversity and the surrounding neighborhoods of the HOPE VI sites. Then, a negative binomial regression analysis showed that higher housing type diversity and a higher number of education programs were significantly associated with a higher number of new job placements. The results suggest that mixing residents with diverse housing types could yield positive employment outcomes. None of the neighborhood-level predictors was statistically significant. This paper is one of the first to apply the entropy index to diverse housing types of mixed-income developments.