Selected students have been assigned 500-word response essays to dig deeper into any topic(s) in designated chapters of Doug Massey et al.’s book, Climbing Mount Laurel. Feel free to draw on my suggested reading questions further below, or devise your own questions to explore.
When students post essays (using the WordPress category), they should appear below:
- Achievements and Downfalls of Housing and Subsequent Data Visualization Reflected in Chapter 8, “Tenant Transitions”Isabel Fine
- Greener Pastures: Chapter 7 of Climbing Mount Laurel: The Struggle For Affordable Housing And Social Mobility In An American Suburb by Douglas MasseySG
- Housing Development Arguments in “Climbing Mt. Laurel”Angus Macdonald
- Selection Bias and Internal and External Validity in Climbing Mount LaurelClaire Bradach
- The Keynesian View of Housing and Public School Markets: Is the Grass Always Greener for Ethel Lawrence Homes?Hans How
Chapter 1:
1) Massey et al. argue that housing markets are not truly “free markets,” but created and supported by government actions. What examples do they offer to support this argument, and do you find them persuasive? Also, through their lenses, what comparisons can you draw between private housing markets and public school markets?
2) Massey et al. argue that that land-use policy decisions (such as zoning) typically fall from the highest levels of government (federal or state) to the lowest, most decentralized levels (municipal government). Why does this happen, and why is it a problem, in the authors’ eyes?
3) Massey et al. argue that “density zoning is now the most important mechanism promoting class and racial segregation” in the US, and that it has largely replaced overt racial discrimination in housing markets (pp. 19-21). How do the authors explain how this shift happened, and is their case persuasive?
4) Massey et al. point to housing mobility programs (aka residential mobility programs, the Gatreaux experiment in Chicago, and later Moving to Opportunity programs) as new civil rights strategies (p. 21). What makes housing mobility different from past strategies? What are some of the risks of this new approach? How are housing mobility programs similar to school choice programs?
5) When I read the introductory chapter to Climbing Mount Laurel, there are many places where data visualization would improve how readers learn about these concepts, especially those involving spatial segregation and concentration of poverty over time. If you were designing a digital edition of Massey’s book, what are one or two of the most important data visualizations that you would create to accompany the text, and why? Feel free to add a simple sketch to your post if desired.
Chapter 2:
6) Ethel Lawrence and other African Americans had been long-term residents of suburban Mount Laurel, not newcomers moving in from the city. How did this history happen, and did it shape this particular case?
7) What different kinds of objections did opponents to the Mount Laurel Doctrine raise, and were some more compelling than others?
Chapter 3:
8) Why were Peter O’Connor and others in the Fair Share Housing Development (FSHD) legal team so concerned with the physical appearance of Ethel Lawrence Homes?
9) Who were the first residents to move into the Ethel Lawrence Homes in 2000, and were they randomly selected?
10) How did Ethel Lawrence Homes manage the problem of “gap financing,” or finding revenue to meet costs not covered by low-income residents rent?
General questions for the empirical evidence in the body of the book, chapters 4 – 9:
11) When we read Robert Bifulco et al.’s article the challenges of evaluating school choice programs, we discussed “selection bias,” which refers to hard-to-measure motivations and resources of support among program applicants, which makes them different from non-applicants. How did Massey and his co-authors deal with selection bias in their study of a housing mobility program, and should we exercise caution when interpreting their results?
12) In April 2014, Doug Massey presented his research to a broad audience of people interested in housing issues in Hartford, titled “Mt. Laurel’s Promise In CT: How Housing Can Help Close Our Achievement Gap.” Look at his 28 presentation slides and compare them to the book. What does one medium convey that the other does not?
13) Massey’s Hartford speaking engagement was subtitled “How Housing Can Help Close Our Achievement Gap.” Is that a claim that Massey makes about housing mobility in his book — or not? Look closely at what their evidence about academic outcomes does and does not tell us.