Housing Restoration and Displacement

Report Outline
Whites' Return to the Cities
Government Role in Housing
New Factors Affecting Ownership
Special Focus

Whites' Return to the Cities

Economic Impetus for City Transformation

Scars of neglect are still very much in evidence in most American cities. Houses in many urban neighborhoods are rundown, apartments are overcrowded, and unemployment and crime rates remain high. However, important changes are also occurring. The so-called “white flight” to the suburbs that began after World War II and reached its peak during the 1960s has slowed considerably in recent years and in some cases has been reversed. Old inner-city neighborhoods that once were the object of social and political rejection have become highly desirable both as real estate investments and places to live.

Little by little, the middle class is returning to the nation's long-neglected urban centers. While precise national data on central city reinvestment have not yet been compiled, available information suggests that neighborhood redevelopment has increased substantially in the 1970s. A 1977 survey by the Urban Land Institute on housing activity in major U.S. cities found significant investment in three-quarters of those with populations of 500,000 or more. The study estimated that some 50,000 center-city housing units were restored from 1967 to 1975 — and that the number probably has increased since 1975.

With the cost of new houses expected to go up by as much as 10 percent in 1979, the impetus for the back-to-the-city movement is attributable largely to economics — it has become cheaper to buy an old house and repair it than to build or buy a new one. Many municipalities, conscious of the potential for added tax dollars, are encouraging migration into urban neighborhoods. They often make available low-cost city houses to non-commercial buyers who agree to refurbish them and live in them for a specified period. In such areas as Boston's South End, Washington's Adams-Morgan neighborhood, Philadelphia's Queen Village, Seattle's Capitol Hill and Baltimore's Fells Point section, restoration is well under way.