How Public Housing Redevelopments Affect Local School Composition and Quality

Lindsay Lanteri

Over the last three decades, the federal government has invested billions of dollars in public housing (PH) redevelopment (e.g., HOPE VI and Choice Neighborhoods Initiative) to deconcentrate poverty, revitalize dilapidated housing, and expand resources and opportunities for residents. Due to the enduring relationship between geographic residence and school assignment, federal housing policies are likely to influence low-income children's educational experiences and school contexts. Historically, PH has been situated in underinvested, racially and economically segregated neighborhoods, and schools located near PH have faced a myriad of challenges that depress student achievement. While prior research has examined PH redevelopment in terms of resident health and well-being, and neighborhood safety outcomes, studies have not assessed effects on local school contexts. The proposed study will use an innovative quasi-experimental design – flexible conditional difference-in-differences – to examine the causal effects of federal PH redevelopment on local public school demographic composition and quality, including student academic outcomes, teacher experience, and exclusionary discipline. A novel integrated dataset will be created, combining national education data, neighborhood-level data, and housing data. This dataset and the proposed analytic technique provide a unique opportunity to evaluate the intersection of housing policies and the education sector. This study will contribute to the theoretical and empirical literature by helping to disentangle whether PH redevelopments increase school diversity and improve school quality, or instead enhance school segregation and associated disparities.

About Lindsay Lanteri

Lindsay Lanteri is a Ph.D. candidate in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology at Boston College. Her research broadly examines the interconnection between neighborhood, housing, and school contexts with the goal of understanding how policies and community interventions in these realms can mitigate inequities in education, economic mobility, and health outcomes for children and families. As an interdisciplinary scholar and mixed-methods researcher, Lindsay employs a range of methodological approaches from quasi-experimental designs and large-scale survey analysis to qualitative interviews and focus groups. Lindsay is currently a researcher on the Housing Opportunity and Mobility Experiment (HOME) Study, which is a longitudinal natural experiment that aims to examine the effects of public housing redevelopment on resident's health and well-being, as well as their educational and economic success. Lindsay's recent work has been published in Children & Youth Services Review and the American Journal of Community Psychology. Prior to pursuing a doctoral degree, Lindsay was a research specialist for Providence Public Schools and an impact manager for City Year, an education non-profit. She received a B.A. in Political Science and Urban Studies from the University of Pittsburgh, and an M.A. in Urban Education Policy from Brown University.