Case Study Three: Dispersing Public Housing in Yonkers, NY
In Yonkers, existing public housing residents from concentrated high-rise developments were successfully dispersed into middle-income areas using scattered-site townhouses designed with "Defensible Space." This is a program now under active consideration by many major cities in the country (Chicago, Dallas, Newark, Boston, Hartford, etc.).
Throughout the country, hundreds of existing 40-year-old, high-density public housing projects are ready to be torn down. Their inhabitants are insisting on the dispersal of these units rather than on their rehabilitation or replication. HUD has been taken to court by some of these residents and by the Justice Department to prevent the perpetuation of these ghettos. Yonkers provides a workable model of how this can be done without spreading crime, depressing property values, or prompting middle-class flight.