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1 bedroom asking rent fell, everything else rises. And we're digging deeper on Tidewater relocation and race.
After our last rent report on where Tidewater Gardens residents ended up after the redevelopment, we received a lot of follow-up questions. So this month, we’re continuing with another look at the relocation data, this time by race. And in a hopeful portent of things to come, asking rents for 1 bedroom apartments are down! As always, if you like this work consider supporting us here to help keep it free. We are entirely donor funded.
In August, the average asking rent across all units was $1,882. The median was $1,777. That's up slightly from last month. 1 bedroom rents fell to $1,581 down from $1,591!
Studio:
Average Rent: $1,400.69 | Median Rent: $1,439.25
1 Bedroom:
Average Rent: $1,581.08 | Median Rent: $1,607.50
2 Bedroom:
Average Rent: $1,846.00 | Median Rent: $1,800.00
3 Bedroom:
Average Rent: $2,228.35 | Median Rent: $2,200.00
4+ Bedroom:
Average Rent: $2,762.23 | Median Rent: $2,625.00
Last month we brought you a look at where residents from Tidewater Gardens ended up. Specifically, we asked if there was any truth to the NRHA (Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority’s) claim that over 90% of Tidewater Gardens households relocated to neighborhoods with less than 40% poverty.
After our email, we heard back from a few of our fans (CityWorkers?) with follow-up questions. They wanted to know how race factored into relocation dynamics.
After all, when the demolition of Tidewater Gardens began, the NRHA wanted to relocate residents to what Housing and Urban Development (HUD) called “Areas of Opportunity.” These are neighborhoods with less than 40% poverty and less than a 62% minority population.
We already noted how many residents relocated to neighborhoods with 39% poverty. But what about race? Did Tidewater Gardens’ residents move from one minority-concentrated neighborhood to another?
As a refresher, Tidewater Gardens had 618 units. The NRHA has relocation data on 614 of them.
305 households took a Housing Choice Voucher (formerly Section 8) which allows tenants to rent in the private market with government support. 207 households relocated to Project Based or Public Housing, where rental assistance is offered at specific apartments while tenants live there. The remaining 102 households are “Deceased,” “Eviction,” “Moved without notice,” “Purchased a Home,” or “Rented Elsewhere.”
We only have specific data on 481 households that relocated in Norfolk. If a household relocated outside of Norfolk, say Portsmouth, the NRHA doesn’t say specifically where in Portsmouth that household went.
Out of 481 households, 343 moved to neighborhoods where the racial concentration is 62% or more African American. Roughly 71% of all households that relocated in Norfolk relocated to neighborhoods with a high concentration of African Americans.
In general, there’s a pretty strong trend that emerges. The more Black the neighborhood, the more likely it was that someone from Tidewater Gardens moved there. The chart below shows the relationship between a neighborhood’s Black population and how many households relocated there.
One way to read this chart is that in any given neighborhood, if the African American population went up by 10%, we'd expect about 2.4 more households from Tidewater to relocate to that neighborhood.
In fact, most households relocated to neighborhoods where the African American population is around 80%. This image below shows a map of Norfolk. The purple neighborhoods are neighborhoods with over 62% African American population, the blue dots represent the amount of relocated households. The bigger the blue dot, the more households relocated there.
If we compare this with white neighborhoods, we find a negative relationship with relocations. Meaning, the whiter a neighborhood gets, the fewer households relocated there. In Norfolk, only 15 households relocated to neighborhoods over 62% white.
If you’re saying to yourself the 40% poverty and 62% minority threshold is kind of arbitrary, you’re right. And in all fairness to the NRHA, they did not choose that definition. HUD set those numbers. For its part, the NRHA believes there’s more to opportunity than race and poverty. In their own words: “While the HUD definition of a “Neighborhood of Opportunity” also includes a caveat that the neighborhood is less than 62% minority concentration, we believe that the racial makeup of a community isn’t the inherent problem or solution, but that a safe place with access to jobs, schools, healthcare, transportation, and community support is of more importance and value.”
In Other News
Christopher Newport University Professor Johnny Finn has just published an excellent article in Nonsite on the history of Urban Renewal and Tidewater Gardens in Norfolk.
Read it here.
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