Public housing and property values: Alexandria, Virginia as a not generalizable case?

Urban Institute did a study of public housing in Alexandria, Virginia--a super high value housing market, marked by historic housing in the core that is in high demand, and proximate to the public housing there--and said that public housing doesn't reduce property values ("What Does Affordable Housing Do to Nearby Property Values?," Bloomberg).

The public housing is probably maintained better than the typical public housing agency. The properties are intermingled in super high value residential areas, which is atypical.  The article also acknowledges that the public housing in Alexandria doesn't have the poor design and construction values typical of public housing. 

I think the wrong lessons will be drawn from this--people across the country will tout that "public housing" doesn't reduce property values, and this will be used to justify public housing construction in the face of nimby opposition elsewhere.

The real lessons are:

(1) High quality public housing (and actually it's been rebuilt, it had been old and tired) 

(2) that is well managed

(3) built with quality architectural design and construction values

(4) is well located

(5) intermingled in high value residential areas (with access to high quality amenities)

(6) works better, is valued more highly and doesn't impinge on market rate housing values.

The fact is that most public housing authorities are financially strapped, poor property managers of ugly and poorly constructed buildings that are often not well located.

DC would be an interesting case study as well.  Most people don't know that Capitol Hill has the most amount of public housing of most any neighborhood in the city, and the neighborhood is extremely high valued despite the presence and proximity of public housing.

But the public housing that is there tends to be problematic in terms of design and construction value, and association with nuisance behavior and crime.  

For example, Kentucky Courts and Potomac Gardens are on the edge of Capitol Hill. Super problematic, ugly ("Police identify two men fatally shot near Potomac Gardens in Southeast Washington," Washington Post). 

Potomac Gardens

Regardless of their poor condition and crime problems, the demand for nearby high quality historic housing supersedes the nuisance value of the public housing. 

Although that is the case now that the demand for urban living has changed--20 years ago, that wasn't the case ("THE NEIGHBORHOOD SYMBOLIZED D.C. GENTRIFICATION -- THEN SOMETHING WENT VERY WRONG," Washington Post).   The neighborhood needed more residents in order to counter nuisance forces, and that came with the addition of various multiunit housing developments, as well as the continued rehabilitation of formerly vacant properties.  

Plus, once the demand for urban living switched to positive c. 2000, the city experienced greater numbers of higher income households moving into the city, including in Capitol Hill.

During the HOPE6 Clinton years another public housing project, Ellen Wilson Dwellings, was de-socialed, where only 25% of the units remained for low income after reconstruction ("Dream City," 1999, "'Hood winked," 2002, Washington City Paper). 

A different project, located on the other side of the Southeast-Southwest Freeway, the Arthur Capper Dwellings (now called Capper-Carrollsburg) was demolished and rebuilt as mostly as market rate rowhouses with some public housing organized as rowhouse apartments intermingled ("Old D.C. Housing Projects Give Way To New," 2012, WAMU/NPR). 

After.  Photos: JDLand

Before.

Those houses are plenty expensive.  I don't know the quality of the management of the public housing properties.  They seem to be well maintained.  

What's fascinating to me is there's an owners association for the development that precludes membership and participation by tenants in the public housing units--it's the equivalent of "poor doors" in New York City ("The “Poor Door” and the Glossy Reconfiguration of City Life," New Yorker).