Greg Rosalski

Or if it was about the whole mixing incomes idea, you know, just do that.

Or maybe it was about some third thing that they weren't even thinking of.

And Matt was like, huh, what if we went back over our data and grouped Hope 6 developments according to how well off the neighborhoods around them were?

And they were even able to show that the Hope Six kids really were interacting more with the more well-off kids.

They were more connected to each other on Facebook and more likely to live together as adults.

So it's not the architecture, it's like who you're interacting with.

So that's actually something I want to drill down on.

And I realize this is in some ways beyond the scope of the paper, but it feels like a really present question, which is, what are the possible stories for why that's occurring?

Raj's last theory is the one he personally finds the most compelling, and it's about what kids think is even possible for themselves.

Now there's a part of me that reads a study like this and is like, this is great.

We did it.

We have an answer now for how to reduce poverty, how to like cause upward mobility.

We're done.

But then it never seems to work out quite that cleanly in the real world.

So next, we're going to talk about how we're actually doing as a country at putting the ideas from this study into practice.

And we're going to go back to Wysina, who raised her own son in a Hope Six development, to see what she thinks about the study.

All of that after the break.

Okay, so there are a few things you need to understand about HOPE VI, this program that really changed outcomes for kids who grew up in public housing.

The first is that it doesn't exist anymore.

Funding for the HOPE VI program ended 14 years ago.