Funny you use low-income housing as an example. Housing projects have made many things worse, because they concentrate poverty and therefore crime. It's one of the four columns of the poverty-cycle:
My view is probably biased since I live in Denver. Every new building with more than a certain number of units (I couldn't find the year it started) is required to have some percentage of units dedicated to low-income / low-rent tenants. So we don't have the problem of concentrated poverty or crime.
It is based off of earning a percentage of median income by county (or maybe zip code).
- drug war
- justice system
- housing projects
- welfare gap