It`s easy for Selenia McPhee to picture the life she might be leading if her family hadn`t moved from Englewood to the suburbs in 1978.
It`s not a pretty picture.
``I didn`t want to be one of those with three kids, on welfare and on drugs, with nothing else to do,`` said 24-year-old McPhee, who graduated from Illinois Benedictine College in Lisle in 1990 and recently joined the Navy.
But the odds were against her in Englewood. Crimes and drugs were rampant, and she once found a body in an alley near her home.
Like most of the students in a recent study, McPhee found that changing her environment changed her life.
According to a Northwestern University study to be released Wednesday, low-income black children who moved from inner-city Chicago to predominantly white, middle-class suburbs through subsidized housing are more than twice as likely to attend college than those who were relocated within the city.
The study, one of three conducted since 1982, shows once again that environment, rather than race and class, is more likely to determine a child`s ability to succeed.
``The importance of place can`t be underestimated in the lives of children and families,`` said Alexander Polikoff, the lawyer who led a 1974 racial segregation suit against the Chicago Housing Authority and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. ``The way to get ahead in our society is moving to a better neighborhood. And that avenue for traditional American mobility is closed to blacks because of racial segregation.``
The two-year study, which tracked one student each from 107 families in the court-ordered Gautreaux subsidized housing program, indicates that by changing their environment, poor people can find the motivation to improve their lives, said researcher James Rosenbaum.
``No one sees any opportunity in the projects, so there`s no reason for them to exert themselves in school,`` said Rosenbaum, a professor at the university`s Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research. ``It`s very demoralizing. People in the projects accept that as the only way it can be. In the suburbs, there were clear incentives. The standards were higher in the schools. Kids learned if you don`t go to school, you won`t make something of yourself.``
Of the 18- to 25-year-olds studied, 68 moved to the suburbs and 39 remained in the city. Fifty-four percent of those who moved to the suburbs attended college, as opposed to 21 percent of those who remained in the city. Even those who did not attend college fared better in the suburbs. Seventy-five percent found employment, while only 41 percent in the city got jobs. The suburban jobs also paid more and provided better benefits.
But civil rights leaders, such as Urban League Executive Director James Compton, caution that moving black families to white neighborhoods doesn`t necessarily equate success.
``Integration is a factor, but not if it`s simply commingling of the races,`` Compton said. ``It`s integration with opportunities that did not exist in CHA. These people were able not only to improve their housing, but their way of life.``
Since the Gautreaux program began in 1976 as a outgrowth of the lawsuit against the CHA and HUD, about 4,300 low-income families have used federal housing vouchers administered by the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities to move from public housing to either integrated city neighborhoods or the suburbs. Most families were headed by single mothers who received public assistance.
The move meant more than a new home in a safer neighborhood. Moving often meant getting off welfare rolls and joining the ranks of the employed, sometimes for the first time, Rosenbaum said.
According a previous Northwestern study of Gautreaux participants in 1988, 58 percent of the women found jobs on their own.
Many of the women in that study cited an absence of crime, a feeling of greater security with their children, more available jobs, and their desire to fit in with their neighbors. They said these factors helped them acquire jobs. Selenia McPhee`s mother, Cora, would be the first to agree.
In 1978, Cora McPhee said, she was a high school dropout working as a security guard. After she moved with her two daughters to a two-bedroom townhouse in Lisle, she enrolled in a job skills training course. A teacher encouraged her to get her high school equivalency diploma, and she later decided to take college courses.
Today, McPhee, 40, owns her own home in suburban Markham.
``I`d probably still be living in the city somewhere, not knowing there was a better way to live,`` McPhee said. ``Just moving opened the door.``
The Gautreaux program`s success may soon be mirrored nationwide. A bill, sponsored by Rep. Bob Traxler (D-Mich.) and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), has tentatively passed in the House and the Senate. The $20 million demonstration project will provide poor families in five cities with Section 8 housing vouchers so that they can move to more affluent communities.
According to Rosenbaum, moving to more affluent neighborhoods doesn`t guarantee immediate success.
Many suburban students were kept back a grade, while 20 percent were put in special education classes. In city schools, only 7 percent of the Gautreaux pupils were enrolled in remedial classes. By 1989, most of the suburban students had average or above-average grades.
Almost half of the suburban students said they were called bad names by white students; 12 percent said whites threatened them. About the same number of city students reported name calling; 19 percent said they were threatened by black students. After a year, most suburban racial incidents died down.
``When I moved to Lisle, it was like another world,`` Cora McPhee said.
``I made up my mind I would never ever put my kids back in the Chicago public school system again.``