The New York Times this weekend offered an interesting glimpse into what life is like for Section 8 residents who leave urban centers for the suburbs.

Under the Section 8 federal housing voucher program, thousands of poor, urban and often African-American residents have left hardscrabble neighborhoods in the nation’s largest cities and resettled in the suburbs.

Law enforcement experts and housing researchers argue that rising crime rates follow Section 8 recipients to their new homes, while other experts discount any direct link. But there is little doubt that cultural shock waves have followed the migration. Social and racial tensions between newcomers and their neighbors have increased, forcing suburban communities like Antioch to re-evaluate their civic identities along with their methods of dealing with the new residents.

The piece focuses specifically on Antioch, Calif., a northern California city about 40 miles northeast of Oakland that has experienced an influx of Section 8 residents in the past decade.  It’s pretty clear the NYT article was written, at least in part, as a reaction to Hannah Rosin’s controversial piece in The Atlantic last month. I’ll let you decide how well it did in that regard….and you can also check out an interesting discussion about Rosin’s piece on EquityBlog, too.