People living in high-poverty neighborhoods in the U.S. often don’t have easy access to good schools, jobs, or parks and other green spaces. Instead, the residents of such neighborhoods are exposed to violence and environmental hazards on a daily basis. Growing up in such difficult environments, research has shown time and again, leads to a lifetime of negative consequences.

To help the situation, anti-poverty policies designed to pull poor families out of downtrodden areas have been put in place all over the country. Giving out housing vouchers, for instance, has been one effective way to help low-income families live in better neighborhoods. Federal and local governments have also encouraged the development of affordable-housing units in rich neighborhoods (although many such efforts have faced significant pushback).

But a new report by the Center for American Progress reaffirms that these initiatives have not been nearly sufficient in meeting the growing demand for affordable housing. “As a result, there is a great divide between where low-income people can afford to live and where opportunities exist,” the report’s authors write.

To illustrate this divide, the CAP report examined the location of vacant affordable units for rent in the Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Houston metro areas. (These are units that a household earning 80 percent of the area’s median income can afford without spending more than 30 percent of household income on rent and mortgage payments.) These cities are in different parts of the country and have different laws, economies, and city planning. But in each case, housing options for the poor are primarily located in low- to mid-opportunity neighborhoods—where opportunity is measured by presence of things like high-paying jobs, good transit, retail, and education.