The second study, “Moved to Opportunity: The Long-Run Effect of Public Housing Demolition on Labor Market Outcomes on Children,” by Eric Chyn, a professor of economics at the University of Virginia, found a substantial positive impact on children who were moved to better neighborhoods after being displaced (as a consequence of public housing demolition) from concentrated poverty. These children “are 9 percent more likely to be employed and earn 16 percent more as adults” than those who were not displaced, Chyn reported.

The flare-up over affordable housing in Baltimore County is just the kind of controversy Democratic Party leaders dread because it pits Democrats against Democrats. And it is also just the kind of controversy Republicans thrive upon, as exemplified by Donald Trump’s speech Tuesday night in West Bend, Wisconsin, a white community 40 miles north of Milwaukee, where police have been battling rioters.

Trump told his supporters that Clinton is “peddling the narrative of cops as a racist force in our society” and shares “responsibility for the unrest.” Trump went even further:

She is against the police, believe me. You know it and I know it, and guess what? She knows it.

The problems for Democrats on matters of race and housing subsidies are not confined to Baltimore. In Westchester County, just north of New York City, an ongoing battle over the court-ordered construction of affordable housing has played a key role in the election and re-election of a Republican county executive — in a suburban jurisdiction that, in presidential elections, has become increasingly Democratic.

It is this kind of conflict that the Clinton campaign is determined to avoid. Clinton’s staff has repeatedly declined requests for her views on assertive government policies that require suburbs to provide affordable housing for those with low or moderate incomes.

Such policies include court orders under the Fair Housing Act of 1968, along with enforcement of the June 2015 Housing and Urban Development regulation known as the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, which mandates that local governments produce plans providing for increased integration by race and class.

As she attempts to draw votes from both of these wings of the Democratic Party, Clinton has good reason for caution. The town of Chappaqua in Westchester County, where the Clintons own a home, happens to be located in the midst of an affordable housing conflict I have written about before.

Rob Astorino, the Republican county executive, takes great joy in capitalizing on the issue. In July 2015, Astorino pointedly held a news conference in front of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s home, using affordable housing as a political cudgel to demand:

Now, I have a question for Hillary Clinton, who’s in her home today right behind me: does she think she lives in a discriminatory town? I don’t. Does she think that the Obama administration is being very unfair in attacking her own community? I do. But we need to know where Hillary Clinton stands on this issue and she needs to speak up today.

Clinton did not respond, nor did she reply to requests for local comment from the Westchester media.