Housing Mobility Programs Research Articles

What determines the success of housing mobility programs?

Housing Mobility Programs (HMPs) support residential mobility to reduce economic segregation. One design feature of HMPs requires identifying areas to which moving will most improve outcomes. We show that ranking neighborhoods’ effects using current residents’ outcomes has strengths over using previous residents’ outcomes due to statistical uncertainty, bias from sorting over time, and lack of support. We simulate how the choice of neighborhood ranking and others affect an originally-intended outcome of HMPs: reducing racial segregation. HMP success on this dimension depends on the ability to port vouchers across jurisdictions, access to cars, and the range of neighborhoods targeted.

Does Poor Health Influence Residential Selection? Understanding Mobility Among Low-Income Housing Voucher Recipients in the Moving to Opportunity Study

Housing-mobility programs and housing choice vouchers provide low-income families with a potentially transformative opportunity to move to low-poverty neighborhoods. However, families often face barriers to attaining upward residential mobility; poor health may be one important barrier, although few studies have examined this hypothesis. We used the experimental Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Project (MTO) Study, constructed residential trajectories, and linked neighborhood opportunity measures to over 14,000 addresses of 3526 families across 7 years. We used latent growth curve longitudinal models to test how baseline health modified effects of MTO housing voucher treatment on neighborhood opportunity trajectories. Results show that poor baseline health adversely influenced how the voucher induced upward mobility. Voucher receipt strongly promoted residential mobility if families were healthy; moreover, the low-poverty neighborhood voucher plus counseling treatment promoted higher-opportunity neighborhood attainment than controls, regardless of the baseline health of the family. However, families with health vulnerabilities did not retain the same initial neighborhood gains conferred by the housing choice voucher (HCV) treatment as families without health vulnerabilities. These results suggest that housing counseling may be one necessary element to expand neighborhood choice into higher-opportunity neighborhoods for families with health challenges. Providing housing vouchers alone is insufficient to promote low-income-family high-opportunity moves, for families who have disabilities or special needs. The implications of these results point to scaling up housing-mobility programs, to provide tailored support for low-income families to use HCVs to make high-opportunity moves, which is particularly necessary for families with health challenges.

Association of a Housing Mobility Program With Childhood Asthma Symptoms and Exacerbations

Structural racism has been implicated in the disproportionally high asthma morbidity experienced by children living in disadvantaged, urban neighborhoods. Current approaches designed to reduce asthma triggers have modest impact. To examine whether participation in a housing mobility program that provided housing vouchers and assistance moving to low-poverty neighborhoods was associated with reduced asthma morbidity among children and to explore potential mediating factors. Cohort study of 123 children aged 5 to 17 years with persistent asthma whose families participated in the Baltimore Regional Housing Partnership housing mobility program from 2016 to 2020. Children were matched to 115 children enrolled in the Urban Environment and Childhood Asthma (URECA) birth cohort using propensity scores. Moving to a low-poverty neighborhood. Caregiver-reported asthma exacerbations and symptoms. Among 123 children enrolled in the program, median age was 8.4 years, 58 (47.2%) were female, and 120 (97.6%) were Black. Prior to moving, 89 of 110 children (81%) lived in a high-poverty census tract (>20% of families below the poverty line); after moving, only 1 of 106 children with after-move data (0.9%) lived in a high-poverty tract. Among this cohort, 15.1% (SD, 35.8) had at least 1 exacerbation per 3-month period prior to moving vs 8.5% (SD, 28.0) after moving, an adjusted difference of -6.8 percentage points (95% CI, -11.9% to -1.7%; P = .009). Maximum symptom days in the past 2 weeks were 5.1 (SD, 5.0) before moving and 2.7 (SD, 3.8) after moving, an adjusted difference of -2.37 days (95% CI, -3.14 to -1.59; P < .001). Results remained significant in propensity score-matched analyses with URECA data. Measures of stress, including social cohesion, neighborhood safety, and urban stress, all improved with moving and were estimated to mediate between 29% and 35% of the association between moving and asthma exacerbations. Children with asthma whose families participated in a program that helped them move into low-poverty neighborhoods experienced significant improvements in asthma symptom days and exacerbations. This study adds to the limited evidence suggesting that programs to counter housing discrimination can reduce childhood asthma morbidity.

“I Thought This Was a Ghost Neighborhood”: How Youth Respond to Neighborhood Change

Abstract Relatively little scholarship centers the experiences of Black youth to understand how young people interact with their neighborhood contexts, evaluate the differences between neighborhoods, and adapt to new neighborhoods. Using interviews with 120 Black youth whose families moved from high-poverty central city neighborhoods into lower-poverty, more racially diverse suburban neighborhoods with the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program, we find that Black youth describe tradeoffs that come with living in both city and suburban neighborhoods. While youth viewed their suburban neighborhoods as safer, the young people encountered new repertoires of socializing and space use after moving to the suburbs, with fewer opportunities to spontaneously hang out with peers. This made it challenging to establish new social ties. In response, youth adopted varied strategies, some aligned with new patterns of socializing, others stayed inside, and some returned to the city to reconnect with friends, even if this involved returning to neighborhoods they perceived as less safe. Our work underscores the idea that neighborhoods do not impose culture on youth in enduring or inflexible ways; rather they offer strategies of action that youth can decide to take up. How youth perceive the qualities of their neighborhoods shapes where and how they choose to spend their time.

“Inter-District School Transfers and the Role of Educators in Black Students’ Sense of School Belonging”

Inter-district racial and socioeconomic segregation continue to affect students’ educational opportunities. Housing mobility programs provide a way for low-income families to access lower-poverty and higher-performing schools in nearby districts. However, changing schools is also disruptive for students. Through interviews with 67 low-income Black youth who moved from Baltimore city into the suburbs with a mobility program, we examine how students’ interactions with educators shaped their school transition. Educators who provided academic and interpersonal support helped mitigate disruption by promoting students’ sense of school belonging. Yet, we find significant heterogeneity in the support students received as they entered new schools.

Neighborhoods, Caregiver Stress, and Children's Asthma Symptoms

Neighborhood and caregiver characteristics have each been linked to children's asthma outcomes, but less is known about how caregiver psychosocial functioning may explain the link between neighborhood characteristics and asthma outcomes. To examine associations between neighborhood safety, caregiver stress and depressive symptoms, and children's asthma outcomes, and to evaluate whether caregiver stress and depressive symptoms mediate the relationship between neighborhood safety and asthma outcomes. We analyzed baseline data from a prospective cohort study of the effects of a housing mobility program on children's asthma-related outcomes. Age- and sex-adjusted models evaluated associations of neighborhood safety, and caregiver stress and depressive symptoms, with children's asthma symptoms and exacerbations. Participants were 140 low-income children with persistent asthma (98% Black participants; 53% males; mean age, 9.0 years) with an average of 7.1 ± 5.3 maximum symptom days per 2 weeks. Lower neighborhood safety, and higher caregiver stress and depressive symptoms, were associated with higher asthma symptoms, but not exacerbations, in adjusted models (eg, for neighborhood safety, maximum symptom days: odds ratio, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.07-1.88; for caregiver stress, maximum symptom days: odds ratio, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.01-1.15; for depressive symptoms, maximum symptom days: odds ratio, 1.05; 95% CI, 1.00-1.11). Exploratory analyses suggested that caregiver stress partially mediated associations between neighborhood safety and asthma symptoms for children in unsafe neighborhoods. Neighborhood safety was associated with children's asthma symptoms independent from caregiver stress and depressive symptoms, although for children in unsafe neighborhoods, caregiver stress may partially mediate this association. Findings suggest the importance of targeting multiple systems to improve children's asthma outcomes.

How neighborhood conditions and policy incentives affect relocation outcomes of households from low-income neighborhoods—Evidence from intra-city movement trajectories

This paper examines residential mobility patterns of households living in low-income neighborhoods, paying close attention to the neighborhood characteristics that influence their mobility. Using several million records of household-level datasets for address change trajectories in the Chicago metropolitan area, this paper explores the relationship among movers and the associated neighborhood-level income differences between origin and destination locations, to interpret which households from low-income neighborhoods can use residential mobility to move up to more neighborhood conditions result in residential mobility outcomes to favorable neighborhood conditions and potentially end the cycle of poverty. This research finds the positive prospects for low-income neighborhood households to move up, while the characteristics (e.g., racial composition) of origin and destination neighborhoods play a significant role in relocation outcomes. In addition, housing mobility programs can have various impacts on households moving from neighborhoods of different income levels. Policymakers should be aware of the diverse needs of households in extremely low-income neighborhoods (less concentrated housing assistance) and in very low-income neighborhoods (public housing) that can help them move out of concentrated poverty and move up to neighborhoods with higher income spectrums.

An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force: A Comment

Previous articleNext article No AccessCommentsAn Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force: A CommentSteven N. Durlauf and James J. HeckmanSteven N. DurlaufUniversity of Chicago Search for more articles by this author and James J. HeckmanUniversity of Chicago Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Volume 128, Number 10October 2020 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/710976 Views: 3687Total views on this site Citations: 10Citations are reported from Crossref HistoryPublished online September 08, 2020 © 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Stephen B Perrott The recruitment of women and visible minorities into Canadian police forces: Should we expect further progress?, The Police Journal: Theory, Practice and Principles 96, no.11 (Aug 2021): 26–44.https://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X211032106Brendan O’Flaherty, Rajiv Sethi Stereotypes and the Administration of Justice, (Nov 2022): 1–25.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-4016-9_10-1Richard Stansfield, Ethan Aaronson, Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn Police use of firearms: Exploring citizen, officer, and incident characteristics in a statewide sample, Journal of Criminal Justice 75 (Jul 2021): 101828.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2021.101828Jessica Huff Understanding police decisions to arrest: The impact of situational, officer, and neighborhood characteristics on police discretion, Journal of Criminal Justice 75 (Jul 2021): 101829.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2021.101829Ian Lundberg, Rebecca Johnson, Brandon M. Stewart What Is Your Estimand? Defining the Target Quantity Connects Statistical Evidence to Theory, American Sociological Review 86, no.33 (Jun 2021): 532–565.https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224211004187Matt E. Ryan Frisking, (Aug 2021): 1–4.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_685-2Brendan O'Flaherty, Rajiv Sethi Stereotypes and the Administration of Justice, SSRN Electronic Journal 41 (Jan 2021).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3808745Roland G. Fryer Jr. An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force: A Response, Journal of Political Economy 128, no.1010 (Sep 2020): 4003–4008.https://doi.org/10.1086/710977Deepak Premkumar Intensified Scrutiny and Bureaucratic Effort: Evidence from Policing and Crime After High-Profile, Officer-Involved Fatalities, SSRN Electronic Journal 103 (Jan 2020).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3715223Dionissi Aliprantis, Hal Martin, Kristen Tauber What Determines the Success of Housing Mobility Programs?, SSRN Electronic Journal 102 (Jan 2020).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3737041

What Determines the Success of Housing Mobility Programs?

There is currently interest in crafting public housing policy that combats, rather than contributes to, the residential segregation in American cities. One such policy is the Housing Mobility Program (HMP), which aims to help people move from disinvested neighborhoods to ones with more opportunities. This paper studies how design features influence the success of HMPs in reducing racial segregation. We find that the choice of neighborhood opportunity index used to define the opportunity areas to which participants are encouraged to move has limited influence on HMP success. In contrast, we find that three design features have large effects on HMP success: 1) whether the geographic scope is confined to the central city or is implemented as a metro-level partnership; 2) whether the eligibility criteria are race-based, race-conscious, or race-neutral; 3) whether tenant counseling, tenant search assistance, and landlord outreach are successful in relaxing rental housing supply constraints.

Racial Inequality, Neighborhood Effects, and Moving to Opportunity

Moving to Opportunity (MTO) was a housing mobility program designed to investigate neighborhood effects, the influences of the social and physical environment on human development and well-being. Some of the results from MTO have been interpreted as evidence that neighborhood effects are not as strong as earlier evidence had indicated. This Commentary discusses new research suggesting that neighborhood effects are, on the contrary, as strong and policy relevant as suspected before the experiment. This Commentary also discusses why the interpretation of the MTO data is important: If neighborhood effects drive outcomes, then addressing racial inequality requires concerted efforts beyond ending racial discrimination.

A housing mobility program's impacts on teen and young adult parenting.

ObjectiveTo assess the impact of Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program (MTO) implemented in 1994 in five U.S. cities (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City) on teen births.MethodsWe analyzed baseline and long-term evaluation data for youth (ages 13–20) and young adults (ages 21–30) (N = 7861) who were children or teens at baseline. We used regression analyses to estimate the impact of housing vouchers on having a teen birth.ResultsOverall, MTO had no significant effect on teen births. However, among young adults whose parent had a child before age 20, the proportion with a teen birth themselves was 21% lower among those offered housing vouchers to low-poverty neighborhoods with no restrictions compared to those not offered housing vouchers (p < 0.05).ConclusionMTO appeared to decrease intergenerational teen births among young adults. Further exploration of housing relocation may help untangle risks and protective factors for reducing intergenerational teen births.Public health implicationsReducing intergenerational teen births is important, especially among those facing economic, environmental, and health risks. Comprehensive programs addressing multiple social determinants of health are vital to reducing teen births.

The impact of residential change and housing stability on recidivism: pilot results from the Maryland Opportunities through Vouchers Experiment (MOVE)

ObjectivesThis article provides a description and preliminary assessment of the Maryland Opportunities through Vouchers Experiment (MOVE), a randomized housing mobility program for former prisoners designed to test whether residential relocation far away from former neighborhoods, incentivized through the provision of a housing subsidy, can yield reductions in recidivism.MethodsThe MOVE program was implemented as a randomized controlled trial. Participants were recruited from four different Maryland prisons and randomly assigned to experimental groups. In the first iteration of the experiment, treatment group participants received 6 months of free housing away from their home jurisdiction and control group participants received free housing back in their home jurisdiction. In the second iteration of the experiment, the treatment group remained the same and the control condition was redesigned to represent the status quo and did not receive free housing. Analyses were conducted of one-year rearrest rates.ResultsWith respect to reductions in recidivism, pilot results suggest that there is some benefit to moving and a benefit to receiving free housing. Rearrest was lower among the treatment group of movers than the non-movers, and was also lower for non-movers who received free housing versus non-movers who did not receive housing.ConclusionsTo the extent that pilot results can be validated and replicated in a full-scale implementation of the MOVE program, policies that provide greater access to housing assistance for formerly incarcerated individuals may yield substantial public safety benefits, particularly housing opportunities located far away from former neighborhoods.

Car access and long-term poverty exposure: Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment

The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department designed the landmark Moving to Opportunity (MTO) Experiment for Fair Housing Voucher Program to help low-income households move out of and stay out of concentrated poverty. The program was designed based on the assumption that households benefit from living in higher-opportunity neighborhoods. Early evaluations of the MTO program, however, showed minimal gains for participant families. One explanation for these findings is the short length of time which MTO families typically spent in lower-poverty neighborhoods; the positive effects of longer-term exposure to low-poverty neighborhoods appear more promising.In this study we examine the role of automobiles in increasing the length of time that MTO households remain in lower-poverty neighborhoods over a much longer period than previous studies, 1994–2010. A growing body of research suggests that automobiles provide households with better access to opportunities than other modes of travel, particularly in neighborhoods with lower poverty rates in more dispersed urban environments. We find that automobile access reduces households' neighborhood poverty exposure by between 3% and 4%, and automobile access trails only successful lease-up among policy-relevant factors in reducing exposure. Therefore, to maximize the effects of housing mobility programs, we suggest that voucher receipt ought to be paired with policies to increase participants' access to automobiles.

Walking Away From The Wire: Housing Mobility and Neighborhood Opportunity in Baltimore

Families using the Housing Choice Voucher Program rarely experience large gains in neighborhood or school quality when compared with unassisted poor renters. Research on housing mobility programs has reached mixed conclusions about whether vouchers can improve neighborhood and school quality, especially in the long term. We revisit these findings using new data from the partial remedy to the Thompson v. HUD desegregation case in Baltimore, known as the Baltimore Housing Mobility Program (BHMP). Through targeted vouchers, intensive counseling and innovative policy features, the BHMP helped families move to low-poverty, nonsegregated neighborhoods with higher performing school districts. We examine residential outcomes for the first 1,800 families that moved through the program for a period of up to 9 years. We find that BHMP families moved to more integrated and affluent neighborhoods, in school districts with more qualified teachers and fewer poor students—and most families stayed in these neighborhoods beyond their initial lease-up period. Eventually, a small proportion of families moved to neighborhoods that are less white, but still significantly less poor and less segregated than their original communities. We interpret these findings in light of past mobility programs and discuss policy implications for the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

Housing mobility and adolescent mental health: The role of substance use, social networks, and family mental health in the moving to opportunity study

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment was a housing mobility program begun in the mid-nineties that relocated volunteer low income families from public housing to rental units in higher opportunity neighborhoods in 5 US cities, using the Section 8 affordable housing voucher program. Compared to the control group who stayed behind in public housing, the MTO voucher group exhibited a harmful main effect for boys’ mental health, and a beneficial main effect for girls’ mental health. But no studies have examined how this social experiment caused these puzzling, opposite gender effects. The present study tests potential mediating mechanisms of the MTO voucher experiment on adolescent mental health (n=2829, aged 12–19 in 2001–2002). Using Inverse Odds Ratio Weighting causal mediation, we tested whether adolescent substance use comorbidity, social networks, or family mental health acted as potential mediators. Our results document that comorbid substance use (e.g. past 30day alcohol use, cigarette use, and number of substances used) significantly partially mediated the effect of MTO on boys’ behavior problems, resulting in -13% to -18% percent change in the total effect. The social connectedness domain was a marginally significant mediator for boys’ psychological distress. Yet no tested variables mediated MTO's beneficial effects on girls’ psychological distress. Confounding sensitivity analyses suggest that the indirect effect of substance use for mediating boys’ behavior problems was robust, but social connectedness for mediating boys’ psychological distress was not robust. Understanding how housing mobility policies achieve their effects may inform etiology of neighborhoods as upstream causes of health, and inform enhancement of future affordable housing programs.

Low-Income Housing Rental Assistance, Perceptions of Neighborhood Food Environment, and Dietary Patterns among Latino Adults: the AHOME Study

Federal rental assistance programs, in the form of the traditional public housing program and the Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP-formerly known as Section 8), are designed to reduce the economic rental burden for low-income residents. While residents using federal housing vouchers, which allow low-income residents in public housing to move out of public housing to rent-subsidized homes, have been found to be have better cardiovascular outcomes compared to the cardiovascular outcomes of low-income public housing residents, the mechanisms explaining these associations remains an understudied area. The aim of this study is to assess whether residents participating in HCVP or unassisted residents had greater access to healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, and less access to unhealthy foods such as fast food and sugar sweetened beverages, when compared to residents living in public housing (referent group). The Affordable Housing as an Obesity Mediating Environment (AHOME) study is a cross-sectional study of Latinos residing in low-income housing in the Bronx, NY (n=362). Participants were interviewed to assess food patterns and perceptions of neighborhood environment. The analytic sample was primarily female (74.5%) with a mean age of 46.4years (SD=14.68). Residents participating in HCVP had similar availability of fruits and vegetables in the home compared to residents receiving no assistance or public housing residents. HCVP participants consumed more fast food (β=0.34; CI=0.10-0.58) but had similar sugar sweetened beverage consumption compared to public housing residents. Unassisted residents had more fast food consumption (β=0.25; CI=0.01-0.49) but less sugar sweetened beverage consumption (β=-0.52; CI=-0.76--0.28) than public housing residents. Perceptions of neighborhood food environment were not significantly associated with dietary patterns. This study shows variability in consumption of sugar sweetened beverage consumption and fast food consumption, but not in availability of fruits and vegetables, across residents participating in HCVP, public housing residents, and unassisted residents. Evaluating the health benefits associated with low-income housing mobility programs, such as HCVP, requires examining how housing may influence dietary patterns above and beyond an individual's socioeconomic position.

Selecting for Safety: A Qualitative Meta-Analysis of Neighborhood Violence and Residential Decision Making

Many studies have established that people in high poverty neighborhoods who select to participate in housing mobility programs cite crime and violence as primary motivations for wanting to make a residential move. Using a novel approach, we analyzed qualitative data across several studies to explore the frequency and dimensions of safety concerns, relating these to the role of neighborhood forces in the residential decision-making process. We asked the following questions: What are the sources and frequency of motivations for residential mobility among participants? In what ways does neighborhood violence factor into residential mobility? Does a more accurate understanding of the role played by neighborhood violence in residential mobility have either theoretical or practical implications for practitioners or policy makers? Qualitative data pertinent to voucher programs, neighborhood crime and residential decision making were gleaned from 20 studies published between the years 2000 and 2014. Our meta-synthesis revealed not only that neighborhood violence is a key factor in the decision making of voucher holders but also a complex one. Violence affects all of the factors that participants consider in the relocation equation: the needs of the household, housing unit features, the prospective neighborhood and its institutions and how these will affect both participants and their dependent children. We also consider the policy implications of the costs to opportunity incurred as a result of neighborhood violence and the magnitude of the role that neighborhood violence plays in shaping residential decision making.

Section 8 Renters in the Phoenix, Arizona, Foreclosure Crisis: Implications for Poverty Deconcentration

How the recent U.S. foreclosure crisis affected federal housing mobility programs has not been well studied. This article explores the crisis’s impact on low-income renters receiving Section 8 vouchers in Phoenix, Arizona. We find that (a) 8% of voucher holders lived in homes that underwent foreclosure, (b) they were in comparably affluent neighborhoods, and (c) most eventually moved after foreclosure. Yet, those who moved after foreclosure were not overtly disadvantaged in the housing market. This unexpected finding may be explained by the opening up of new housing opportunities for voucher holders as foreclosures in more affluent areas were converted to rentals. Overall, this research suggests that the foreclosure crisis did not adversely affect the Section 8 program’s goal of deconcentrating poverty in Phoenix and may have even advanced it—a dynamic potentially occurring in other formerly booming and economically distressed Sunbelt regions.

Why Do Housing Mobility Programs Fail in Moving Households to Better Neighborhoods?

This article conceptualizes the relationship between housing instability, residential mobility, and neighborhood quality. We summarize the existing literature about residential mobility and housing instability and examine their potential interactions along three dimensions: (a) the reasons for a move, including a variety of push and pull factors; (b) mobility outcomes in terms of whether moves result in residing in a better or worse neighborhood than that of the prior residence; and, especially important for low-income households, (c) the degree to which the current move and past experiences of moving have been discretionary or forced. Housing instability is a cumulative concept, with involuntary moves at its center. This synthetic model of housing instability's impact on mobility outcomes suggests that the more instability a household has experienced, the less likely mobility moves are to occur, or, if they do occur, to be long lasting. Policy implementation may underestimate the interaction between cumulative housing instability and residential mobility in housing mobility policies. Thus, these interactions have implications for mobility policies, pointing toward a path for future research that inform policies to move low-income households toward both greater housing stability and better neighborhood outcomes.

Targeting housing mobility vouchers to help families with children.

Targeting housing mobility vouchers to help families with children.