Housing Voucher Program Research Articles

Tenant-Based Housing Voucher Programs: A Community Guide Systematic Review.

Context:Unaffordable or insecure housing is associated with poor health in children and adults. Tenant-based housing voucher programs (voucher programs) limit rent to 30% or less of household income to help households with low income obtain safe and affordable housing.Objective:To determine the effectiveness of voucher programs in improving housing, health, and other health-related outcomes for households with low income.Design:Community Guide systematic review methods were used to assess intervention effectiveness and threats to validity. An updated systematic search based on a previous Community Guide review was conducted for literature published from 1999 to July 2019 using electronic databases. Reference lists of included studies were also searched.Eligibility Criteria:Studies were included if they assessed voucher programs in the United States, had concurrent comparison populations, assessed outcomes of interest, were written in English, and published in peer-reviewed journals or government reports.Main Outcome Measures:Housing quality and stability, neighborhood opportunity (safety and poverty), education, income, employment, physical and mental health, health care use, and risky health behavior.Results:Seven studies met inclusion criteria. Compared with low-income households not offered vouchers, voucher-using households reported increased housing quality (7.9 percentage points [pct pts]), decreased housing insecurity or homelessness (−22.4 pct pts), and decreased neighborhood poverty (−5.2 pct pts).Adults in voucher-using households had improved health care access and physical and mental health. Female youth experienced better physical and mental health but not male youth. Children who entered the voucher programs under 13 years of age had improved educational attainment, employment, and income in their adulthood; children's gains in these outcomes were inversely related to their age at program entry.Conclusion:Voucher programs improved health and several health-related outcomes for voucher-using households, particularly young children. Research is still needed to better understand household's experiences and contextual factors that influence achievement of desired outcomes.

The Failed Federalism of Affordable Housing: Why States Don't Use Housing Vouchers

This Article uncovers a critical disjuncture in our system of providing affordable rental housing. At the federal level, the oldest, fiercest debate in low-income housing policy is between project-based and tenant-based subsidies: should the government help build new affordable housing projects or help renters afford homes on the private market? But at the state and local levels, it is as if this debate never took place. The federal government (following most experts) employs both strategies, embracing tenant-based assistance as more cost-effective and offering tenants greater choice and mobility. But this Article shows that state and local housing voucher programs are rare, small, and limited to special populations. States and cities almost exclusively provide project-based rental assistance. They move in lockstep despite disparate market conditions and political demands: project-based spending overwhelmingly predominates in both high- and lowrent markets and in both liberal and conservative states. States have done so across decades of increased spending. This uniform subnational approach suggests an unhealthy federalism—neither efficient nor experimental. This Article further diagnoses why states have made this unusual choice, identifying four primary culprits: (1) fiscally-constrained states use project-based models to minimize painful cuts during recessions; (2) incomplete federal housing subsidies inadvertently incentivize project-based spending; (3) the interest groups involved in financing and constructing affordable housing are relatively more powerful subnationally; and (4) rental assistance’s unusual, lottery-like nature elevates the value of visible spending over cost-effectiveness. Finally, this Article points the way toward reform, offering two paths forward. Taking a federalist perspective allows for a new understanding of federal housing statutes. Better cooperative models—expanding either the federal or state role in providing affordable housing—could accept states’ limitations in providing rental assistance and exploit their strengths.

Access to transportation, residential segregation, and economic opportunity

AbstractThe Housing Choice Voucher Program assists low‐income families to afford decent housing and provide them with better economic opportunities. There is growing evidence that public transportation plays an important role in shaping the residential location choices of low‐income households. However, transportation has not been a major focus of the research related to housing voucher programs. We develop a general equilibrium model of a city with multiple districts, decentralized employment, multiple commuting modes, and locally financed education. We compare housing vouchers with transportation vouchers with respect to poverty deconcentration, educational quality in each district, unskilled employment in the suburbs, and welfare.

When education policy and housing policy interact: Can they correct for the externalities?

We develop a simple spatial equilibrium model with the peer group effect and local public finance to analyze the implications of housing policies such as public housing and housing voucher programs, and education policies such as school finance consolidation. The calibrated model can match several stylized facts of the labor market and the housing market in the United States. Our counterfactual policy analyses suggest that public housing and housing voucher programs have similar welfare implications on the household level. However, within a household, the public housing program tends to benefit the children more than the parents, while the housing voucher program delivers the opposite result. Combining the school finance consolidation policy with the public housing program could improve the well-being of children from poor households without hurting other households’ welfare. Some policies’ short-run welfare implications can deviate significantly from their long-run counterparts when all choices are optimized.

Do peer social relationships mediate the harmful effects of a housing mobility experiment on boys' risky behaviors?

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to understand why a housing mobility experiment caused harmful effects on adolescent boys' risky behaviors. MethodsMoving to Opportunity (MTO) (1994–2010) randomly assigned volunteer families to a treatment group receiving a Section 8 rental voucher or a public housing control group. Our outcome was a global risky behavior index (RBI; measured in 2002, n = 750 boys) measuring the fraction of 10 items the youth engaged in, 6 measuring past 30-day substance use and 4 measuring recent risky sexual behavior. Potential mediators (measured in 2002) included peer social relationships (e.g., peer drug use, peer gang membership). ResultsThe voucher treatment main effect on boys' RBI was harmful (B (SE) = 0.05 (0.02), 95% CI 0.01, 0.08), and treatment marginally increased having friends who used drugs compared to controls (B (SE) = 0.67 (0.23), 95% CI 0.22, 1.12). Having friends who used drugs marginally mediated the MTO treatment effect on RBI (indirect effect: B (SE) = 0.02(.01), 95% CI −0.002, 0.04), reducing the total treatment effect by 39%. ConclusionsIncorporating additional supports into housing voucher programs may help support teenage boys who experience disruptions to their social networks, to buffer potential adverse consequences of residential mobility.

Racial rent differences in U.S. housing markets: Evidence from the housing voucher program

AbstractThis paper exploits an unusually rich data set to estimate racial differences in the rents paid for identical housing in the same neighborhood in U.S. housing markets and to show how they vary with neighborhood racial composition. Results suggest that black households pay more for identical housing in identical neighborhoods than their white counterparts and that this rent gap increases with the fraction of the neighborhood white. In neighborhoods with the smallest fraction white, the premium is about 0.6%. In neighborhoods with the largest fraction white, it is about 2.4%. This pattern holds across different types of areas.

REAGAN’S AUSTERITY BUREAUCRATS

AbstractIn 1982, President Ronald Reagan’s administration initiated a dramatic policy shift towards a new housing voucher program, which simultaneously resulted in a near-halt in public and project-based assisted housing funding. When analyzing this historic policy shift, many affordable housing scholars have overemphasized race-absent narratives about fiscal austerity to explain the Reagan administration’s policy rejection of public housing and embrace of housing vouchers. To present a more comprehensive and intersectional history of the Reagan administration’s transition to housing vouchers, I employ an alternative methodological lens that I call Black feminist critical policy studies. This paper traces how the Office of Management and Budget and Housing and Urban Development officials relied on obscured racial and gender bias in their debate informing Reagan's alternative housing voucher program. By revealing the social bias endemic in the Reagan administration’s housing debate, this article illustrates that housing vouchers were not simply a neutral, cost-efficient policy tool but helped ensure low-income black mothers’ continued subjection to anti-welfare backlash, housing discrimination, and paternal supervision.

Chicago and the Riddle of Race

Chicago and the Riddle of Race Amy Absher Rashad Shabazz, Spatializing Blackness: Architecture of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 184 pp. $85, cloth. $25, paper. Christopher Robert Reed, The Rise of Chicago’s Black Metropolis, 1920–1929. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 288 pp. $95, cloth. $32, paper. Christopher Robert Reed, Knock at the Door of Opportunity: Black Migration to Chicago, 1900–1919. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2014. 390 pp. $52. Lionel Kimble Jr., A New Deal for Bronzeville: Housing, Employment and Civil Rights in Black Chicago, 1935–1955. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015. 200 pp. $35. Robert E. Weems Jr. and Jason P. Chambers, ed., Building the Black Metropolis: African American Entrepreneurship in Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. 276 pp. $95, cloth. $30, paper. Joseph Gustaitis, Chicago Transformed: World War I and the Windy City. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016. 368 pp. $25.89, paper. Mary Lou Finley, ed., The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. 495 pp. $45. Natalie Y. Moore, The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation. New York: St. Martin’s, 2016. 272 pp. $28.99, cloth. $17, paper. The recent publications concerning the history of Chicago’s South Side all begin in much the same way. They note that Chicago is a city of neighborhoods; therefore, segregation became the defining historical [End Page 135] experience for the city’s inhabitants. Though segregation is not unique to Chicago, Chicago’s segregation is emblematic of the larger American history with race and urbanization. Why? Because segregation in Chicago has always been about more than housing. It haunts joblessness rates, shortened life spans, violence, policing, education, and gender. Segregation in Chicago did not end with the housing voucher programs or the election of Harold Washington. Likewise, segregation did not end in the nation at large with the integration of public schools or the election of President Obama. Currently, at the center of recent publications on Chicago history, is Christopher Robert Reed who demands we ask better questions. He wants readers and scholars to think carefully about segregation and how we book-end history. In The Rise of Chicago’s Black Metropolis: 1920–1929, Reed begins by challenging Drake and Cayton’s seminal work, Black Metropolis. What if, Reed asks, this foundational text had focused on the 1920s rather than beginning in the 1930s? Questioning the canon and origin myths of Chicago history is essential to Reed’s work. Indeed, in Knock at the Door of Opportunity: Black Migration to Chicago, 1900–1919, Reed challenges the work of Allan H. Spear and Rayford W. Logan by suggesting that “voluntary clustering” was the first step toward segregation and that Black Chicago’s history is not the history of urban blight. His approach is purposeful. Reed must dislodge the established segregation narrative so he might free the history from its stultifying focus on resistance movements. Ultimately, Reed wants readers to go beyond understanding history as statistics and conflict so as to move toward appreciating the community’s humanity. Reed intends his recent work to be a synthesis and an introspective reinterpretation of the canonical sources. A comparison of Reed’s style of synthesis with Joseph Gustaitis’s Chicago Transformed: World War I and the Windy City demonstrates just how varied the historical synthesis can be. With Reed there is a focus on argument. With Gustaitis there is a focus on details. Reed is able to remake and deepen our understanding of a well-traveled history. Gustaitis teaches his readers, but doesn’t challenge them to interpret. Furthermore, many new histories of Chicago are either imitating or inspired by the work of Christopher Reed. For instance, Robert E. Weems Jr. and Jason P. Chambers, editors of Building the Black Metropolis: African American Entrepreneurship in Chicago, focus on upending E. Franklin Frazier’s 1957 book Black Bourgeoisie, which refused to acknowledge the impact of slavery, Jim Crow segregation as well as mocked Black business [End Page 136] as a “myth,” and blamed business failure on the owners’ lack of acumen. By doing so...

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.

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.

Housing demand and neighborhood choice with housing vouchers

This paper presents a new model of household choice of neighborhood and housing consumption, and uses it to predict the effects of alternative housing voucher policies on the choices of voucher recipients and their levels of wellbeing. The model is estimated using household level data from housing voucher recipients in Pittsburgh, aggregate data on unsubsidized households, and a large dataset of neighborhood characteristics including crime rates, school quality, racial composition, and housing prices. Using the estimated model, this study predicts effects of a variety of interesting reforms of the housing voucher program, namely, a more generous voucher subsidy, subsidy amounts that vary with census tract housing prices instead of metropolitan area prices, subsidies that are proportional to the market rent of the specific units, and a requirement that voucher recipients live in a census tract where the poverty rate is less than 30% .

주택바우처 수혜자의 주거지 특성 분석 - 서울시를 중심으로

주택바우처 수혜자의 주거지 특성 분석 - 서울시를 중심으로

How to attract more landlords to the housing choice voucher program: a case study of landlord outreach efforts

Since 1980, the focus of American housing policy has shifted away from project-based to tenant-based subsidies, i.e. the Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP). Yet many HCVP recipients have remained in high-poverty and high-minority areas of central cities. To improve the effectiveness of HCVP in expanding residential choices, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is encouraging local public housing authorities to utilize a variety of techniques to provide more opportunity for voucher recipients to move to low poverty areas including meetings with current or prospective owners, owners’ newsletters, owner fairs, program videos and direct contact with owners. Although there has been a considerable body of research on voucher recipients in the Gautreaux and Moving to Opportunity programs, two special housing voucher programs, there has been little research on the effectiveness of landlord outreach efforts as part of the regular HCVP. We therefore conducted a case study of landlord outreach efforts currently being implemented by the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority. We combined observation of landlord outreach events with semi-structured interviews to determine reasons why landlords do or do not participate, landlords’ perceptions on the extent to which HCVP addresses their concerns, what they take away from these events, and how outreach efforts might be improved. This case study indicates that there is considerable room for improvement in landlord outreach efforts by the housing authority. The policy implications for HUD as well as public housing authorities across the United States are discussed.

Practical Guidance for Conducting Mediation Analysis With Multiple Mediators Using Inverse Odds Ratio Weighting

Despite the recent flourishing of mediation analysis techniques, many modern approaches are difficult to implement or applicable to only a restricted range of regression models. This report provides practical guidance for implementing a new technique utilizing inverse odds ratio weighting (IORW) to estimate natural direct and indirect effects for mediation analyses. IORW takes advantage of the odds ratio's invariance property and condenses information on the odds ratio for the relationship between the exposure (treatment) and multiple mediators, conditional on covariates, by regressing exposure on mediators and covariates. The inverse of the covariate-adjusted exposure-mediator odds ratio association is used to weight the primary analytical regression of the outcome on treatment. The treatment coefficient in such a weighted regression estimates the natural direct effect of treatment on the outcome, and indirect effects are identified by subtracting direct effects from total effects. Weighting renders treatment and mediators independent, thereby deactivating indirect pathways of the mediators. This new mediation technique accommodates multiple discrete or continuous mediators. IORW is easily implemented and is appropriate for any standard regression model, including quantile regression and survival analysis. An empirical example is given using data from the Moving to Opportunity (1994-2002) experiment, testing whether neighborhood context mediated the effects of a housing voucher program on obesity. Relevant Stata code (StataCorp LP, College Station, Texas) is provided.

Are Private Markets and Filtering a Viable Source of Low-Income Housing? Estimates from a “Repeat Income” Model

While filtering has long been considered the primary mechanism by which markets supply low-income housing, direct estimates of that process have been absent. This has contributed to doubts about the viability of markets and to misplaced policy. I fill this gap by estimating a “repeat income” model using 1985–2011 panel data. Real annual filtering rates are faster for rental housing (2.5 percent) than owner-occupied (0.5 percent), vary inversely with the income elasticity of demand and house price inflation, and are sensitive to tenure transitions as homes age. For most locations, filtering is robust which lends support for housing voucher programs. (JEL R21, R31, R38)

The Effect of Fundamental Housing Policy Reforms on Program Participation

This paper estimates the effects of alternative reforms of the current system of low-income housing assistance on the number of people of various types who would receive assistance. The reforms are designed to eliminate the system’s substantial inefficiencies, inequities, and bias against homeownership. All would replace HUD’s largest low-income housing programs with alternative tenure-neutral housing voucher programs that serve all eligible families that apply for assistance. Most cost less than the current system. The estimated effects on program participation are long-run effects after the transition to the new system has been completed. The estimates of participation in the reformed voucher programs are based primarily on the five-percent household sample from the 2000 Decennial Census and participation experience in the only similar housing assistance programs that have been operated in the United States. HUD’s administrative records provide data on current recipients of low-income housing assistance. The paper explores the sensitivity of the results to the equations used to predict participation in the reformed voucher programs. The results indicate that even the reformed program that reduces public expenditure by more than 10 percent would serve 75 percent more people in total and many more in families of each type – white, black, and Hispanic; elderly and nonelderly; families living in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas; small, medium, and large families; and families in the first two real income deciles. The most underserved types experience the largest increases.

A Driving Factor in Mobility? Transportation's Role in Connecting Subsidized Housing and Employment Outcomes in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) Program

Problem, research strategy, and findings: We evaluate the role of transportation in improving the employment outcomes of participants in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) for Fair Housing Voucher Program, a 10-year demonstration project designed to enable low-income families to improve their outcomes by moving out of high-poverty neighborhoods. We use longitudinal data from the MTO program to assess the role of transportation—automobiles and improved access to public transit—in moving to, and maintaining, employment. We use multi-nomial logistic regression to predict changes in employment status as a function of change in automobile availability and transit accessibility, controlling for other potential determinants of employment. We find that keeping or gaining access to an automobile is positively related to the likelihood of employment. Improved access to public transit is positively associated with maintaining employment, but not with job gains. Although we cannot say for certain whether car ownership preceded or followed employment, it is clear that having a car provides multiple benefits that facilitate getting and keeping a job.Takeaway for practice: Policies to increase automobile access among low-income households—even in dense urban areas—will most clearly enhance job gain and job retention. While auto programs are unpopular with many planners, they would improve the lives of low-income families who currently have the least access to cars. In addition, supporting moves to transit-rich neighborhoods may help households maintain consistent employment.

Vouchers, Magnet Schools, Charter Schools, and Options

The topic of safe routes to school has been researched since the 1970s, and safe routes to school have been a goal of government programs since 1997. Despite the improvements made because of these efforts, the share of students walking and biking continues to decline. Identified barriers include parents' concerns about safety, the environment, time, and external factors such as traffic, weather, and distance. This research suggests that planners have overlooked two important factors influencing distance: education movements since the 1950s for greater school choice and affordable housing policies. Beyond desegregation, the creation of magnet schools, vouchers, academies, charter schools, and other school options has resulted in growing shares of urban students traveling long distances to school. In Oakland, California, only 49% of students attend school in the neighborhood where they live, and another 10,228 attend 34 charter schools with countywide enrollment. U.S. housing policies have also changed. Construction of public housing has ceased, save for the construction of replacement units. Housing voucher programs are oversubscribed, and individuals with vouchers often change neighborhoods or cities to find a unit. Foreclosures, high prices, and low vacancy rates in cities have also limited housing availability. School and housing policies combined have eroded the economic location theory, in which families balance housing and transportation costs to be near work and good schools. The study uses surveys, time use diaries, and interviews with 70 Oakland parents or caregivers. Results identify the complex choices that affect school travel and offer potential ways for transport, land use, and education planners to coordinate active travel to school.

“We Don't Live Outside, We Live in Here”: Neighborhood and Residential Mobility Decisions among Low–Income Families

Over 20 years of scholarship suggests that living in America's poorest and most dangerous communities diminishes the life course development of children and adults. In the 1990s, the dire conditions of some of these neighborhoods, especially those with large public housing developments, prompted significant policy responses. In addition to the demolition and redevelopment of some of the projects, the federal government launched an experiment to help families leave poor neighborhoods through an assisted housing voucher program called Moving to Opportunity (MTO). While families who moved through this program initially relocated to census tracts with poverty rates almost four times lower than their original projects, many returned to communities of moderate to high poverty. Why? We use mixed methods to explore the patterns and the decision–making processes behind moves among MTO families. Focusing on the Baltimore MTO site, we find that traditional theories for residential choice did not fully explain these outcomes. While limited access to public transportation, housing quality problems, and landlords made it hard for families to move to, or stay in, low–poverty neighborhoods, there were also more striking explanations for their residential trajectories. Many families valued the low–poverty neighborhoods they were originally able to access with their vouchers, but when faced with the need to move again, they often sacrificed neighborhood quality for dwelling quality in order to accommodate changing family needs. Having lived in high–poverty neighborhoods most of their lives, they developed a number of coping strategies and beliefs that made them confident they could handle such a consequential trade–off and protect themselves and their children from the dangers of poorer areas.

Exiting homelessness without a voucher: A comparison of independently housed and other homeless veterans.

Studies that have shown the superiority of housing voucher programs over standard care for homeless adults with mental illness have also incidentally shown that many are able to obtain independent housing without subsidies. The current study examined how individuals obtain housing without a voucher and whether greater employment earnings or better clinical outcomes were associated with such housing success. Data from an experimental evaluation of the Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program were used for an observational study that compared participants who, at 3 months, were: (1) Independently Housed Without a Voucher (n 96), (2) Independently Housed With a Voucher (n 93), (3) Housed In Another Individual’s Place (n 60), or (4) Not Yet Housed (n 170). Participants who obtained independent housing without a voucher worked more days and had higher employment income than those who did use a voucher, but they were less satisfied with their housing. About a third of participants who lived in independent housing without a voucher had others living with them. Homeless veterans with mental illness are able to use employment and shared housing as naturalistic ways to obtain independent housing.