Housing Vouchers Research Articles

“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.

Long-term effects of public low-income housing vouchers on neighborhood quality and household composition

In this paper we estimate the effect of housing voucher receipt on the composition of recipient households and the quality of the neighborhoods in which recipient households reside. Drawing on a dataset that contains extensive information on a large and diverse panel of low-income families for up to 5years following voucher receipt, we isolate the effects of voucher receipt using propensity score matching techniques together with regression adjustment. Full-sample results show voucher receipt to have little effect on neighborhood quality in the short-term, but some positive long-term effects. We also find that voucher receipt is tied to a higher probability of change in household composition in the year of voucher receipt, but greater stability in subsequent years. Our large sample allows us to explore differential responses of geographic and socioeconomic subgroups. Our findings have several implications for both research and policy.

American murder mystery revisited: do housing voucher households cause crime?

Potential neighbors often express worries that Housing Choice Voucher holders heighten crime. Yet, no research systematically examines the link between the presence of voucher holders in a neighborhood and crime. Our article aims to do just this, using longitudinal, neighborhood-level crime, and voucher utilization data in 10 large US cities. We test whether the presence of additional voucher holders leads to elevated crime, controlling for neighborhood fixed effects, time-varying neighborhood characteristics, and trends in the broader sub-city area in which the neighborhood is located. In brief, crime tends to be higher in census tracts with more voucher households, but that positive relationship becomes insignificant after we control for unobserved differences across census tracts and falls further when we control for trends in the broader area. We find far more evidence for an alternative causal story; voucher use in a neighborhood tends to increase in tracts that have seen increases in crime, suggesting that voucher holders tend to move into neighborhoods where crime is elevated.

The impact of source of income laws on voucher utilization

Vouchers are lauded both for being the most efficient way of delivering housing assistance to needy households and for the potential to allow poor households to access better neighborhoods. The success of vouchers is of course predicated on recipients being able to successfully use a voucher. For a number of reasons, including discrimination by landlords on the basis of source of income (i.e. a voucher), voucher recipients frequently cannot find apartments to lease. Using a difference-in-differences approach the research reported here examines how Source of Income anti-discrimination laws affect the utilization of housing vouchers. The findings indicate that utilization rates are higher among Local Housing Authorities in jurisdictions with Source of Income anti-discrimination laws. These findings suggest such laws can be an effective tool for increasing the rate at which vouchers are successfully utilized. In a time of scarce resources for affordable housing this is an important policy tool that should not be over looked.

American Murder Mystery Revisited: Do Housing Voucher Households Cause Crime?

Potential neighbors often express worries that Housing Choice Voucher holders heighten crime. Yet no research systematically examines the link between the presence of voucher holders in a neighborhood and crime. Our paper aims to do just this, using longitudinal, neighborhood-level crime and voucher utilization data in 10 large U.S. cities. We test whether the presence of additional voucher holders leads to elevated rates of crime, controlling for neighborhood fixed effects, time-varying neighborhood characteristics, and trends in the broader sub-city area in which the neighborhood is located. In brief, crime tends to be higher in census tracts with more voucher households, but that positive relationship becomes insignificant after we control for unobserved differences across census tracts and falls further when we control for trends in the broader area. We find far more evidence for the reverse causal story; voucher use in a neighborhood increases in tracts with rising crime, suggesting that voucher holders tend to move into neighborhoods where crime rates are increasing.

Neighborhoods, obesity, and diabetes--a randomized social experiment.

The question of whether neighborhood environment contributes directly to the development of obesity and diabetes remains unresolved. The study reported on here uses data from a social experiment to assess the association of randomly assigned variation in neighborhood conditions with obesity and diabetes. From 1994 through 1998, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) randomly assigned 4498 women with children living in public housing in high-poverty urban census tracts (in which ≥40% of residents had incomes below the federal poverty threshold) to one of three groups: 1788 were assigned to receive housing vouchers, which were redeemable only if they moved to a low-poverty census tract (where <10% of residents were poor), and counseling on moving; 1312 were assigned to receive unrestricted, traditional vouchers, with no special counseling on moving; and 1398 were assigned to a control group that was offered neither of these opportunities. From 2008 through 2010, as part of a long-term follow-up survey, we measured data indicating health outcomes, including height, weight, and level of glycated hemoglobin (HbA(1c)). As part of our long-term survey, we obtained data on body-mass index (BMI, the weight in kilograms divided by the square of the height in meters) for 84.2% of participants and data on glycated hemoglobin level for 71.3% of participants. Response rates were similar across randomized groups. The prevalences of a BMI of 35 or more, a BMI of 40 or more, and a glycated hemoglobin level of 6.5% or more were lower in the group receiving the low-poverty vouchers than in the control group, with an absolute difference of 4.61 percentage points (95% confidence interval [CI], -8.54 to -0.69), 3.38 percentage points (95% CI, -6.39 to -0.36), and 4.31 percentage points (95% CI, -7.82 to -0.80), respectively. The differences between the group receiving traditional vouchers and the control group were not significant. The opportunity to move from a neighborhood with a high level of poverty to one with a lower level of poverty was associated with modest but potentially important reductions in the prevalence of extreme obesity and diabetes. The mechanisms underlying these associations remain unclear but warrant further investigation, given their potential to guide the design of community-level interventions intended to improve health. (Funded by HUD and others.).

Long-term earnings and employment effects of housing voucher receipt

Using a propensity score matching approach coupled with difference-in-differences regression analysis, we estimate the effect of housing voucher receipt on the employment and earnings of a large longitudinal sample of low-income families for 6 years following voucher receipt. Our results indicate that voucher receipt has little effect on employment, but a negative effect on earnings. The negative earnings effect is largest in the years immediately following initial receipt, and fades out over time. In addition, we find that the pattern of recipient earnings responses to voucher receipt differs substantially across demographic subgroups. Several robustness tests are run to support the reliability of our findings. We discuss the implications of our findings for research and policy.

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.

보금자리 주택의 공급 특성과 무주택 저소득 가구를 위한 향후 주택정책 방향

This paper aims to explore the characteristics of Bogeumjari Housing Program and its significance to housing policy, and propose an appropriate direction of future housing policy for low-income households without home ownership based on actual data on housing careers and preferences of the policy target households. Supply of Bogeumjary Housing is characterized by consolidation of existing housing program, housing support by income level, differentiation of eligible households, and housing subscription on-line. Bogeumjari Housing Program is meaningful in that it is a policy that resumed the supply of permanent housing, provides multi-tier support system by income level, and adjusts the imbalances in housing demand and supply. Despite their strong preferences for Bogeumjari Housing, their affordability is very low due to their low income levels and gloomy outlook for household finances. In this light, the government should pursue housing policies that include not only new housing constructions, but also efficient use of housing stocks, expansion of loans for first-time home buyers, and introduction of home mortgage and housing voucher.

Housing Vouchers, Benefits and Allowances (VBAs): Comparing Rental Tools in the US, England and the Netherlands

This paper compares rental housing tools in the US, Britain and the Netherlands in order to determine the best strategy for enhancing rental housing accessibility. In doing so, the authors employ a ‘tools approach’ of governance paradigm, based on the work of Salamon's The Tools of Governance (2002). Rental housing tools are called housing vouchers in the US, housing benefits in Britain and housing allowances in the Netherlands. Overall, it was found that Britain and the Netherlands can learn from the US on means and ways of designing more efficient and fiscally responsible housing vouchers, benefits, and allowances (VBAs). The US, in turn, can learn from Britain and the Netherlands on means and needs of achieving higher equity and effectiveness. This analysis contributes in a meaningful way by addressing the missing middle link between policies and programs – namely, the tools perspective.

The Effect on Program Participation of Replacing Current Low-Income Housing Programs with an Entitlement Housing Voucher Program

This paper estimates the effect on participation rates of families of various types of replacing HUD’s largest low-income housing programs with alternative tenure-neutral entitlement housing voucher programs that differ in their taxpayer cost and the relative generosity of the subsidy to households of different types. The estimates of participation in the entitlement programs are based primarily on the five-percent household sample from the 2000 Decennial Census and participation experience in the only entitlement 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. The results indicate that even the entitlement housing voucher program that costs 10 percent less than the current system would serve 50 percent more households in total and many more of each type – white, black, and Hispanic; elderly and nonelderly; families living in metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas; small, medium, and large families; and households in the first two real income deciles.

Blue Moonlight Rising: Evictions, Alternative Accommodation and a Comparative Perspective on Affordable Housing Solutions in Johannesburg

The City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality v Blue Moonlight Properties 39 (Pty) Ltd is a welcomed addition to the eviction jurisprudence in South Africa. Courts have jostled for years with the question of whether socio-economic rights should be enforced in the context of adequate housing and evictions. Today, the central questions in comparative constitutional law deal with how courts should enforce such rights. In other words, what are the remedies for violations of socio-economic rights? The usual proposed remedies are coercive orders aimed at guaranteeing occupiers the denied rights directly, planning orders, or procedural benefits. Amidst Blue Moonlight’s increased interest amongst academics, practitioners and jurists, as an example of South Africa’s ‘new normality assumption’ and its realisation of procedural benefits to people facing imminent eviction from private property, is a comparative housing policy yet to be discovered and considered in South Africa. A policy-oriented interpretation of the text of the lower Court’s opinion in Blue Moonlight reveals the policy blueprint of several housing voucher programmes currently operating in the United States that may serve as a new model on how to enforce socio-economic rights for occupiers facing imminent eviction – the Blue Moonlight remedy. Vouchers are a primary mechanism for providing affordable, safe and decent housing to the poor in the US and ought to be considered by academics, policy-makers, jurists and public officials as one of many potentially innovative solutions to Johannesburg’s housing woes.

Relocation of urban poor in Chicago: HOPE VI policy outcomes

The HOPE VI program was created in 1992 as a tool for public housing authorities in the US to deconcentrate poverty in project-based public housing neighborhoods. As part of the process, thousands of public housing residents have been required to relocate. They have the option to move to temporary housing in another project unit, to leave the subsidized housing system all together, or to participate in local housing voucher programs. This study focuses on those public housing residents in Chicago who move with a housing voucher certificate. The purpose of the study is to evaluate and reveal the relocation outcomes of these voucher users, both numerically and geographically. Conditions in their origin and relocation tracts are examined using 1990 and 2000 US census data to determine if they relocated to less poor and segregated neighborhoods. Evidence shows that voucher users are moving in an outward direction away from the central city. This movement is reshaping the landscape of advantage and disadvantage in Chicago: suburbs are becoming poorer while the old neighborhoods are gentrifying. Poverty is highly concentrated in the neighborhoods chosen by most voucher recipients, but not as high as the poverty levels which existed in the old neighborhoods. Mapping relocation shows that outcomes vary geographically, demonstrating the importance for future research to address spatial and contextual differences.

Priorities of Low-Income Urban Residents for Interventions to Address the Socio-Economic Determinants of Health

To determine the priorities of low-income urban residents for interventions that address the socio-economic determinants of health. We selected and estimated the cost of 16 interventions related to education, housing, nutrition, employment, health care, healthy behavior, neighborhood improvement, and transportation. Low-income residents of Washington, D.C. (N=431) participated in decision exercises to prioritize these interventions. Given a budget valued at approximately twice an estimated cost of medical and dental care ($885), the interventions ultimately prioritized by the greatest percentage of individuals were: health insurance (95%), housing vouchers (82%) dental care (82%), job training (72%), adult education (63%), counseling (68%), healthy behavior incentives (68%), and job placement (67%). The percentages of respondents who received support for housing, adult education, and job training and placement were far less than the percentage who prioritized these interventions. Poor and low-income residents' priorities may usefully inform allocation of social services that affect health.

What should housing vouchers do? A review of the recent literature

This paper challenges the assumption that housing vouchers help recipients move from crime-ridden inner-city areas to ‘good’ lower-poverty neighborhoods and, in turn, to achieve self-sufficiency. A review of the American and European literature on housing mobility programs and on mixed-income communities fails to support this belief. Efforts to maintain, and expand, the voucher program should be based on the program’s proven ability to provide decent and affordable housing rather than on unproven claims that it promotes poverty deconcentration and family self-sufficiency. I find considerable evidence that voucher recipients cluster spatially and that this promotes social decline in neighborhoods already vulnerable to change. Policymakers need to monitor voucher settlement patterns and to address programmatic weaknesses that cause negative neighborhood effects and voucher controversies.

Dealing with living in poor neighbourhoods

In this prologue to the special issue, the guest editors place the contributions in the context of current debates on living in concentrated poverty neighbourhoods. These debates concern two broad categories of residents: poor households that are assisted to move from concentrations of poverty to lower-poverty areas (movers); and households (not exclusively the poor) that cannot move out of poor neighbourhoods or are not willing to do so, for various reasons (stayers). For the first category, the main issue is whether housing vouchers provide movers only with better housing or also with other social, psychological and economic benefits. A wealth of (partly contradictory) evidence justifies exploring a fundamental question: What should housing vouchers do? With regard to those unwilling or unable to move out of poor neighbourhoods, we focus on how residents cope with the recurrent problems and stressful circumstances in poor neighbourhoods. Here, four interrelated concepts are central to our discussion: place attachment, coping tactics, territoriality, and social network formation. Our discussion paves the way for the subsequent five papers, each dealing with one of the selected topics. The aim of this special issue is to provide new evidence that underpins or questions the current debates on living in or leaving neighbourhoods with concentrated poverty. The research reported here was done in the United States, Great Britain and the Netherlands.

Limited Exposure: Children’s Activities and Neighborhood Effects in the Gautreaux Two Housing Mobility Program

ABSTRACT:Housing mobility programs intend to improve the well-being of low-income families by changing the neighborhood environment in which they live, and thereby creating access to a new set of opportunities and resources. Using data collected in a study of the Gautreaux Two (G2) Housing Mobility program, which offered housing vouchers to public housing residents in Chicago to move to lower-poverty and less segregated “opportunity” neighborhoods, this article explores families’ access to programs and services for their children in the neighborhoods where they move. The analysis is based on a sample of 46 families who moved through the G2 program. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with mothers in four waves, which started when the family still lived in public housing. The results show that almost three-quarters of the families utilized activities for their children in the baseline neighborhoods, but mothers also expressed concerns about the safety and lack of program variety available in these disadvantaged neighborhoods. After moving through the G2 program, only one-third of the children in these families are using activities. The decline in activity participation is especially steep for children in families that move to areas outside of the city. Although few mothers are concerned with safety or the variety of programs available, several report barriers to activities for children in the new neighborhood, including fewer programs for low-income children, high cost, transportation difficulties, and issues finding daycare or preschool for younger children. Some children continue to use activities in the old neighborhood and some families end up making subsequent moves to nonqualifying neighborhoods. These findings suggest that activity participation is important for many low-income families, and losing access to these activities upon moving through the G2 program may limit children’s exposure to the new neighborhood and contribute to subsequent moves.

The Effect of a Program‐Based Housing Move on Employment: HOPE VI in Atlanta

We combine records of Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) clients, Georgia Department of Labor (DOL) employment records, and neighborhood characteristics to analyze the causal effect of an exogenous move out of public housing on the employment of public housing residents. The exogenous move was caused by a HOPE VI or HOPE VI‐like project in Atlanta. We find that such an exogenous move has a positive and statistically significant effect on the probability of employment for those residents who moved relative to other public housing tenants. We also compare the change in employment of those whose exogenous move was to another public housing unit to those who took a housing voucher. We also compare the change in the probability of employment associated with an exogenous move and a voluntary move and find that both types of moves are associated with a greater probability of employment as compared to those who did not move.

Does Moving to Better Neighborhoods Lead to Better Schooling Opportunities? Parental School Choice in an Experimental Housing Voucher Program

BackgroundPrevious research has demonstrated that children growing up in poor communities have limited access to high-performing schools, while more affluent neighborhoods tend to have higher-ranking schools and more opportunities for after-school programs and activities. Therefore, many researchers and policy makers expected not only that the families moving to low-poverty neighborhoods with the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program would gain access to zone schools with more resources but also that mothers would be more likely to meet middle-class parents who could provide information about academic programs and teachers, leading them to choose some of these new higher-quality-zone schools. However, research evaluating the effects of the MTO program on child outcomes 4-7 years after program moves found that while the schools attended by the MTO children were less poor and had higher average test scores than their original neighborhood schools, the differences were small: Before moving with the program, MTO children attended schools ranked at the 15th percentile statewide on average; 4-7 years after the move, they were attending schools that ranked at the 24th percentile on average.PurposeThe fact that the residential changes brought about by the MTO experiment did not translate into much larger gains in school academic quality provides the impetus for our study. In other words, we explore why the experiment did not lead to the school changes that researchers and policy makers expected. With survey, census, and school-level data, we examine where families moved with the MTO program and how these moves related to changes in school characteristics, and how parents considered schooling options.SettingAlthough the MTO experiment took place in five cities (New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Baltimore), we use data from the Baltimore site only.PopulationThe sample in our study includes the low-income mothers and children who participated in the Baltimore site of the MTO housing voucher experiment. Ninety-seven percent of the families were headed by single black women. The median number of children was two, and average household income was extremely low, at $6,750. Over 60% received Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) as their primary source of income (at program entry in 1994), over 77% of household heads were unemployed, and 40% of the women had no high school degree or GED.ProgramThe Moving to Opportunity program gave public housing residents in extremely poor neighborhoods in Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston a chance to apply for the program and move between 1994 and 1998. Families were randomly assigned into one of three groups: an experimental group that received housing counseling and a special voucher that could only be used in census tracts with 1990 poverty rates of less than 10%; a second treatment group, the Section 8 group, that received a regular voucher with no geographic restrictions on where they could move; and a control group that received no voucher through MTO, although they could continue to reside in their public housing units or apply for other housing subsidies (usually a regular Section 8 voucher). The program did not provide assistance with transportation costs, job searches, or local school information after the family relocated.Research DesignWe use survey data, census data, school-level data, and interviews from the Baltimore site of a randomized field trial of a housing voucher program. We present a mixed-methods case study of one site of the experiment to understand why the children of families who participated in the Baltimore MTO program did not experience larger gains in schooling opportunity.ConclusionsOur article demonstrates that in order to discover whether social programs will be effective, we need to understand how the conditions of life for poor families facilitate or constrain their ability to engage new structural opportunities. The described case examples demonstrate why we need to integrate policies and interventions that target schooling in conjunction with housing, mental health services, and employment assistance. Future programs should train mobility counselors to inform parents about the new schooling choices in the area, help them weigh the pros and cons of changing their children's schools, and explain some of the important elements of academic programs and how they could help their children's educational achievement. Counselors could also assuage parents’ fears about transferring their children to new schools by making sure that receiving schools have information about the children and that little instruction time is lost in the transition between schools.

Comment on Kirk McClure's “Are low-income housing tax credit developments locating where there is a shortage of affordable units?”

Kirk McClure's article makes important contributions to our understanding of the way in which state allocating agencies are using the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). However, one of the premises of his analysis – that allocating agencies should encourage the location housing developments in census tracts with a “surplus” of low-income renters – is mistaken. Census tracts are too small to be considered closed-system housing markets. Additionally, the LIHTC program does not exist in isolation, but instead as part of a combined national rental housing policy that includes both supply-side programs (LIHTC) and demand-side programs (housing vouchers). A final flaw in the notion that LIHTC units should be built in census tracts with a surplus of renter households in the 30% to 60% of AMI range compared with the units affordable to them is that increasing the amount of affordable housing in those tracts could have the effect of further concentrating households by income and race.