Moving to Work and Neighborhood Opportunity: A Scan of Mobility Initiatives by Moving to Work Public Housing Authorities

M E T R O P O L I T A N H O U S I N G A N D C O M M U N I T I E S P O LI C Y C E N T E R R E S E A R C H R E P O R T Moving to Work and Neighborhood Opportunity A Scan of Mobility Initiatives by Moving to Work Public Housing Authorities Martha Galvez Jasmine Simington Mark Treskon December 2016 (updated July 2018) A B O U T T H E U R B A N I N S TI T U T E The nonprofit Urban Institute is dedicated to elevating the debate on social and economic policy. For nearly five decades, Urban scholars have conducted research and offered evidence-based solutions that improve lives and strengthen communities across a rapidly urbanizing world. Their objective research helps expand opportunities for all, reduce hardship among the most vulnerable, and strengthen the effectiveness of the public sector. Copyright © December 2016. Urban Institute. Permission is granted for reproduction of this file, with attribution to the Urban Institute. Cover image by Tim Meko. Contents Contents iii Acknowledgments iv Errata v Moving to Work and Neighborhood Opportunity 1 Background 1 Summary of Approach 4 Findings: Overview of Key Interventions 7 Activities that Limit Mobility 15 Conclusion 15 Appendix A. Moving to Work Housing Authorities 17 Appendix B. Inventory of Mobility-Related Initiatives by Moving to Work Agencies 18 Appendix C. Inventory of Initiatives Identified by Moving to Work Agencies as Promoting Housing Choice 27 Notes 45 References 46 About the Authors 48 Statement of Independence 49 IV A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S Acknowledgments This report was funded by the Urban Institute in support of the Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO) project. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. Funders do not determine research findings or the insights and recommendations of Urban experts. Further information on the Urban Institute’s funding principles is available at www.urban.org/support. The CMTO project focuses on identifying and testing programs and policies that hold promise as pathways to improve low-opportunity neighborhoods or facilitate moves to high-opportunity neighborhoods. This review relies on a database of MTW activities created in 2016 for a separate project: HUD’s national evaluation of the MTW program. The authors thank HUD for allowing the additional use of the database for this report. The authors also thank Margery Turner and Mary Cunningham for valuable feedback and review of this work. E R R A T A V Errata This report was updated in July 2018 to correct the year that Moving to Work launched as referenced in box 1. Moving to Work and Neighborhood Opportunity This report explores how public housing authorities (PHAs) granted Moving to Work (MTW) status by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) use their unique policy and fiscal flexibility to help low-income households move to opportunity-rich neighborhoods. Policy and programs adopted through MTW include changes to the tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program or policies that increase the affordable housing supply in opportunity neighborhoods through the project-based voucher (PBV) program. PHAs may also use their MTW authority to limit voucher holders’ ability to move across PHA jurisdictions. Intensive mobility programs that couple counseling and services with housing vouchers have received the most attention as promising approaches to helping families move to high-opportunity neighborhoods (Berdahl-Baldwin 2015; Engdahl 2009).1 In this report, we identify comprehensive programs, but focus mainly on underresearched “lighter-touch” programs, or administrative policies. We draw from an extensive review of publicly available MTW agency plans and reports that document each PHA’s initiatives. Box 1 describes the MTW program and the reports we draw from. Appendix A lists the 39 MTW housing authorities, and appendixes B and C summarize the initiatives we identified. Our review does not evaluate the effectiveness of individual agency activities, but rather identifies and describes what MTW PHAs are experimenting with in the field. Background Neighborhoods play a key role in individual- and family-level outcomes and in children’s long-term prospects. Evidence suggests that moving from high-poverty areas to neighborhoods with lower poverty rates that are free from crime and offer access to economic and educational opportunities can yield long-term gains in health, economic, and educational well-being. The five-city Moving to Opportunity experiment found that people who moved to low-poverty areas experienced improved mental and physical health and higher incomes and employment rates (Turner, Nichols, and Comey 2012). Most recently, Chetty, Hendren, and Katz (2016) found that children who moved to new neighborhoods before age 13 were more likely to attend college, less likely to become single parents, 2 M O V I N G T O W