Section 8 Vouchers and Mobility

For more than a decade, the Urban Institute has been following the experiences of CHA families as they were relocated and their buildings were demolished and replaced with new, mixed-income housing. In this brief, the author distills a decade's worth of research and outlines lessons from this research that have important implications for cities across the nation grappling with how to improve their most troubled communities and provide decent, affordable housing for vulnerable families in an era of shrinking resources.

This brief provides an overview of the Urban Institute research on CHA families since 2001. It describes how most former residents now live in better housing in safer neighborhoods. Those who got intensive case management and supportive services through the Chicago Family Case Management Demonstration have significantly lower rates of depression, better physical health, and higher rates of employment. However, even with these gains, many adults struggle with extremely high rates of debilitating chronic illnesses that prevent them from finding full-time employment and many children still grapple with the fallout from growing up with chronic violence.

Chicago's Plan for Transformation improved housing quality for residents in our study; most reported living in extremely distressed units in 2001 but by 2011, just 25 percent reported such severe problems. Although their neighborhoods are still poor and racially segregated, they have higher rates of collective efficacy, less social disorder, and fewer signs of physical disorder. Many respondents are experiencing material hardship, including food insecurity and trouble paying bills and utilities. Voucher holders, in particular, are moving frequently with no perceptible improvement in housing or neighborhood quality. In fact, voucher holders report more housing problems than residents in public housing.

Demonstration participants, who were particularly vulnerable and hard to house in 2007, received intensive supportive services focused on improving family stability, mental health, and self-sufficiency. Our analysis finds significant gains in employment for working-age Demonstration participants living in traditional public housing (and subject to the CHA work requirement). In contrast, the health of Panel Study respondents—comparable CHA residents who did not receive intensive services— deteriorated steadily over the past decade. Despite these overall positive results, chronic disease remains a major challenge and mortality rates for these CHA residents are shockingly high.

Youth in our study who lived through CHA's Plan for Transformation remain in crisis. Many exhibit the short-term effects of growing up around violence, including high rates of criminal and delinquent behaviors. In 2011, fear and violence was affecting youth whose families had relocated with vouchers more than it was affecting those who had relocated to mixed-income or public housing. To manage their exposure to violence, some youth socially isolate themselves, or their families continue to seek refuge by moving. Still, some children are witnesses, victims, and perpetrators of violence as they leave their protective networks and enter new communities.

After more than a decade of physical and social transformation and $1 billion, the Chicago Housing Authority's singular Plan for Transformation offers valuable lessons for federal policymakers and local housing authorities trying to improve their most troubled neighborhoods and improve the quality of life for public housing residents, an Urban Institute research and policy synthesis explains.

The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program provides low income households the ability to affordably rent decent housing practically anywhere in the United States. And yet, voucher holders largely live in a relatively small number of low opportunity neighborhoods. In order to fully exercise their housing choice, program participants need quality information about the housing options available and tools to overcome real and perceived barriers in the private rental market. Drawing on the best available research and model programs from across the country, this toolkit provides practical advice on how to plan and implement a housing mobility program to overcome these challenges.

The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration tested the long-term benefits of helping poor families move from severely distressed housing projects to low-poverty neighborhoods. Evaluation results recently released by HUD find significant gains in health but not in employment, incomes, or educational attainment among experimental families. One possible reason gains were limited is that few families spent much more than a year living in high-opportunity neighborhoods. This brief summarizes new evidence that the MTO families that lived longer in neighborhoods with lower poverty and higher education levels did achieve better outcomes in work and school, as well as in health.