Moving to Opportunity

Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing (MTO) is a program sponsored by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which gives Section 8 housing vouchers to low-income families and gives them counseling and assistance to help them move to low-poverty neighborhoods with better resources than the usual high-poverty neighborhoods that Section 8 voucher holders usually move to. In order to assess the effectiveness of this program, families who volunteered to participate in the program were divided into 3 groups. Two of the groups received standard counseling while the third group received special assistance with searching for homes in low-poverty areas. It was hoped that those who received special attention would move to more resourceful neighborhoods, and these areas would have a positive effect on their employment, education, and health ^[1] The pilot study was implemented by public housing authorities in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.

The initial results show that the parents in families who moved to low-poverty areas had lower rates of obesity and depression, and their female children were more likely to graduate from high school, and less likely to engage in delinquent or risky behavior. The program was carried out during a period of economic expansion and welfare reforms which required all welfare recipients to work (1994–2004), so nearly all participants in both high-poverty and low-poverty were employed.

In 2006 Harcourt and Ludwig found essentially identical overall crime rates among participants moved under the program and those who stayed put.

Moving to Opportunity was modeled on the Chicago Housing Authority's Gautreaux Project.

References

1. ^ Ferryman, Kadija et al. 2008. "Do Better Neighborhoods for MTO Families Mean Better Schools." Urban Institute [1]

• Ferryman, Kadija et al. 2008. "Do Better Neighborhoods for MTO Families Mean Better Schools." Urban Institute [2]
• HUD description of MTO and initial results: [3]
• Recent MTO findings [4]
• Harcourt, Bernard E. and Ludwig, Jens, Broken Windows: New Evidence from New York City and a Five-City Social Experiment. University of Chicago Law Review, Vol. 73, 2006.

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_to_Opportunity"