Housing Vouchers and Certificates as a Vehicle for Deconcentrating the Poor

Abstract

The authors analyze the census tract location of over 11,000 certificate and voucher households in Washington, D.C., and its suburbs, and compare those to the distribution of public housing and various other project-based subsidized housing developments such as Section 236. They find evidence that household mobility programs may be succeeding in the goal of dispersing affordable housing opportunities beyond the central-city boundary, but they also find evidence that market forces and personal choices may lead toward reconcentration of suburban voucher and certificate holders in neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status and higher proportions of minorities.

Rigging the Rules of the Game: How Landlords Geographically Sort Low–Income Renters

“…Increasingly, the program aspires to facilitate low-income renters' access to geographic opportunity through residential choice and has been enlisted to fight poverty concentration (Freeman 2011;Goering 2005;Goetz 2003;McClure 2010;Newman and Schnare 1997;Turner and Kingsley 2008). 5 However, even though a voucher can be used in any neighborhood with an affordable unit, research shows that voucher holders are concentrating in neighborhoods with moderate to high poverty rates (Devine 2003;Galster 2005;Hartung and Henig 1997;Orr et al 2003;Schwartz 2010). Voucher holders are no less likely to live in minority neighborhoods than unassisted low-income renters (Basolo and Nguyen 2005;Devine 2003;Schwartz 2010;Turner 1998).…”

Do Housing Choice Voucher holders live near good schools?

“…Similarly, voucher holders typically live in neighborhoods that are less disadvantaged than those lived in by the average public housing resident or resident of other HUD-assisted development (Hartung and Henig, 1997;Kingsley et al, 2003;Pendall 2000;Devine et al, 2003). However, the neighborhoods where voucher holders live appear to be somewhat more disadvantaged on average than the neighborhoods surrounding LIHTC developments (McClure, 2006).…”

Struggling to stay out of high-poverty neighborhoods: housing choice and locations in moving to opportunity's first decade

“…Voucher holders typically cluster in moderate-to-high-poverty neighborhoods of housing markets (Feins and Patterson 2005;Newman and Schnare 1997), sometimes in distinct corridors or ''hot spots'' where affordable rental housing tends to be more abundant and minority concentration high (Hartung and Henig 1997;McClure 2001;Wang and Varady 2005). At least some of these areas are poorer 8 Latinos appear to occupy an intermediate position, with more favorable locational trajectories than blacks but less favorable ones than whites (South, Crowder, and Chavez 2005), and also to show substantial variation among nationality groups (e.g., Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican); data limitations have made it impossible to study longitudinal patterns among Asians.…”