Location Patterns of Section 8 Housing in Jefferson County, Kentucky

Abstract

The controversial Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program is the largest federal low-income housing program. Using GIS-based spatial clustering analysis (Getis-Ord's Gi statistic) and multiple linear regressions, in this paper, the authors examine the locational patterns of more than 13,600 Section 8 housing units in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and explore key social, economic, demographic, and locational factors underlying the spatial distribution of Section 8 housing. The findings reveal that Section 8 housing continues to concentrate in the central city area with predominantly black residents, a high proportion of families in poverty, and abundant low-cost properties. The Section 8 voucher policy has failed to successfully de-concentrate poor families from these urban areas. Residential mobility of low-income families has been restricted by various factors, most important of which is the lack of accessibility to public transportation across the metropolitan area.

Housing and Jobs: Investigating the Geographic Variance of Housing Vouchers in Metropolitan Regions

“…Most studies have investigated this mismatch from a job and transportation perspective (Ihlanfeldt, & Sjoquist, 1998;Lens et al, 2019;Stacy, 2020;Igoufe, 2018;Liu, 2020;Taylor & Ong, 1995;Yılmaz, & Yeşilırmak, 2021). Several studies have taken a similar approach to the study of the geographic distribution of voucher opportunities (Song, & Keeling, 2010;Sinai & Waldfogel, 2005;Park, 2013;Silverman et al, 2015). The voucher program's impact in reducing the spatial mismatch is missing in this literature.…”