Residential location,transportation, and welfare‐to‐work in the United States: A case study of Milwaukee

Abstract

This article addresses two questions about spatial barriers to welfare‐to‐work transition in the United States. First, what residential and transportation adjustments do welfare recipients tend to make as they try to become economically self‐sufficient? Second, do these adjustments actually increase the probability that they will become employed?

Analysis of 1997–2000 panel data on housing location and automobile ownership for Milwaukee welfare recipients reveals two tendencies: (1) to relocate to neighborhoods with less poverty and more racial integration and (2) to obtain a car. Results from binary logit models indicate that residential relocation and car ownership both increase the likelihood that welfare recipients will become employed. These findings suggest that policies should aim to facilitate residential mobility for low‐income families and improve their neighborhoods, rather than simply move them closer to job opportunities. The findings also suggest a critical role for transportation policy in reducing unemployment.     

“… And a suitable living environment”: The failure of housing programs to deliver on neighborhood quality

Abstract

This article evaluates the relative performance of housing programs in terms of neighborhood quality. We profile neighborhood characteristics surrounding assisted housing units and assess the direction of assisted housing policy in light of this information. The analysis relies on a housing census database we developed that identifies the type and census tract location of assisted housing units—that is, public housing, developments assisted under the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Section 515 Rural Rental Housing Direct Loan Program, the low‐income housing tax credit, certificates and vouchers, and state rental assistance programs.

We conclude that project‐based assistance programs do little to improve the quality of recipients’ neighborhoods relative to those of welfare households and, in the case of public housing, appear to make things significantly worse. The certificate and voucher programs, however, appear to reduce the probability that families will live in the most economically and socially distressed areas.     

The Use of Rental Housing Assistance by Immigrants in the United States and New York City

Abstract

The large influx of immigrants to the United States and New York City from poorer countries has sparked considerable debate as to whether immigrants are becoming a “public charge” to American society. Most arguments have centered around immigrants’ use of cash assistance programs. This article compares immigrants’ receipt of rental housing assistance with that of native‐born Americans.

Bivariate analyses reveal that immigrants, as a group, are no more likely than native‐born households to use any form of rental housing assistance. Indeed, in most instances immigrants are less likely than native‐born households to receive assistance, with two exceptions: immigrants who have been in the United States since 1970 and immigrants from the former Soviet Union in New York City. Multivariate analyses reveal similar results, except that immigrants who have been in the United States since 1970 are no more likely than other immigrants to receive housing assistance when we control for other factors.     

Section 8 and Movement to Job Opportunity: Experience after Welfare Reform in Kansas City

Abstract

This research addresses the extent to which tenant‐based rental assistance, before and after welfare reform, helps households move to areas with greater opportunities for employment. It was thought that the threat of losing their welfare benefits would encourage participants in the Section 8 program to use the mobility it offers to move to neighborhoods with greater opportunities for employment.

Two samples of Section 8 program participants, one taken before welfare reform and the other taken after it was enacted, have been examined. With the strong economy after welfare reform, more Section 8 households are employed and fewer are on welfare. However, the analysis finds that, independent of welfare reform, households did not use their housing subsidy to move to areas with greater opportunities for employment. Program participants typically remained in racially concentrated areas of the central city, away from those neighborhoods with job growth or large numbers of jobs.     

Child characteristics and successful use of housing vouchers: Estimates from the moving to opportunity demonstration

Abstract

Voucher‐based programs have become the most common form of housing assistance for low‐income families in the United States, yet only a slim majority of households that are offered vouchers actually move with them. This article uses data from 2,938 households in the Moving to Opportunity demonstration program to examine whether child characteristics influence the probability that a household will successfully use a housing voucher to lease‐up.

Our results suggest that while many child characteristics have little bearing on the use of housing vouchers, child health, behavioral, and educational problems, particularly the presence of multiple problems in a household, do have an influence. Households with two or more child problems are 7 percentage points less likely to move than those who have none of these problems or only one. Results suggest that such families may need additional support to benefit from housing vouchers or alternative types of affordable housing units.     

Housing,Welfare Reform,and Self‐Sufficiency: An Assessment of the Family Self‐Sufficiency Program

Abstract

Recently passed welfare reform legislation may have adverse impacts on the incomes of public and assisted housing residents and hence on the rental income of housing authorities. One way to dampen these impacts is to help welfare‐reliant tenants find jobs. The Family Self‐Sufficiency (FSS) programs sponsored by many housing authorities may be an important means of doing this. This article presents the findings of an early study of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's FSS program and explores the program's potential for dampening the impacts of welfare reform. The study involved a mail survey of the coordinators of 564 FSS programs.

The survey results indicate a surprising lack of interest in the early FSS program among potential participants. The results also indicate that these programs are inadequately staffed, and that the programs’ potential to dampen the effects of welfare reform are limited by the relatively small percentage of welfare‐reliant residents enrolled.     

Comment on Jill Khadduri's “should the housing voucher program become a state‐administered block grant?”

Abstract

The stated goal of the Housing Act of 1949 is “a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family.” It is time that we delivered on that commitment. Contrary to popular opinion, this does not require spending more money on housing assistance. It can be achieved without additional funds by shifting all funds from less cost‐effective methods for delivering housing assistance to choice‐based vouchers as soon as current contractual commitments permit and by gradually reducing the large subsidies to current voucher recipients. The proposal to replace the Housing Choice Voucher Program with a block grant to states can contribute to this goal by precluding the use of the block grant funds for project‐based assistance, increasing the targeting of assistance to the poorest families, and including the fraction of recipients with extremely low incomes in the formula for determining the performance rating of state programs.     

The Impact of Homeless Prevention on Residential Instability: Evidence From the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program

ABSTRACT

Millions of individuals and families in the United States do not have access to stable housing. Recent policies in the United States and the rest of the developed world emphasize programs intended to prevent homelessness through temporary financial assistance. This article explores the impact of the largest homelessness prevention program in U.S. history, the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing Program (HPRP), on residential instability, using a national sample of families with children enrolled in school. The identification strategy exploits variations on the location of HPRP providers. Using data on the ratio of K–12 students experiencing homelessness in school districts, we find that HPRP is associated with reductions in the percentage of homeless students for districts closer to an HPRP provider. However, the impacts of HPRP fade out when program benefits end, bringing into question whether homeless prevention can help families achieve self-sufficiency in the long run.     

Subsidized housing and work among welfare recipients

Abstract

Some studies suggest an inverse relationship between housing assistance and employment. That is, when housing assistance increases, employment decreases. A popular view holds that subsidized housing generates an economic disincentive to work. This article examines the relationship between subsidized housing and the number of hours female recipients of public assistance work. A California survey reveals that residents in Section 8 housing work considerably more than do those renting in the private market or residing in public housing. This finding holds after controlling for observable personal characteristics and accounting for income effects. Additional analysis comparing the two housing programs shows a consistent, robust difference, with those in Section 8 working more.

One explanation is that the finding is a statistical artifact caused by programmatic creaming or self‐selection among applicants. The second, more plausible explanation is that Section 8 housing offers residential choice and mobility that improve opportunities for employment.     

Preservation of existing housing: A key element in a revitalized national housing policy

Abstract

A key aspect of the continuing housing policy debate is how best to spend limited resources to aid the poor. Recently, the policy has focused on whether it is more effective to intervene on the supply side via provision of a voucher or rental certificate that enables a low‐income household to secure decent housing in the private market.

This paper argues that preserving and maintaining the affordability of the remaining stock of unsubsidized low‐cost housing will require a skillful balancing of supply‐and demand‐side interventions. Exclusive reliance on vouchers will not do the job, especially since large segments of the poor do not receive any form of housing assistance. Flexible programs to expand the purchasing power of poverty‐level households must be developed.     

Comment on Jill Khadduri's “should the housing voucher program become a state‐administered block grant?” A housing voucher block grant is a bad idea

Abstract

Khadduri argues for a well‐designed voucher block grant, phased in over several years. But proposals under consideration are more likely to undermine the effectiveness of vouchers than address their limitations. The most important advantage of housing vouchers is that they give recipients the freedom to choose the kind of housing and the location that best meet their needs. Although the current program is not living up to its potential, strategies for making it work better can be implemented without a block grant. Supporters of block grants claim welfare reform as a model, but none of the factors that contributed to declining caseloads under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families apply to housing. The single biggest problem with the housing voucher program is that federal spending for affordable housing is woefully inadequate. Instead of addressing this issue, a block grant would make housing hardship a state rather than a federal problem.     

Economic Aid and Peace Implementation: The African Experience

Abstract

This paper examines the potential importance of externally-facilitated peace dividends and donor coordination in sustaining peace after the signing of an accord. We extend our previous research on US performance after civil wars to learn if adversary assumptions on peace dividends have additional positive impact when a wider sample of major Western European donors is included. Was the lack of US follow-through compensated for in whole or in part by the extension of development assistance allocations from European allies? We find that cases in which donors provide significant and sustained post-conflict aid are somewhat less likely to return to civil war than those who do not receive comparable assistance. Moreover, we find in such cases that donor coordination reinforced behaviour that encouraged the implementation process, providing an extra incentive for maintaining the peace agreement over the five-year threshold and beyond.     

POLICY FOR THE'DESERVING,'BUT POLITICALLY WEAK: THE 1996 WELFARE REFORM ACT AND BATTERED WOMEN

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (Public Law #104–193) is perhaps the most visible national legislation since the sweeping Civil Rights laws of the 1960s. For social policy so well entrenched into the American social fabric, the rapidity with which reforms swept through the welfare system was unprecedented and confound conventional theoretical pronouncements on bureaucracy and policy change. The swiftness of reform, and the political rhetoric that surrounded the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, have prompted criticism that reformers responded more to the social construction of welfare recipients than they did to the dictates of sound public policy (Magusson and Dunham, 1996). This article discusses the ramifications of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act for battered women and concludes that battered women's social construction as deserving of public assistance, but politically weak, precipitated welfare reform policy, targeted to battered women, that has been largely rhetorical rather than substantive.     

New York city and subsidized housing: Impacts and lessons of the city's $5 billion capital budget housing plan

Abstract

New York City has devoted far more resources to the development and rehabilitation of affordable housing than any other U.S. city, investing more than $4 billion from 1986 to 1997. This article surveys the impact, status, and implications of New York's housing programs. It looks at correlations between publicly funded housing starts and changes in the housing stock, welfare rolls, and crime and at the economic impact of the city's housing investments within low‐income neighborhoods.

New York's housing programs have transformed neighborhoods, replacing large swaths of abandoned shells and vacant land with new housing and preserving thousands of buildings at risk of abandonment. While these housing investments correlate most strongly with reductions in vacant units and vacant lots, they also show significant correlations with reductions in welfare rolls and violent crime, but uneven economic impacts as well. New York's housing programs are important nationally less for the specifics of particular programs than for the institutional collaborations on which they are founded.     

Using housing vouchers to move to the suburbs: How do families fare?

Abstract

When families with Section 8 housing vouchers move from inner‐city communities to the suburbs, are they more likely to move to neighborhoods with higher socioeconomic status and to perceive improvements in housing and neighborhood conditions than those who make local moves or those who first move to the suburbs but then return to the central city? Both crosstabular and logistic regression analysis are applied to a telephone interview sample of 300 Section 8 voucher recipients in Oakland and Berkeley, CA.

As predicted, compared with the other two groups, suburban‐bound movers were more likely to move to neighborhoods with higher socioeconomic status and to experience better residential conditions, even when relevant background characteristics were controlled. Furthermore, few suburban‐bound movers experienced adjustment problems with neighbors or landlords, and their children quickly and smoothly adjusted to their new schools. The implications of these results for the Section 8 housing voucher program are discussed.     

Moving out of poverty: Expanding mobility and choice through tenant‐based housing assistance

Abstract

Historically, federal housing policy has contributed to the concentration of poverty in urban America. Moving out of poverty is not the right answer for every low‐income family, but tenant‐based housing assistance (Section 8 certificates and vouchers) has tremendous potential to help families move to healthier neighborhoods. This article explores the role of tenant‐based housing assistance in addressing the problem of concentrated inner‐city poverty.

The Section 8 program by itself does not ensure access to low‐poverty neighborhoods, particularly for minority families. Supplementing certificates and vouchers with housing counseling and search assistance can improve their performance; a growing number of assisted housing mobility initiatives are now in place across the country. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should continue to fund these initiatives and increase their number over time. HUD should also strengthen incentives for all housing authorities to improve locational outcomes in their Section 8 programs.     

The TANF/SSI connection

Interactions and overlap of social assistance programs across clients interest policymakers because such interactions affect both the clients' well-being and the programs' efficiency. This article investigates the connections between Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and TANF's predecessor, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Connections between receipt of TANF and SSI are widely discussed in both disability policy and poverty research literatures because many families receiving TANF report disabilities. For both states and the individuals involved, it is generally financially advantageous for adults and children with disabilities to transfer from TANF to SSI. States gain because the federal government pays for the SSI benefit, and states can then use the TANF savings for other purposes. The families gain because the SSI benefits they acquire are greater than the TANF benefits they lose. The payoff to states from transferring welfare recipients to SSI was substantially increased when Congress replaced AFDC with TANF in 1996. States retained less than half of any savings achieved through such transfers under AFDC, but they retain all of the savings under TANF. Also, the work participation requirements under TANF have obligated states to address the work support needs of adults with disabilities who remain in TANF, and states can avoid these costs if adults have disabilities that satisfy SSI eligibility requirements. The incentive for TANF recipients to apply for SSI has increased over time as inflation has caused real TANF benefits to fall relative to payments received by SSI recipients. Trends in the financial incentives for transfer to SSI have not been studied in detail, and reliable general data on the extent of the interaction between TANF and SSI are scarce. In addition, some estimates of the prevalence of TANF receipt among SSI awardees are flawed because they fail to include adults receiving benefits in TANF-related Separate State Programs (SSPs). SSPs are assistance programs that are administered by TANF agencies but are paid for wholly from state funds. When the programs are conducted in a manner consistent with federal regulations, the money states spend on SSPs counts toward federal maintenance-of-effort (MOE) requirements, under which states must sustain a certain level of contribution to the costs of TANF and approved related activities. SSPs are used for a variety of purposes, including support of families who are in the process of applying for SSI. Until very recently, families receiving cash benefits through SSPs were not subject to TANF's work participation requirements. This article contributes to analysis of the interaction between TANF and SSI by evaluating the financial consequences of TANF-to-SSI transfer and developing new estimates of both the prevalence of receipt of SSI benefits among families receiving cash assistance from TANF and the proportion of new SSI awards that go to adults and children residing in families receiving TANF or TANF-related benefits in SSPs. Using data from the Urban Institute's Welfare Rules Database, we find that by 2003 an SSI award for a child in a three-person family dependent on TANF increased family income by 103.5 percent on average across states; an award to the adult in such a family increased income by 115.4 percent. The gain from both child and adult transfers increased by about 6 percent between 1996 (the eve of the welfare reform that produced TANF) and 2003. Using data from the Department of Health and Human Services' TANF/SSP Recipient Family Characteristics Survey, we estimate that 16 percent of families receiving TANF/SSP support in federal fiscal year 2003 included an adult or child SSI recipient. This proportion has increased slightly since fiscal year 2000. The Social Security Administration's current procedures for tabulating characteristics of new SSI awardees do not recognize SSP receipt as TANF We use differences in reported TANF-to-SSI flows between states with and without Separate State Programs to estimate the understatement of the prevalence of TANF-related SSI awards in states with SSPs. The results indicate that the absolute number of awards to AFDC (and subsequently) TANF/SSP recipients has declined by 42 percent for children and 25 percent for adults since the early 1990s. This result is a product of the decline in welfare caseloads. However, the monthly incidence of such awards has gone up-from less than 1 per 1,000 child recipients in calendar years 1991-1993 to 1.3 per 1,000 in 2001-2003 and, for adult recipients, from 1.6 per 1,000 in 1991-1993 to 4 per 1,000 in 2001-2003. From these results we conclude that a significant proportion of each year's SSI awards to disabled nonelderly people go to TANF/SSP recipients, and many families that receive TANF/SSP support include adults, children, or both who receive SSI. Given the Social Security Administration's efforts to improve eligibility assessment for applicants, to ensure timely access to SSI benefits for those who qualify, and to improve prospects for eventual employment of the disabled, there is definitely a basis for working with TANF authorities both nationally and locally on service coordination and on smoothing the process of SSI eligibility assessment. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 reauthorized TANF through fiscal year 2010, but with some rules changes that are important in light of the analysis presented in this article. The new law substantially increases effective federal requirements for work participation by adult TANF recipients and mandates that adults in Separate State Programs be included in participation requirements beginning in fiscal year 2007. Thus SSPs will no longer provide a means for exempting from work requirements families that are in the process of applying for SSI, and the increased emphasis on work participation could result in more SSI applications from adult TANF recipients.     

From dependency to self‐sufficiency: An appraisal of the gateway transitional families program

Abstract

This article presents a longitudinal evaluation of the Gateway Transitional Families Program, an innovative self‐sufficiency program designed to help public housing residents leave public housing for their own homes. The evaluation followed participants and a comparison group over six years to isolate program impacts on employment and receipt of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), food stamps, and housing assistance.

Many participants dropped out of the program. Difficulty in juggling educational and child‐rearing responsibilities, noncompliance with program or public housing regulations, low wages while in the program, impatience with the length of the program, and staff shortages and turnover contributed to the dropout rate. Those who finished the program experienced modest increases in income, decreases in receipt of AFDC and food stamps, and reduced reliance on housing assistance relative to comparison group members. Furthermore, graduates were more likely than comparison group members to have bought a home.     

Comment on Victoria Basolo and Mai Thi Nguyen's “Does mobility matter? The neighborhood conditions of housing voucher holders by race and ethnicity”

Abstract

Creating the opportunity for minorities to move away from poor, racially concentrated neighborhoods to better ones is an important goal of the Housing Choice Voucher Program. However, mobility is not its only—or even its primary—objective. Rather, it aims to reduce severe rent burdens for very low income families and individuals.

Basolo and Nguyen imply that the voucher program by itself can overcome entrenched patterns of racial discrimination. This is unrealistic, even when families receive search assistance. Instead, the test is whether a minority family with a voucher is more likely to live in a low‐poverty, low‐minority neighborhood than the same family without a voucher. The program passes that test. However, Basolo and Nguyen's analysis points to the need for more research on voucher use in localities like Santa Ana where overcrowded housing is an issue, in neighborhoods with a mixed minority population, and in specific metropolitan areas.