History lessons for today's housing policy: the politics of low-income housing

History offers valuable lessons to housing policymakers. For those who would devise new low-income housing programs during today's trying economic circumstances, it is helpful to study the strategies that succeeded in achieving low-income housing programs in past difficult times. This article, History Lessons for Today's Housing Policy, examines the political processes that led to the adoption of new low-income housing policies during four political crises. The four crises were the Great Depression of the 1930s, the post-World War II housing shortage, the urban crisis of the 1960s, and the policy crisis of the 1970s. Among other history lessons, the article reveals that well-organized political support, especially from large institutions, is crucial to achieving distinctly different new programs; that decentralized programs are more politically resilient than centralized programs; that programs that appeal to the nation's broad middle-class are most popular; and that policy research is valuable but that politics trumps research.     

A different lens: administrative perspectives on portability in Illinois' Housing Choice Voucher Program

Over the last decade, the Housing Choice Voucher Program has grown to become the USA's primary strategy for providing safe, decent, and affordable housing. Annually serving more than 2 million low-income households, the program is designed to help low-income households afford private market rental housing. The program also allows for the “portability” of vouchers nationally between housing authority jurisdictions. Both features aim to mitigate the effects of concentrated poverty. Research on the Moving to Opportunity Program and the Gautreaux consent decree have produced data confirming that residential mobility can at times lead to positive opportunities for assisted households. This past research has been conducted on specific programs occurring outside of the general Housing Choice Voucher Program framework and has focused on household-level outcomes, paying little attention to the ways in which program administration may affect outcomes for voucher households. This article aims to understand voucher portability from the perspective of housing authority executive directors and program administrators, in order to better understand how program administration impacts the types of household outcomes observed in prior research. The results reveal that housing authority administrative practices and inter-housing authority relationships play a significant role in shaping the types of outcomes realized by porting voucher households. These findings suggest several changes to program administrative design and policy that may improve support for voucher households as they make portability moves.     

The low income housing tax credit and racial segregation

This paper addresses a critical but almost unexamined aspect of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program – whether its use (and in particular, the siting of developments in high-poverty/high-minority neighborhoods), is associated with increased racial segregation in the metropolitan area. Using data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Census, supplemented with data on the racial composition of LIHTC tenants in three states, we examine three potential channels through which the LIHTC could affect segregation: where LIHTC units are built relative to where other low income households live, who lives in these tax credit developments, and changes in neighborhood racial composition in neighborhoods that receive tax credit projects. The evidence on each of these channels suggests that LIHTC projects do not contribute to increased segregation, even those in high poverty neighborhoods. We find that increases in the use of tax credits are associated with declines in racial segregation at the metropolitan level.     

Beyond NIMBY and poverty deconcentration: reframing the outcomes of affordable rental housing development

Policies and research around affordable rental housing remain stuck between the “rock” of not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) fears and the “hard place” of deconcentrating poverty goals, leading to fragmented outcome measurement in contemporary project-based affordable rental housing programs. This article compares the motivations and results of existing research focused on NIMBY concerns around place to that of programs that promote the deconcentration of poor people. We suggest reframing the argument for project-based affordable rental housing by bolstering outcome measurement on neighborhoods and developments and expanding it to include tenants. Building upon current evaluation practices of mobility studies and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, we present a comprehensive framework for evaluating outcomes of project-based rental housing developments within their local context at three relevant scales: project, household, and community. We present an array of indicators and examine data collection needs and limitations, acknowledging the political and financial obstacles to comprehensive evaluation but arguing for the need to justify expenditures and prove results to the public. We recommend that government agencies stretch beyond NIMBY arguments and deconcentration of poverty goals to be proactive in targeting, measuring, publicizing, and redressing an expanded set of outcomes through better comprehensive planning for affordable housing. Through more rigorous and comprehensive evaluation of outcomes at all scales, it may be shown that affordable housing development yields a broad range of benefits for the people housed, projects financed, and the communities where it is built.     

Rooms for Improvement: A Qualitative Metasynthesis of the Housing Choice Voucher Program

This article synthesizes housing subsidy voucher research to explain why, when in theory vouchers enable users to move out of poor neighborhoods, in practice they often do not. This qualitative meta-analysis presents an examination of the assumptions of the program and their relationship to empirical findings.

Two themes emerged from this synthesis: market barriers and product problems. Data from a variety of studies and contexts portray recipients struggling to use vouchers in the private rental market due to market barriers, including lack of public transportation and the presence of discrimination. Product problems constrained freedom of choice about where to move and when to make a housing transition. These constraints manifest as compromised housing quality and low voucher utilization. This synthetic view cannot account for all outcomes or exceptional cases, but results suggest where participant experiences are generalizable and attributable to features of the housing market and structure of the program itself.     

Quality of Life,Transportation Costs,and Federal Housing Assistance: Leveling the Playing Field

Abstract

Federal housing subsidies are allocated without regard to spatial differences in the cost of living or quality of life. In this article, we calculate housing subsidy payments for participants in the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program and demonstrate that these subsidies are significantly related to metropolitan quality-of-life differentials. We then estimate amenity-adjusted subsidies and compare these estimates with data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Location Affordability Portal. Our analysis yields three insights regarding the relationship between federal housing assistance payments (HAP), metropolitan quality-of-life differentials, and transportation cost burdens. First, HCV HAP show a strong inverse correlation with household transportation expenditures, and this is particularly pronounced for low-income households. Thus, HAP do not address location affordability because those living in high-transportation cost metropolitan areas receive the lowest housing subsidies. Second, we present evidence that HAP are positively related to metropolitan quality-of-life differentials. This suggests that high-amenity metropolitan areas also tend to be the most affordable from a transportation cost perspective. Third, our proposed amenity-adjusted HAP strongly reduce the inverse relationship between HAP and transportation cost burdens.     

Permanent supportive housing for domestic violence victims: program theory and client perspectives

The US Violence Against Women Act of 2005 allocated $10 million to support collaborative efforts to create permanent housing options for domestic violence victims. Such programs are relatively new and rare, and up to now little research has examined their efficacy. This research investigates one permanent housing option, the permanent supportive housing model, through an exploratory case study of a Connecticut-based program currently being developed. The study compares the program design articulated by administrators and advocates with perspectives of domestic violence agency clients.

Findings indicate important differences between the program activities and goals articulated by administrators, and those preferred by clients. Although everyone agreed that personal safety was a priority, administrators stressed independence and choice whereas clients sought a stricter, community-centered environment with time-limited stays. These themes can be used to develop hypotheses for larger studies and have important preliminary policy and program implications.     

The Reconcentration of Poverty: Patterns of Housing Voucher Use, 2000 to 2008

In theory, housing choice vouchers provide low-income families with increased neighborhood options. However, previous research is mixed regarding whether the program promotes integration. Examining the 50 most populous U.S. metropolitan areas, I find that households using vouchers are more economically and racially segregated than an extremely low-income comparison group. However, voucher households in areas with source-of-income protection laws are less racially segregated than voucher households in areas without such laws.     

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.     

Interpreting the dynamics of public housing: Cultural and rational choice explanations

Abstract

This article uses culture of poverty and rational choice theories of poverty to explain how quickly nonelderly household heads leave public housing. Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics serve as the basis for the analysis.

Although a significant proportion of all household heads have public housing spells lasting five or more years, the majority have spells lasting less than five years. The availability of other housing options has a strong impact on how quickly individuals move out of public housing. Family structure and human capital play a more modest role. To the extent that one's childhood experiences affect the likelihood of exiting public housing, they appear to do so mostly through their effect on the acquisition of human capital. Finally, the evidence presented is inconsistent with the notion that public housing is a trap from which it is more difficult to escape the longer one lives in it.     

The convergence of nonequity housing models in Canada: Changes to housing policy since 1990

Abstract

This study examines the impact of housing policy convergence on the nonequity housing system in Ontario, Canada. Ontario has four distinct nonequity housing models— public, nonprofit cooperative, municipal nonprofit, and private nonprofit. This article argues that since 1990, housing policy in Canada, and particularly in Ontario, has become increasingly influenced by the neoconservative agenda of downsizing and decentralization of government functions found in the United States.

The findings reveal that changes to housing policy have caused the convergence of nonequity housing models in the areas of management and administration. Drawing on the present findings and on an experimental project in tenant management, this article argues that the trend toward convergence will continue and will likely result in one nonequity housing model in Canada. This pattern is interpreted in light of the neoconservative agenda of both countries that emphasizes private sector solutions to housing low‐income families.     

Supporting low-income homeowners: lessons from a program to coordinate weatherization and rehabilitation services

Homeownership is the primary way most families build wealth in this country. Low-income homeowners are less likely to get that benefit because they are more likely to own older houses that are more costly to operate and need more essential maintenance. Rapidly escalating home energy costs are straining the budgets of many low-income homeowners, increasing the likelihood of under maintenance and mortgage default. This paper presents an evaluation of a demonstration program designed to coordinate weatherization and rehabilitation programs in order to assist low-income households, decrease energy costs, and to improve the condition and value of their homes. The experience of 11 local non-profit organizations, funded to develop programs to coordinate weatherization and housing rehabilitation services, were studied over a five-year period. The results of the evaluation indicate that there are many obstacles to coordinating weatherization and rehabilitation programs, but that it can be accomplished under the right conditions. Major gaps exist between program eligibility thresholds and in the types of assistance available to low-income homeowners. Policy recommendations for facilitating coordination are presented.     

Moving up versus moving out: Neighborhood effects in housing mobility programs

Abstract

This article suggests ways to better design, conduct, and interpret evaluations of the effects of housing mobility programs on participants, with emphasis on how to isolate neighborhood effects. It reviews earlier critiques of neighborhood effects research and discusses the key assumptions of housing mobility programs—about the benefits of affluent neighbors, the spatial organization of opportunity for the urban poor, and the meanings of “neighborhood” to residents, researchers, and policy makers.

Studying mobility contexts, especially in suburban areas, offers special challenges to researchers. More research is needed that looks at residents’ social ties and uses mixed‐methods approaches. Ethnographic data, in particular, would enhance the validity of the quantitative data that now dominate studies of neighborhood effects. Adding substantially to what we know about the processes or mechanisms—the “how” of neighborhood effects—mixed‐methods approaches would also make research much more useful to policy makers and program managers.     

Rental Housing Assistance and Health: Evidence From the Survey of Income and Program Participation

Interest in the health impacts of renter housing assistance has grown in the wake of heated national discussions on health care and social welfare spending. Assistance may improve renters’ health by offering (a) low, fixed housing costs; (b) protection against eviction; and (c) access to better homes and neighborhoods. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and econometric analysis, I estimate the effect of receiving assistance from the public housing or Section 8 voucher programs on low-income renters’ reported health status and spending. Assisted renters spent less on health care over the year than unassisted low-income renters did, after controlling for other characteristics. This finding suggests that assisted housing leads to health benefits that may reduce low-income renters’ need to purchase health services. Voucher holders’ lower expenditures are influenced by their low, fixed housing costs, but public housing residents’ lower expenditures are not explained by existing theory.     

Lists and Lotteries: Rationing in the Housing Choice Voucher Program

This article investigates how the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program rations subsidies. HCV is the largest low-income housing assistance program in the United States. Despite the program’s size, millions of HCV-eligible households go without subsidy each year. Because the demand for support exceeds the supply of subsidies, HCV assistance is rationed through several mechanisms. These mechanisms and their relationship with the HCV system from both the client and administrator perspectives will be discussed. Implications of HCV rationing will also be discussed.     

HOPE VI relocation: Moving to new neighborhoods and building new ties

Abstract

Severely distressed public housing developments are being torn down and redeveloped through the HOPE (Housing Opportunities for People Everywhere) VI initiative in cities across the United States. This article examines how families from one HOPE VI site decided where to move and how they fared in building social ties with their new neighbors. Semistructured interviews from a random sample of 41 families with children were analyzed.

Families that chose to move into public housing expressed concern about the unreliability of the Section 8 program and their own ability to pay the extra utility costs involved. Those who used Section 8 vouchers to relocate had more education on average and made this choice to improve the neighborhood for their families. Over the past two years, regardless of what kind of neighborhood they moved into, families have not rebuilt the close ties most of them had in their former neighborhood.     

Development of an Index of Subsidized Housing Availability and its Relationship to Housing Insecurity

Housing insecurity is a known threat to child health understanding predictors of housing insecurity can help inform policies to protect the health of young children in low-income households. This study sheds light on the relationship between housing insecurity and availability of housing that is affordable to low-income households.

We developed a county-level index of availability of subsidized housing needed to meet the demand of low-income households. Our results estimate that if subsidized units are made available to an additional 5% of the eligible population, the odds of overcrowding decrease by 26% and the odds of families making multiple moves decrease by 31%. Both of these are known predictors of poor child health outcomes. Thus, these results suggest that state and federal investments in expanding the stock of subsidized housing could reduce housing insecurity and thereby also improve the health and well-being of young children, including their families' food security status.     

Changing occupant characteristics in rural public housing in the Great Plains: 1977 to 1996

Abstract

Housing quality and affordability are growing concerns in rural areas, particularly in regions affected by economic restructuring and population decline. This article uses data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to assess changes in the characteristics of nonmetropolitan public housing residents in the Great Plains between 1977 and 1996.

Results indicate that public housing occupants were younger and more racially diverse in 1996 than in 1977. Also, a larger proportion received welfare benefits in addition to housing supplements. (In 1977, few households received both types of assistance.) Regression models reveal a significant positive relationship between changes in county population, unemployment rates, and economic designation and minority representation in public housing. Implications include the need for flexible measures that meet the changing needs of subsidized households. The characteristics of these households in the Great Plains region indicate the need for both region‐specific and coordinated housing and welfare policies.     

Institutionalized social skill and the rise of mediating organizations in urban governance: the case of the Cleveland Housing Network

In this paper we build on an expanding literature that attempts to understand the changing organizational and institutional dimensions of contemporary urban governance. We do so by utilizing the Cleveland Housing Network as a lens through which salient characteristics of contemporary governance become visible. Doing so enables us to highlight the distinctive challenges of the multi-institutional nature of contemporary governance arrangements and “heterarchic” governance in particular. These challenges situate mediating organizations as central components of governance arrangements. Finally, by focusing on the distinctive characteristics of the organization's leaders, we demonstrate that mediating organizations are usefully thought of as institutionalized forms of the “social skill” of institutional entrepreneurs.     

Originating lender localness and mortgage sustainability: an evaluation of delinquency and foreclosure in Indiana's mortgage revenue bond program

Originating lenders play a vital role in selecting and preparing borrowers for homeownership, directly and through partnerships with community entities. While previous research demonstrates the importance of originating lenders for mortgage access to low- and moderate-income borrowers, this analysis evaluates the influence of the originating lender, and in particular the localness of the lender, on mortgage sustainability (reduced delinquency and foreclosure). Employing data on more than 5,000 low- and moderate-income borrowers participating in Indiana's Mortgage Revenue Bond (MRB) program from 2004–2006, this analysis finds that the localness of the originating lender is significantly predictive of mortgage sustainability. After controlling for borrower, mortgage, and market characteristics, an increase in the localness of the lender is associated with a decrease in the probability of delinquency and foreclosure, particularly for higher risk (lower credit score) borrowers participating in the MRB program.