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Leveraging accessibility modeling to improve housing equity for low-income assisted renters: A case study in Bridgeport, Connecticut
Abstract
The Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP) in the United States assists low-income households with a rent voucher to be redeemed in the private rental market. However, public housing authorities in certain states, such as Connecticut, may impose geographic restrictions that we coin as the "same-jurisdiction rule," when implementing the HCVP. In practice, this constraint is translated to the requirement that assisted households must lease up within the same jurisdiction, which may eventually restrict access to high-quality housing or prevent relocation to higher-opportunity neighborhoods. To identify ways for policy improvement, we adopt the two-step floating catchment area method to evaluate the accessibility to HCVP-eligible housing in Bridgeport, Connecticut with and without the same-jurisdiction rule. The results indicate that when the geographic restrictions are lifted, there is a 9.23 % increase in median accessibility, and the increase is more significant in low-accessibility areas, which are often lower-opportunity neighborhoods. The results suggest that removing the same-jurisdiction rule can result in more housing options and thus improve housing equity for assisted renters. Since the HCVP and other rental assistance programs are spatial-driven, we call for establishing an operational workflow to corroborate the rigor of these programs to improve housing equity for low-income households.
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The spatial distribution and accessibility of urban public service facilities affect socioeconomic factors in the lives of residents, especially housing prices. Given that most previous studies focus on the accessibility of a certain, single type of facility and its impact on housing prices, this research uses improved two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) methods by considering the differences in the service capacity of different types of public service facilities in real life to evaluate their accessibility to residential communities in Jinan city based on 3117 facilities covering 11 different kinds of facilitates. Then, we assess the spatial distribution of the impact of the accessibility of different public service facilities on housing prices in Jinan city through a local indicator of a spatial association (LISA) cluster diagram generated based on the bivariate local Moran’s index. Our objectives are to assess the accessibility of multiple public service facilities using an improved 2SFCA method and to explore the spatial correlations between the accessibility of public service facilities and housing prices. The results show that the housing prices in Jinan are clustered and that the areas with high housing prices are mainly concentrated in the Lixia District and the center of the downtown area. The accessibility of medical, shopping, educational and bus stop facilities in the Lixia District is better than that in other districts. The accessibility of shopping, medical and tourist attraction facilities has the most significant impact on housing prices, and the number of communities in which the accessibility of these public service facilities and housing prices form a positive correlation cluster accounts for 50.5%, 47.9% and 45.8% of all communities, respectively. On the other hand, educational accessibility and bus stop accessibility have nothing to do with housing prices, and the number of communities in which the accessibility of these public service facilities forms a not-significant cluster with housing prices accounting for 51.1% and 56.5% of the total, respectively. In this study, the combined 2SFCA method is used to improve the method for evaluating the accessibility of a variety of public service facilities, and its applicability is verified by practical application. By analyzing the spatial correlation between accessibility and housing prices, we expand our understanding of accessibility and show that it plays a central role in housing prices, which will help to improve the spatial pattern of urban public places in the future, provide support for decision makers and provide a reference for the government and real estate developers.
As a public service facility that provides relief, resettlement, and evacuation services to disaster-affected people, emergency shelters play a vital role in helping people cope with disaster events. The measurement of spatial accessibility of existing emergency shelters is a key task in improving emergency shelter services and minimizing property losses and deaths. In this study, considering the differences in emergency shelters’ service capacities and population distribution, we developed a two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method with a variable service radius and evacuation radius to describe emergency shelter accessibility in Lanzhou’s core area and compared with the traditional 2SFCA method. Furthermore, we used bivariate local Moran's I to identify the spatial relationships between emergency shelter accessibility and population density. The results show that the traditional 2SFCA method underestimates accessibility in densely populated areas with dispersed emergency shelters. Shelter accessibility in Lanzhou’s core area is unevenly distributed, with the lowest levels of accessibility in densely populated areas. There is an obvious spatial mismatch between the accessibility of emergency shelters and the population density, and the central and western part of Chengguan has a serious shortage of emergency shelters. This study provides important information for the planning and construction of emergency shelters.
In the early development of COVID-19, large-scale preventive measures, such as border control and air travel restrictions, were implemented to slow international and domestic transmissions. When these measures were in full effect, new cases of infection would be primarily induced by community spread, such as the human interaction within and between neighboring cities and towns, which is generally known as the meso-scale. Existing studies of COVID-19 using mathematical models are unable to accommodate the need for meso-scale modeling, because of the unavailability of COVID-19 data at this scale and the different timings of local intervention policies. In this respect, we propose a meso-scale mathematical model of COVID-19, named the meso-scale Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, Recovered (MSEIR) model, using town-level infection data in the state of Connecticut. We consider the spatial interaction in terms of the inter-town travel in the model. Based on the developed model, we evaluated how different strengths of social distancing policy enforcement may impact epi curves based on two evaluative metrics: compliance and containment. The developed model and the simulation results help to establish the foundation for community-level assessment and better preparedness for COVID-19.
This paper develops OECD information on housing policies and the degree to which OECD countries pursue social policy objectives them. Data collected by the OECD shows that most OECD countries provide considerable support to promote access to homeownership: reported spending can amount up to 2.3% of GDP. Most OECD countries also support the provision of social rental housing, but public support for social rental housing is declining in many countries and the private rental sector is playing an increasingly important role in promoting access to affordable housing. In almost all OECD countries housing support is also delivered through means-tested housing allowances, for which reporting countries spend between 0.6 and 1.8% of GDP. The available data do not allow for a comprehensive cross-country comparison of the housing policy mix but, where available, data suggest that owner-occupied housing receives significant support compared to other tenures.Access to housing and housing quality also remain pressing concerns in many OECD countries. Significant numbers of people are homeless: while statistics are difficult to compare, most OECD countries report that 1 to 8 people in every thousand lack regular access to housing. In addition, many households live in low-quality dwellings: 15% of low-income households live in overcrowded dwellings and 14% do not have access to an indoor flushing toilet. Neighbourhood crime and pollution are also problematic for many households throughout the OECD.
In 2003, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) prepared a study of the location patterns of the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program. This study became an important baseline for the evaluation of the HCV program and its ability to serve the goal of poverty deconcentration. The study examined the ability of HCV households in the 50 largest metropolitan areas to make entry to a broad array of neighborhoods and to locate in high-opportunity neighborhoods with low levels of poverty.
Low-income housing policies seeking to deconcentrate poverty and increase opportunities through mobility have produced mixed results. The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program, for example, resulted in some beneficial outcomes for low-income households moving from high- to low-poverty neighborhoods, but it did not produce the widespread positive effects anticipated by many policymakers and researchers. The Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP) does not require moves to low-poverty neighborhoods, as MTO did, but rather it relies on a weaker policy of choice to achieve more income-diverse neighborhoods. As compared with what researchers have learned about the MTO participants, less is known concerning the mobility behavior and outcomes of HCVP recipients. Using survey data from voucher holders under the jurisdiction of two local housing authorities in California combined with secondary data from multiple sources, this article examines a range of outcomes, including neighborhood poverty rates, employment, and school quality, associated with mobility in the HCVP. The results of the analyses show that movers did not have better outcomes than nonmovers but, compared with conditions in their previous residence, movers lived in neighborhoods with lower poverty rates and better school quality after they moved. By contrast, employment for movers dropped significantly from before to after their moves.
This article examines an important potential justification jor the Housing Choice Voucher Program, namely, whether participants are able to access safer neighborhoods. Using neighborhood crime and subsidized housing data jor 91 large cities, we examined whether voucher holders are able to reach communities with lower levels of crime. We found that, in 2000, voucher households occupied neighborhoods that were about as safe as those housing the average poor renter household and were significantly safer than those in which households assisted through place-based programs lived. Notably, Black voucher holders lived in significantly lower crime neighborhoods than poor households of the same race, but Hispanic and White voucher holders did not. In a separate analysis of seven cities, we found that voucher holders lived in considerably safer neighborhoods in 2008 than they did in 1998, largely because crime rates fell more in the neighborhoods where voucher holders live than in other neighborhoods.
The usefulness of gravity-based spatial access models is limited because of the uncertainty introduced by the range of values of the impedance coefficient. To solve this problem, this paper proposes the concept of spatial access ratio (SPAR) derived from the enhanced 2-step floating catchment area (E2SFCA) method — a recent extension of the gravity model — to assess potential spatial access. First, a sensitivity assessment is conducted to verify the effectiveness of SPAR and its advantages in overcoming the uncertainty problem. Then, the E2SFCA method and the shortest travel time method are employed to measure potential spatial access to colorectal cancer (CRC) prevention and treatment services in Texas based on data at the census tract level. The socio-demographic and geographic distributions of potential spatial access to CRC services are also examined. The sensitivity assessment reveals substantial fluctuations in the values of the spatial access index calculated directly by the E2SFCA method under different values of the impedance coefficient. However, the values of SPAR remain stable under different values of the coefficient. A comparative analysis indicates that potential spatial access to primary care physicians (PCPs), CRC screening facilities, and oncologists varied among different racial/ethnic and socioeconomic population groups as well as in different geographic regions in Texas. Non-Hispanic blacks, Asians, and people in affluent areas had a geographical advantage in accessing CRC services than other groups. The urban/rural difference was more obvious and serious than those of different racial/ethnic groups and groups with different socio-economic statuses, as metropolitan residents had more than three times the potential spatial access than isolated rural residents.
Vouchers are lauded both for being the most efficient way of delivering housing assistance to needy households and for the potential to allow poor households to access better neighborhoods. The success of vouchers is of course predicated on recipients being able to successfully use a voucher. For a number of reasons, including discrimination by landlords on the basis of source of income (i.e. a voucher), voucher recipients frequently cannot find apartments to lease. Using a difference-in-differences approach the research reported here examines how Source of Income anti-discrimination laws affect the utilization of housing vouchers.The findings indicate that utilization rates are higher among Local Housing Authorities in jurisdictions with Source of Income anti-discrimination laws. These findings suggest such laws can be an effective tool for increasing the rate at which vouchers are successfully utilized. In a time of scarce resources for affordable housing this is an important policy tool that should not be over looked.
Deconcentration is a policy aimed at reducing poverty by relocating residents of distressed public housing complexes into private mixed income neighborhoods. This change is presumed to offer new social opportunities and better public facilities that can facilitate improved economic status. HOPE VI is a federal U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program, which has effected this policy in a large number of U.S. cities. This paper reports the findings from research in two relocation sites (high and low poverty) in Tampa, Florida, based on interviews with HOPE VI relocatees and their homeowning neighbors. Results indicate that relocation does not enhance social capital for former public housing residents. Social networks are diminished in comparison with prior conditions in public housing. There is very little interaction with homeowners in relocation sites, and considerable resistance by homeowners. Relocatee satisfaction with housing is greater in the low poverty site, but social networks are not different across sites.
This article presents the results from a study examining the geographic mobility of families with children that entered the Housing Choice Voucher Program between 1995 and 2002. Using a specially constructed longitudinal data set developed from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development administrative records, it ana lyzes the residential moves made by these families to see whether moves within the voucher program—particularly moves after the initial lease up—are associated with improvements in the neighborhoods where the families live and/or with increases in their economic self-sufficiency. We find that subsequent to program entry (that is, after the moves to lease up), a small but consistent tendency exists for families making later moves to choose slightly better neighborhoods. The data show reductions across a number of indicators of concentrated poverty and improvements across a number of neighborhood opportunity indicators for households that moved.
This article synthesizes two GIS-based accessibility measures into one framework, and applies the methods to examining spatial accessibility to primary health care in the Chicago ten-county region. The floating catchment area (FCA) method defines the service area of physicians by a threshold travel time while accounting for the availability of physicians by their surrounded demands. The gravity-based method considers a nearby physician more accessible than a remote one and discounts a physician's availability by a gravity-based potential. The former is a special case of the latter. Based on the 2000 Census and primary care physician data, this research assesses the variation of spatial accessibility to primary care in the Chicago region, and analyzes the sensitivity of results by experimenting with ranges of threshold travel times in the FCA method and travel friction coefficients in the gravity model. The methods may be used to help the US Department of Health and Human Services and state health departments improve designation of Health Professional Shortage Areas.
An elusive goal of the Housing Choice Voucher program is to provide more—and better—locational choices for recipient households. Yet landlord discrimination can be a barrier, particularly in areas of greater opportunity. Using a difference-in-difference design with different comparison groups, we evaluate the effectiveness of source-of-income discrimination laws in 31 jurisdictions enacting such laws between 2007 and 2017 in improving locational outcomes for voucher households. We find evidence that such laws lead to more upwardly mobile moves (or greater improvement in neighborhoods) among existing voucher holders who move. Specifically, existing voucher holders who move post enactment experience greater reductions in neighborhood poverty rates and in voucher household shares. We also find that after SOI laws pass, voucher holders move to neighborhoods with larger white population shares than their original neighborhoods. Effects are modest, but they hold for households whose head is Black as well as for families with children, two groups who may face greater challenges in housing markets. We do not find any change in the characteristics of the neighborhoods where new voucher holders lease up after the passage of SOI laws, but this may be confounded by compositional change in the neighborhoods where successful voucher holders originate.
The recent decade has witnessed a new wave of development in the place-based accessibility theory, revolving around the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method. The 2SFCA method, initially serving to evaluate the spatial inequity of health care services, has been further applied to other urban planning and facility access issues. Among these applications, different distance decay functions have been incorporated in the thread of model development, but their applicability and limitations have not been thoroughly examined. To this end, the paper has employed a place-based accessibility framework to compare the performance of twenty-four 2SFCA models in a comprehensive manner. Two important conclusions are drawn from this analysis: on a small analysis scale (e.g., community level), the catchment size is the most critical model component; on a large analysis scale (e.g., statewide), the distance decay function is of elevated importance. In sum, this comparative analysis provides the theoretical support necessary to the choice of the catchment size and the distance decay function in the 2SFCA method. Justification of model parameters through empirical evidence (e.g., field surveys about local travel activities) and model validation through sensitivity analysis are needed in future 2SFCA applications for various urban planning, service delivery, and spatial equity scenarios.
This article provides a holistic analysis of why and how federal assisted housing policy (specifically, public housing, Low-Income Housing Tax Credit [LIHTC], and voucher programs) should be reformed in ways that would be more conducive to socially desirable outcomes at the neighborhood level. First, I argue that past research has documented mutually causal interrelationships between assisted housing policy and neighborhoods that have been couched as having negative connotations for both. Second, I argue that there is there a rationale on grounds of both efficiency and equity for altering assisted housing policy so it would encourage the creation and preservation of neighborhoods that are physically of good quality and economically diverse. Third, I advocate a circumspect menu of programmatic reforms that would be gradualist, option enhancing, and relatively budget neutral, yet would garner these positive impacts. As overarching reforms, I propose regional housing institution-building, fair housing law revisions, impaction standards, and diversity incentives built into Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing. As reforms to site-based assistance programs, I propose: a new formula for disbursing LIHTC, to repeal and replace the Qualified Census Tract bonus, diversification/preservation incentives for existing assisted private developments, and preserving assisted housing in revitalizing neighborhoods. As reforms to tenant-based assistance programs, I propose: Small Area Fair Market Rents, premove and postmove mobility counseling, ancillary family supports postmove, reducing barriers to lease-up, and diversification incentives in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations.
The Housing Choice Voucher Program provides assistance to approximately 2.2 million households each year, making it the largest low-income housing subsidy program managed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This paper reviews what we know about the program. In brief, experimental research shows that vouchers help to reduce the rent burdens of low-income households, allow them to live in less crowded homes, and minimize the risk of homelessness. Research also shows, however, that the program has been far less successful in getting recipients to better neighborhoods and schools. And perhaps the greatest disappointment of the program is its limited reach. Families typically wait for years to receive a voucher, and only one in four households eligible for a voucher nationally receives any federal rental housing assistance. Another issue is that a significant share of households who receive vouchers never use them, in part because of the difficulty of finding willing landlords with acceptable units. Thus, as effective as the program is, there is still room for improvement.
Diversity is a hot topic in geography and planning. Though a few studies have considered diversity in evaluating accessibility, diversity and the love of diversity have not been simultaneously included in one indicator. This study proposes a method to tackle this challenge, incorporating the constant-elasticity-of-substitution function, with a parameter on the preference for diversity (ρ), into the accessibility indicator of the two-step floating catchment area method (2SFCA). This new method (AC) is implemented to measure Beijing's job accessibility at the jiedao scale which is the basic administrative level in Chinese cities, and compared with the 2SFCA method (AG) and the 2SFCA method with an entropy component for job diversity (AE). All three indicators reveal a similar overall spatial pattern of job accessibility. However, measured by rank of accessibility score, there are some differences between them. Most jiedaos' ranks change when the AE method is used instead of the AG method, though most changes are within a small range. In contrast, when the AC method is used with the ρ-value close to 1, meaning that diversity is almost not valued at all, only a few jiedaos' ranks change. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the accessibility scores' absolute values with the AC method are highly sensitive to the ρ-value, but the overall spatial patterns seem not to be. However, with AC, a small decrease in ρ changes the jiedaos' ranks significantly. Overall, the results indicate that the AC method provides better understanding of accessibility for regions with different preferences on diversity of opportunities.
Measures of geographic food access overlook an important source of statistical biases, termed the edge effect. The edge effect refers to the fallacy that events contributing to the spatial pattern of an analysis unit may be outside of that unit; thus merely summarizing events within the unit may lead to distortion of the estimation. Food procurement activities can happen beyond existing administrative boundaries. Delineating food access using unit-based metrics may misrepresent the true space within which food stores are accessible. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a gravity-based accessibility measure to improve unit-based statistical approaches in food access research. In addition, this method accounts for the spatial interaction between food supply (e.g., food items in stock) and demand (e.g., population) as well as how this interaction is mediated by the spatiotemporal separation (e.g., travel time, modality). The method is applied to the case of Franklin County, OH and has revealed the food access inequity for African Americans by modes of transport, including walking, biking, and driving. The analysis of the correlation between mode-specific food access and socioeconomic status (SES) variables reveals that using a single modality in food access research may not fully capture the travel behavior and its relationship with local food environments. With modifications, the proposed method can help evaluate food access for a target population group, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) users or selected ethnic minorities who may face acute difficulties in procuring economically affordable and culturally appropriate foods.
The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment offered randomly selected families housing vouchers to move from high-poverty housing projects to lower-poverty neighborhoods. We analyze MTO's impacts on children's long-term outcomes using tax data. We find that moving to a lower-poverty neighborhood when young (before age 13) increases college attendance and earnings and reduces single parenthood rates. Moving as an adolescent has slightly negative impacts, perhaps because of disruption effects. The decline in the gains from moving with the age when children move suggests that the duration of exposure to better environments during childhood is an important determinant of children's long-term outcomes. (JEL I31, I38, J13, R23, R38).
This article reports on the social experiences of tenants moving from low-income neighborhoods in the City of Los Angeles to a racially mixed, lower poverty suburb—the Antelope Valley—using Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers. Voucher tenants experience significant social exclusion and aggressive oversight. Local residents use racial shorthand to label their black neighbors as voucher holders and apply additional scrutiny to their activity. They aggressively report voucher tenants to the housing authority and police, instigating inspections that threaten tenants’ voucher status. Tenants react to these circumstances by withdrawing from their communities in order to avoid scrutiny and protect their status in the program. These findings illustrate that the social difficulties documented in mixed-income developments may also exist in voucher programs, highlight the ways in which neighborhood effects may be extended to include social experiences, and suggest the limits of the voucher program to translate geographic mobility into socioeconomic progress.
The federal government has been involved in providing housing assistance to lower-income households since the 1930s. In the beginning, the federal government was involved in supporting the mortgage market (through establishment of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the government-sponsored enterprises) and in promoting construction of low-rent public housing for lower-income families through local public housing authorities (PHAs). Over time, the role of the federal government has shifted away from providing construction-based subsidies to providing rental subsidies; private developers and property owners now play a larger role; and more federal funding has been provided to states and localities. Today's federal housing assistance programs fall into three main categories: rental housing assistance, assistance to state and local governments, and assistance for homeowners. Most of these programs are administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Current housing assistance programs include: Section 8 vouchers and project-based rental assistance, public housing, housing for the elderly (Section 202), housing for the disabled (Section 811), rural rental assistance (Section 515 and 521), Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), HOME Investment Partnerships Block Grants, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), homeless assistance programs, FHA and Veterans' Administration mortgage insurance, and the mortgage interest deduction in the tax code. Most of the federal housing assistance programs are aimed at making housing affordable for low-income families. Housing affordability-housing that costs no more than 30% of family income-is considered the largest housing problem today. Rental assistance programs, which are the largest source of direct housing assistance for low-income families, all allow families to pay affordable, income-based rents; however, different forms of assistance target different types of households, including the elderly, persons with disabilities, and families with children. Several trends in federal housing policy have emerged in recent decades. As the focus of federal housing assistance has shifted away from construction-based subsidies to rental assistance, block grants, and LIHTC, state and local governments have had greater access to federal resources to fund local housing and community development priorities. This shift in federal funding has also led affordable housing developers to pursue mixed financing: the use of multiple streams of federal funding, state, and local funding, or private financing. Lagging homeownership rates among low-income and minority households have prompted the past several Presidents to promote homeownership-based housing policies. This report provides an overview of the history and evolution of federal housing assistance programs and policy, information about the main programs, and a discussion of recent issues and trends. It is an expanded version of the Federal Housing Assistance section originally prepared for the 2008 edition of the Committee on Ways and Means publication, "Background Material and Data on the Programs within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means" (informally known as the Green Book). This report will be updated periodically.
In this study, we use a Geographic Information System-based index to measure spatial accessibility of public high schools. The index is applied to the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Statistical Area in 1990, 2000, and 2010. Overall, urban areas had consistently worse accessibility scores compared with suburban and rural areas. High schools with more African American students tended to have poorer accessibility levels. Schools with lower accessibility tended to be associated with poorer average student performance, and the effect strengthened between 2000 and 2010. In developing a better understanding of the accessibility of public high schools, this paper reaffirms the significance of space, place, and race, and challenges the notion of declining relevance of accessibility in Louisiana public education policymaking.
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.
Access to green spaces is important to physical activities and public health, yet one concern remains as to whether the disparities in green space access exist. This study aimed to (1) introduce an approach to quantify potential spatial accessibility to green spaces in a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment; and (2) evaluate the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in green space access. Urban green spaces (n=890) in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia were collected from the Atlanta Regional Commission. A Gaussian-based two-step floating catchment area method was adapted to assess the spatial accessibility to green spaces at the census tract level. The Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model and the spatial lag model were used to evaluate the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities. Results suggest that the spatial accessibility to green spaces in Atlanta was not evenly distributed. Both models show that neighborhoods with a higher concentration of African Americans had significantly poorer access to green spaces (P
When householders are vouchered-out from distressed, federally subsidised private developments in the US and receive moderate relocation counselling, does that counselling lead to a more intensive housing search, longer-distance moves and higher levels of housing satisfaction ? Multiple regression analysis was applied to a data-set containing survey and geographical information (for example, distance moved, median neighbourhood income level) for 201 voucher recipients in 4 cities. The analysis was used to determine if the use of relocation counselling services (as well as the type of services utilised) and distance moved helped to explain variations in housing satisfaction. Those who used counselling services were in fact more likely to be satisfied with their new home than were those who were unaware of these services. However, those who were aware of the services but did not use them fared as well as householders who used them. Counselling to help in dealings with landlords was the most influential type of relocation assistance vas à vis housing satisfaction. The distance householders moved played an insignificant role in the analysis. This finding undoubtedly reflects the fact that voucher recipients sought to remain in or close to their original neighbourhood to be near friends and relatives and familiar bus lines, and the fact that better housing units offering a greater sense of safety were available in the same neighbourhood or in neighbourhoods adjacent to the vouchered-out development. Implications for HUD's vouchering-out policy are discussed.
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.
This article reports on a highly unusual experiment in racial and economic integration, the Gautreaux program. This program helps black families who are either current or former residents of public housing move into subsidized housing in Chicago and its suburbs. Surveying a random sample of 332 participants, we find that suburban movers are significantly more likely to have a job post-move than city movers, even among those who had never had a job before moving. Multivariate analysis shows that these differences are significant even after controlling for respondents' previous work history, human capital, and personal characteristics. These results suggest that low-income urban blacks experience significant gains in employment by moving to middle-class suburbs. Thus, housing assistance may be an effective alternative to traditional welfare-to-work programs.
The general practitioner is the key element within most rural health care delivery systems, virtually controlling referal to higher levels of care as well as providing basic care. In consequence of the progressive urban-based centralization of health care facilities and specialized personnel encouraged by the desire to take advantage of economies of scale in supply, the role of the general practitioner within rural health care delivery has become increasingly crucial. However, the supply of general practitioners in rural areas has not kept pace with demands, and accessibility to physicians has become a pressing issue in many rural areas. Although ‘accessibility’ is not taken to be synonymous with physical or geographical accessibility, the dispersed settlement characteristic of most rural areas elevates the latter to a position of primary importance. Following a discussion of the merits of measures of accessibility based upon utilization versus measures based upon the relative location of population and physicians, a measure on potential physical accessibility is presented and applied to a Canadian data set. The results suggest that although considerable differences in potential accessibility exist between rural areas near and far from urban centres, the smaller catchment populations of most rural general practitioners may partly compensate for isolation from major, urban concentrations of physicians.
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