Impact Findings from the Supporting Moves to Opportunity Housing Mobility Demonstration

• In Event: Promoting Housing Mobility for Families in the Housing Choice Voucher Program

Abstract

Growing up in high-poverty, highly segregated neighborhoods can limit the future prospects of young children. But low-income families with children often lack sufficient resources and face other systemic barriers to choosing freely what neighborhoods they live in. The federal government’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, which subsidizes rent for some low-income families, helps only a small fraction of families with children to use vouchers to live in low-poverty areas. 

The success of the Creating Moves to Opportunity (CMTO) demonstration in Seattle and King County, Washington, which supported families newly offered Housing Choice Vouchers striving to lease rental housing in areas of relatively higher regional economic opportunity, raised new and important questions about the replicability, scalability, and efficacy of similar program models. A successor housing mobility demonstration, called Supporting Moves to Opportunity (SMTO), led by MDRC provided funding and assistance to organization in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and St. Louis, Missouri between late 2020 and early 2023 with the goal of offering services patterned after those tested in CMTO to both existing and new admissions voucher holders at five public housing agencies (PHAs) in those two regions. 

Opportunity MKE, the program in Milwaukee, and Mobility Connection, the program in St. Louis, assisted families as they prepared to move with their housing searches, applications, and security deposits. These programs shared the common goal of enabling families with housing vouchers to move to lower-poverty communities that may improve their opportunities for upward economic mobility and better life outcomes. 

Randomized controlled trials tested the effectiveness of the two programs. The impact evaluation draws on agency administrative records data and assesses the extent to which the programs improve participants’ outcomes, including moves to high-opportunity areas, continued residence in these neighborhoods, and employment and earnings outcomes. The evaluation finds positive effects on the rates of moves to high-opportunity areas and residence in those areas after 18 months. Our presentation will present final impact findings—including by region and subgroup—and highlight select findings on family participation in the mobility programs and on program implementation to contextualize the impact findings.

Author

• Jonathan Bigelow, MDRC
  Presenting Author