Research by Author & Topic

Publications by G. Thomas Kingsley on Section 8 Vouchers and Mobility

Housing costs constitute the single biggest expenditure in most family budgets, and many low-income families have difficulty finding housing they can reasonably afford. Although most family-strengthening and community change initiatives recognize the urgency of the housing problems facing low-income families, they often have difficulty figuring out how to constructively address them. Federal housing programs are numerous and confusing, implementation is balkanized, funding falls woefully short of needs, and policy debates often focus on narrow technical issues. This primer demystifies federal rental assistance programs and provides the most current information available on how many (and who) they serve and how their scale is changing. It also summarizes key challenges facing housing policy today and in the coming years—challenges that may create opportunities for federal, state, and local engagement and innovation.

The District of Columbia Housing Monitor provides a quarterly look at the Washington, D.C., housing market, tracking home prices, real estate listings, new construction, and affordable housing. This issue's special section provides the most extensive tracking to date of the city's subsidized affordable housing stock, reporting numbers of units by location, program type, ownership, and expiration of affordability restrictions.

The HOPE VI program has invested over $6 billion in federal funds for the redevelopment of severely distressed public housing. Drawing on the existing research evidence, this study systematically compares the costs (both monetary and nonmonetary) of maintaining severely distressed public housing developments to the potential costs and benefits of effectively revitalizing them. An effective redevelopment strategy can dramatically improve living conditions for families, resulting in better physical and mental health and increased employment and earnings. Moreover, redevelopment can trigger the revitalization of previously blighted communities. These outcomes also save public resources. In fact, for a typical distressed public housing project, mixed-income redevelopment can save the public more than $20 million over 20 years.