Relocation Is Not Enough

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Abstract

In addition to providing residents with an improved living environment, the HOPE VI program seeks to help them attain self-sufficiency. However, while there have been dramatic improvements in quality of life, there have been no overall changes in employment. HOPE VI residents' poor health impedes their ability to work. Efforts that address physical and mental health and other key barriers, such as education and safe, affordable child care availability, could prove more effective than job training or placement efforts alone in improving the chances that former and current public housing residents move into employment or retain jobs they already have.

Introduction

The HOPE VI program seeks to improve economic self-sufficiency among original residents of severely distressed public housing developments and to improve the developments themselves. The self-sufficiency goal is particularly challenging in light of the extreme poverty, low education levels, and poor health many residents experience. Underlying the goal are hypotheses about how change would take place—that families would realize gains by moving to resource- and job-rich areas, by living among neighbors who could serve as role models and sources of employment information, or by accessing job and education services through the program's community and supportive services, or CSS, component (Cove et al. forthcoming; Popkin et al. 2004).

HOPE VI's CSS, which at many sites offers job training and placement services, is intended to benefit residents directly and to increase families' chances of meeting criteria for living in the new mixed-income developments—an important point in light of employment requirements for tenancy at some redeveloped sites.1 Employment affects not only a family's self-sufficiency, therefore, but its housing options as well. However, there are no established standards for CSS service packages or implementation practices. To date there is no evidence on the effectiveness of the voluntary CSS services for improving residents' self-sufficiency.

Through the HOPE VI Panel Study, we have tracked residents from five sites where relocation began in 2001 (see text box on page 9). We surveyed residents before relocation in 2001 and again in 2003 and 2005. According to evidence from the study, HOPE VI has led to improved life circumstances for many residents, who report living in better housing located in safer neighborhoods (Buron, Levy, and Gallagher 2007; Popkin and Cove 2007; Comey 2007). But these improvements in living conditions have not affected employment. At baseline, 48 percent of the working-age respondents were not employed—the same share as at the 2003 and 2005 follow-ups. In this brief, we explore why there has been no change. Our findings suggest that HOPE VI relocation and voluntary supportive services are unlikely to affect employment or address the many factors that keep disadvantaged residents out of the labor force.

(End of excerpt. The complete brief is available in PDF format.)

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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