Research Report Housing Choice and Self-Sufficiency Outcomes at Moving to Work Agencies
Mark Treskon, Matthew Gerken, Martha M. Galvez
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This report examines the success of public housing agencies (PHAs) participating in HUD’s Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration in furthering two of the demonstration’s three statutory objectives: increasing housing choice for and encouraging self-sufficiency among households receiving federal housing assistance. The MTW demonstration allows participating PHAs the flexibility to seek exemptions from regulations and restrictions governing the public housing and Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) programs and to design and pursue innovative activities, and also allows them to combine separate federal funding streams.

In this report, we use Comparative Interrupted Time Series (CITS) analysis to examine trends across seven different housing choice and self-sufficiency outcome measures. We compare groups of MTW agencies to groups of matched traditional PHAs not participating in the MTW demonstration. We define MTW groups in two ways: one group of agencies that signed an MTW agreement with HUD between 2008 and 2011, and other groups of agencies based on whether they had implemented activities that could measurably impact housing choice or self-sufficiency outcome measures.

We find some evidence of positive impacts for increasing the share of new households, the share of households with income gains after entry into assisted housing, and the share of work-able households reaching minimal housing subsidy payments and the share of those households who then leave housing assistance. Findings suggest value in examining outcomes of interest across groups of agencies and point to the need for more examination of the varied activities MTW agencies have pursued.

External Link:

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/MTW-Housing-Choice.html

Research Areas Wealth and financial well-being Social safety net Housing
Tags Families with low incomes Employment and income data Housing vouchers and mobility Housing affordability Housing subsidies Inequality and mobility Public and assisted housing
Policy Centers Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center