This report analyzes the cost effectiveness of the Moving to Work (MTW) demonstration. MTW is a HUD demonstration that gives selected public housing agencies greater flexibility with their spending and the ability to provide innovative housing assistance to low-income households.

In this report, we use 15 years of administrative data to compare changes within agencies that join the MTW demonstration with traditional agencies of comparable size during the same period. We find that MTW agencies received higher levels of HUD funding after joining the demonstration and increased the total number of assisted households served, resulting in no significant change in overall cost per household. These agencies also experienced a large increase in dollars per household held in reserves, suggesting that they were able to increase their savings while still serving roughly the same number of assisted households per dollar of HUD funding as before joining the demonstration.

https://www.huduser.gov/PORTAL/publications/MTW-HouseholdCostStudy.html (External Link)