“We Don't Live Outside, We Live in Here”: Neighborhood and Residential Mobility Decisions among Low–Income Families

Abstract

Over 20 years of scholarship suggests that living in America's poorest and most dangerous communities diminishes the life course development of children and adults. In the 1990s, the dire conditions of some of these neighborhoods, especially those with large public housing developments, prompted significant policy responses. In addition to the demolition and redevelopment of some of the projects, the federal government launched an experiment to help families leave poor neighborhoods through an assisted housing voucher program called Moving to Opportunity (MTO). While families who moved through this program initially relocated to census tracts with poverty rates almost four times lower than their original projects, many returned to communities of moderate to high poverty. Why? We use mixed methods to explore the patterns and the decision‐making processes behind moves among MTO families. Focusing on the Baltimore MTO site, we find that traditional theories for residential choice did not fully explain these outcomes. While limited access to public transportation, housing quality problems, and landlords made it hard for families to move to, or stay in, low‐poverty neighborhoods, there were also more striking explanations for their residential trajectories. Many families valued the low‐poverty neighborhoods they were originally able to access with their vouchers, but when faced with the need to move again, they often sacrificed neighborhood quality for dwelling quality in order to accommodate changing family needs. Having lived in high‐poverty neighborhoods most of their lives, they developed a number of coping strategies and beliefs that made them confident they could handle such a consequential trade‐off and protect themselves and their children from the dangers of poorer areas.

Tracking “Choice” in the Housing Choice Voucher Program: The Relationship Between Neighborhood Preference and Locational Outcome

“…Consistent with previous studies (Chatman et al 2013;Deluca, Garboden, and Rosenblatt 2013;Rosenblatt and DeLuca 2012), the survey revealed higher priorities for housing unit over neighborhood conditions. In addition, HCV households heavily relied on housing searches limited to JHA property listings.…”

“…A regional equity approach is a much longer term solution to the problem of preferenceoutcome mismatch than mobility programs, but the equity approach is necessary to build a balanced, sustainable society. landlords on behalf of tenants (Rosenblatt and DeLuca 2012). This rule places a rent ceiling over which rental units are not affordable to voucher holders.…”

Geographic Access to Food Shelves among Racial/ethnic Minorities and Foreign-born Residents in the Twin Cities, Minnesota

“…37,51 Our study additionally found that these areas include a high proportion of minority and immigrant/refugee residents. In this cross sectional study, our results might be interpreted to suggest that food insecure families make choices about where to live based on access to emergency food suppliers, but given the known choice constraints on housing among the poor, 52 this explanation is unlikely. More likely is the idea that food shelf sites locate strategically in neighborhoods where there are high concentrations of communities in need.…”

Simulating the Barriers of Transaction Costs to Public Rental Housing Exits: The Case of Wuhan, China

“…Among the factors that may be conceptualized as problems, and which are raising important search costs, are the following: lack of knowledge about where to search, lack of transportation access for searching, and lack of child care support while searching. A myriad of structural barriers, such as public transportation access, affordable housing availability, and poor quality housing units, made it difficult for households to make permanent exits from current neighborhoods [20]. In addition, in the private market, the discrimination by landlords also plays a significant role in household mobility [21].…”