HUD Moving to Opportunity

Moving to Opportunity (MTO) is a unique random assignment research effort sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

This demonstration was designed to help very low-income families with children living in public housing or Section 8 project-based housing in extremely poor neighborhoods relocate to "opportunity neighborhoods" for greater self-sufficiency and improved individual and family well-being. The interim evaluation included the collection of data on a wide range of outcomes that could potentially be affected by the MTO intervention. These outcomes fit into 6 study domains: (1) mobility, housing, and neighborhood, (2) adult and child physical and mental health, (3) child educational achievement, (4) youth delinquency and risky behavior, (5) adult and youth employment and earnings, and (6) household income and public assistance receipt.

The MTO demonstration ran in five large cities -- Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York -- between September 1994 and August 1998.

A total of 4,608 families enrolled in the MTO demonstration and were randomly assigned. The demonstration combined Section 8 rental assistance with intensive housing search and counseling services to ease families' relocation to low-poverty communities and help them become self-sufficient.

The project review timeframes above do not apply to applications that request access to confidential data assets commingled with data that are either not owned, or are only co-owned, by the statistical agency(s) or unit(s) and require approval from third parties not subject to this policy (e.g., state and local government agencies).