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HUD Moving to Opportunity
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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).
Detailed Methodology
All participants were surveyed (one adult per household). Participants were selected randomly.
Between 1994 and 1998, the housing authorities in five demonstration sites -- Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York -- worked in partnership with local nonprofit counseling organizations to recruit about 4,600 very low-income families for MTO. Each family was randomly assigned to one of three groups: (1) The experimental group was offered housing vouchers that could only be used in low-poverty neighborhoods (where less than 10 percent of the population was poor). Local counseling agencies helped the experimental group members to find and lease units in qualifying neighborhoods. (2) The Section 8 group was offered vouchers according to the regular rules and services of the Section 8 program at that time, with no geographical restriction and no special assistance. (3) The control group members were not offered vouchers but continued to live in public housing or receive other project-based housing assistance. To use their vouchers, families assigned to the experimental group had to move to low-poverty areas. Those in the Section 8 group could use their vouchers to move to neighborhoods of their own choosing. Both groups were required to make these moves within a limited amount of time. In order to retain their vouchers, experimental families were required to stay in low-poverty areas for one year, after which they could move without locational constraints. Random assignment makes the three groups of participating families statistically the same, so that any later significant differences in the neighborhoods, housing, employment, or other aspects of the experimental group's lives in comparison with the control group can be attributed to the MTO intervention. Of course, such differences should only be attributed to MTO if there are social scientific hypotheses suggesting that changing location can influence these outcomes.