Judith D. Feins
Abt Associates

Rhiannon Patterson
U.S. Government Accountability Office

This article presents the results from a study examining the geographic mobility of families with children that entered the Housing Choice Voucher Program between 1995 and 2002. Using a specially constructed longitudinal data set developed from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development administrative records, it analyzes the residential moves made by these families to see whether moves within the voucher program—particularly moves after the initial lease up—are associated with improvements in the neighborhoods where the families live and/or with increases in their economic self-sufficiency. We find that subsequent to program entry (that is, after the moves to lease up), a small but consistent tendency exists for families making later moves to choose slightly better neighborhoods. The data show reductions across a number of indicators of concentrated poverty and improvements across a number of neighborhood opportunity indicators for households that moved.

Geographic Mobility in the Housing Choice Voucher Program: A Study of Families Entering the Program, 1995–2002