The Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Interim Impacts Evaluation provides insights into what benefits can be achieved by improving the neighborhoods of poor families. The Moving to Opportunity program provided thousands of poor adults and children an opportunity to use HUD vouchers to move out of public housing in high poverty neighborhoods to lower poverty neighborhoods. Using rigorous scientific methods, this study looks at the impact these moves have had on housing, health, employment, education, mobility, welfare receipt, and delinquency.
The results presented in this report show the impacts of moving to lower poverty approximately 5-years after the move. Within this relatively short timeframe, moving to lower poverty has had significant positive impacts on:
- personal safety;
- housing quality;
- mental health and obesity among adults; and
- mental health, staying in school, delinquency, and risky behavior among teenage girls.
There are, however, apparently some negative effects on boys' behavior, and no statistically significant effects on employment outcomes for adults or educational achievement for children. Only marginal improvements were found in the quality of schools attended. (author abstract)
