For the Urban Poor, a Downside to Residential Mobility

In 1994, the Department of Housing and Urban Development launched a program called Moving to Opportunity. Its goal was to improve the employment, education, and health of low-income families living in poor neighborhoods, with poverty rates of 40 percent or more, by providing them with residential mobility. Over the next three years roughly 4,200 families from five major cities — Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York — were recruited to participate.

The chance for residential mobility was determined by lottery. Some families remained in their current public housing development. A second group received standard Section 8 housing vouchers. A third set received vouchers that could only be used toward an apartment in a low-poverty neighborhood — areas with a poverty rate below 10 percent. (Families that received vouchers weren't obligated to use them.)