Home Voucher Case Study

Unlike many other rental assistance programs, a feature of the Section 8 Housing Voucher Program is that, the voucher follows the recipient. That is, if a family receives a voucher to live in Minnesota, their section 8 benefits will not change even if the family move to another home or even another state. In other words, the voucher program does not penalize assisted household for moving. In fact, the Department of Housing and Urban Development actually encourages households living in extremely poor neighborhoods to move away from them. However, since 2000, only about 6 percent of voucher users have moved from high to low poverty areas, while 62 percent of assisted households moved from one high poverty neighborhood to another (Newman and Harkness, 2000).

On the supply side, there are not many landlords in high opportunity neighborhoods willing to work with section 8 because of increased government monitoring by public housing agencies. Also, landlords are concerned about the perceived behavioral problems that assisted households may bring, such as poor home maintenance (De Souza, 2010). On the other side, many tenants remain in high poverty neighborhoods because of the more affordable housing options. Additionally, many households may be reluctant to move away from familiar environments, assume that they are aware of the other housing options in high opportunity neighborhoods. Although remaining in high poverty areas may be convenient, families should be encouraged to move to high opportunity areas for higher quality of schools and the health benefits that come with leaving high poverty areas. If, as noted, only few assisted households move from high to low poverty areas while nearly two-thirds of the others move from one extremely poor neighborhood to another, then the Department of Housing and Urban Development is underperforming in its mission to help improve assisted households’ quality of