Helping More Kids Live in Better Neighborhoods

Nearly 4 million children live in low-income families that receive federal rental assistance, which not only helps them keep a roof over their heads but also has the potential to enable children to grow up in better neighborhoods with more opportunities. Unfortunately, we۪ve fallen badly short on the latter ambition.

As of 2010, only 15 percent of the children whose families participate in the major rental assistance programs lived in low-poverty neighborhoods, while 18 percent lived in very high-poverty neighborhoods. The good news is that we can make substantial progress in the next few years without congressional action or more federal funding to help more families live in neighborhoods that will improve their children۪s chances of a better life.

A growing body of evidence supports two conclusions about how neighborhoods affect children۪s well-being, as our major new report explains.
    
First, high-poverty neighborhoods, which are often violent, stressful, and environmentally hazardous, can impair children۪s cognitive development, school performance, mental health, and even long-term physical health.

Second, poor children who grow up in low-poverty neighborhoods and consistently attend high-quality schools perform significantly better academically than those who do not.
    
Policymakers have taken a number of steps in recent decades to give recipients of federal rental assistance better access to safe neighborhoods with good schools, more opportunities for recreation and enrichment, and better access to jobs. They۪ve done so in part by relying more on housing vouchers, which families use to rent units of their choice in the private market, and less on government-funded housing projects, which are often located in very poor, segregated neighborhoods.

Yet the three main rental assistance programs Housing Choice Vouchers, public housing, and Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance have a disappointing track record of helping low-income families avoid high-poverty neighborhoods and live in healthier communities with better opportunities.

The voucher program has performed much better than the other two in enabling more low-income families with children particularly African American and Latino families to live in lower-poverty neighborhoods. Still, a quarter of a million children in the voucher program live in extreme-poverty neighborhoods (with poverty rates of at least 40 percent), despite the better options that a voucher should give them.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which oversees the voucher program, and the state and local housing agencies that administer it can make four sets of related changes to help voucher families live in better locations.

First, they should strengthen housing agencies۪ incentives to help families use vouchers in low-poverty, high-opportunity areas. In measuring agencies۪ performance, for example, HUD should give added weight to how many voucher holders live in high-opportunity areas. HUD also could reward agencies that help families move to high-opportunity areas by paying them additional administrative fees.

Second, policies that discourage families from living in lower-poverty communities need reform. For example, caps on rental subsidies which are set covering areas sometimes encompassing thousands of square miles don۪t adequately reflect local price trends. As a result, caps are often set too low to enable families to rent units in areas with more opportunity but higher prices. HUD can address this challenge by setting caps using smaller geographic areas than it does now.  Inflexible time limits for voucher holders to find an eligible unit also can discourage families from searching in neighborhoods farther away or where fewer landlords accept vouchers. HUD should require agencies to identify available units in lower-poverty communities and give families more time to find homes in these neighborhoods.

Third, bureaucratic barriers to moving to higher-opportunity communities should be lowered. In most metropolitan areas, one housing agency administers the voucher program in the central city while one or more different agencies serve suburban cities and towns. This fractured system makes it harder for families to move to low-poverty suburban areas with better schools. HUD should encourage agencies in the same metropolitan area to unify their program operations and simplify “portability” procedures when families want to use their vouchers in other jurisdictions.
    
Finally, to expand housing choices in safe, low-poverty neighborhoods with good schools, states and localities should adopt policies such as tax incentives and laws prohibiting discrimination against voucher holders to encourage landlords to participate in the voucher program. With federal funding constrained, investments by state and local governments and philanthropic organizations can help fund programs to encourage interested families to use their vouchers in these areas, such as by providing moving funds and mobility counseling.

Taken together, these four recommendations will make it easier for low-income families to use housing vouchers to live in low-poverty neighborhoods that have better safety, schools, and opportunities for their children.

This focus on helping families live in areas with more opportunities for their children does not mean that policymakers shouldn۪t pursue broader strategies to increase incomes, enhance safety, and improve educational performance in very poor areas. Quite the contrary.

Nevertheless, those strategies can require expensive long-term investments, sometimes with uncertain efficacy. The steps outlined here can make a real difference in the near term by helping tens of thousands of children and their families avoid living in violent neighborhoods of extreme poverty and enabling more of them to choose to live in low-poverty neighborhoods with high-quality schools.

To print a PDF version of this document, click here.

Barbara Sard is vice president for housing policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

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