Advancing Choice in the Housing Choice Voucher Program: Source of Income Protections and Locational Outcomes

Abstract

An elusive goal of the Housing Choice Voucher program is to provide more—and better—locational choices for recipient households. Yet landlord discrimination can be a barrier, particularly in areas of greater opportunity. Using a difference-in-difference design with different comparison groups, we evaluate the effectiveness of source-of-income discrimination laws in 31 jurisdictions enacting such laws between 2007 and 2017 in improving locational outcomes for voucher households. We find evidence that such laws lead to more upwardly mobile moves (or greater improvement in neighborhoods) among existing voucher holders who move. Specifically, existing voucher holders who move post enactment experience greater reductions in neighborhood poverty rates and in voucher household shares. We also find that after SOI laws pass, voucher holders move to neighborhoods with larger white population shares than their original neighborhoods. Effects are modest, but they hold for households whose head is Black as well as for families with children, two groups who may face greater challenges in housing markets. We do not find any change in the characteristics of the neighborhoods where new voucher holders lease up after the passage of SOI laws, but this may be confounded by compositional change in the neighborhoods where successful voucher holders originate.

Keywords:

• Vouchers
• discrimination
• mobility
• fair housing
• poverty concentration
• segregation

Acknowledgments

We thank Jake Weiss, Diana Cordova-Cobo, and Ross Greenwood for invaluable research assistance.

Notes

1 For example, see comments made by landlords participating in the first landlord-listening session of HUD’s Landlord taskforce, at https://www.huduser.gov/portal/event/Landlord-Participation-HCV-Program.html

2 The utilization rate is the share of a housing authority’s vouchers used on average during the course of a year.

3 We identify voucher movers by changes in the census tract of residence between year t and t − 1. Previous work suggests that 95% of voucher holder moves are across census tracts (Ellen et al., 2019).

4 Note that our mover sample is limited to those households that are in the program for at least two years, so we can identify that they moved and observe their prior address.

5 During our time period, four states enacted SOI laws. Delaware and Washington enacted statewide SOI laws in 2016 and late 2018 respectively, and California and New York State enacted laws in 2019 and 2020. We include no jurisdictions in Delaware.

6 Cook County, IL; Frederick, MD; Woodland, CA; Dallas, TX; Broward Co, FL; San Diego, CA.

7 Characteristics look similar across the samples of voucher holders in SOI jurisdictions that enacted SOI laws between 2007 and 2018, between 2007 and 2017, and between 2007 and 2016.

8 We obtain similar results, of similar magnitude, for larger families (i.e., those with more than one child in the household).

9 We again see evidence of shifts toward higher poverty neighborhoods between three years and one year prior to enactment. But in the regression of large reductions in neighborhood poverty, we also see an increase in the probability of such reductions between two and one years prior to enactment.

10 Once again, pretrend suggests that voucher holders were moving toward neighborhoods with lower white percentages in the years prior to enactment.

11 SOI laws could also change who leaves the voucher program over time. In particular, if improved locations are a source of economic improvement and increase exits of those voucher recipients, those ‘better’ locational outcomes for the household would no longer be observed in our data.

12 Results available from authors upon request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ingrid Gould Ellen

Ingrid Gould Ellen is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a Faculty Director at the NYU Furman Center. She has published books and numerous articles on housing policy, neighborhood change, and residential segregation.

Katherine M. O’Regan

Katherine O’Regan is a professor of public policy and Planning at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a Faculty Director at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. She has written extensively on affordable housing policy and issues of segregation and neighborhood change.

Katharine W. H. Harwood

Katharine Harwood is a PhD candidate at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a Doctoral Research Fellow at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Her current research focuses on affordable housing policy, household mobility, and neighborhood change.