Comparing residential mobility programs: design elements, neighborhood placements, and outcomes in MTO and Gautreaux

Abstract

Reviewing prior studies of two residential mobility programs, the Gautreaux and Moving to Opportunity (MTO) programs, this paper examines whether program design elements may explain differences in neighborhood placements, which in turn may explain the programs' different individual outcomes.

While MTO has a stronger research design than Gautreaux, it creates more modest changes in environment. Specifically, we find that the two programs create very different kinds of neighborhood placements. Compared with Gautreaux, MTO moves were shorter distances and to census tracts with higher poverty rates, larger minority populations, worse schools, and lower employment rates. These differences in neighborhood placements may explain why Gautreaux found larger impact than MTO in education and employment outcomes and in duration of moves. Although often ignored, design elements may be crucial to the success of programs, and several design elements may explain these different placements.

Keywords:

• low-income housing
• mobility
• poverty or neighborhood

Notes

¹In theory, participants have choices about where they moved, but in practice, participants were assigned to city or suburban locations in a quasi-random manner. Apartment availability was determined by housing agents who did not deal with clients; counselors offered units as they became available according to client's position on the waiting list, not according to their locational preference. As a result, participants preferences for city or suburbs had little to do with where they later moved.

²These are statistically significant differences.

³Although mothers feared racial bias and lack of social acceptance, and indeed some bias and harassment occurred initially, these declined over the first year. By the time of our second interview (over 7 years after moving), we found considerable social interaction between children and their white neighbors. See Rosenbaum 1993.