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Abstract
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Moving to Work demonstration programme (MTW) allows 39 public housing authorities (PHAs) to waive certain federal regulations and merge several funding streams into a single, flexible fund. These flexibilities are designed to allow PHAs the ability to meet local housing needs and the programme's three goals: moving families to self-sufficiency, expanding housing options, and achieving cost savings. This review introduces the policy context of the MTW demonstration, situating it within an environment of neoliberal reforms in public housing and social service provision. It goes on to assess certain activities implemented to achieve the demonstration's three statutory goals. The paper concludes with a policy critique that both draws upon findings from evaluations of the programme conducted to date and sets an agenda for ongoing debates about extending MTW agreements past their 2018 expiration and expanding the demonstration to include more agencies.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Charlotte Housing Authority for funding CURS's ongoing evaluation of their Moving Forward program and Kristin Porter for proofreading assistance.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. A recently released report describes all innovations across MTW PHAs (Webb, Frescoln, & Rohe, Citation2015).
2. For brevity, throughout this review, we refer to PHAs by the city or jurisdiction they serve instead of by their full name.
3. Many PHAs do these activities in conjunction with one another. For example, eight PHAs utilise both triennial recertifications for elderly/disabled residents and biennial recertifications for work-able tenants.