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A Relational Analysis of Mobility in Illinois' Housing Choice Voucher Program Author: Andrew J. Greenlee Dissertation School: University of Illinois at Chicago Pages: 316 Publication Date: January 2012 Availability: Access Number: 10971 Abstract: The federal Housing Choice Voucher program represents the nation's predominant low-income housing strategy. The program maintains two goals: to reduce barriers for low-income households to find and lease safe, decent, and affordable housing; and to support the location decisions of assisted households with the hope that the subsidy will open up better quality communities to low-income renters. A hallmark of the program is voucher portability--the ability for assisted households to search and move nationally with their voucher. While specialized programs such as the Gautreaux Consent Decree and the Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing demonstration program have shown the potential for residential mobility to generate positive outcomes for households moving with vouchers, the effects of mobility on outcomes for the general voucher-assisted population are not clear. This dissertation examines the dynamics of residential mobility for all voucher-assisted households in Illinois between 2000 and 2007, with the goal of understanding not only when and where such mobility resulted in positive outcomes, but also understanding the types of institutional and interpersonal relationships that create barriers and supports to successful mobility. This dissertation uses administrative data on individual voucher households in Illinois in order to construct longitudinal household histories that describe both household characteristics as well as residential locations for 7 years. These data are used to understand the ways in which residential mobility fit into the housing careers of voucher-assisted households. These data are complimented with in-depth interviews with heads of households who have made portability moves with vouchers, landlords who rent to porting tenants, and housing authority administrators in order to understand in more depth the ways in which the motivations for moving on the part of assisted households are shaped into outcomes when examined in relationship to the action of landlord and housing authority staff. Results of this analysis suggest that contrary to program goals, households undertaking portability moves tend to, on average, move to communities that are demographically similar to the communities from which they left. Analysis of quantitative and qualitative data suggest that these "parallel" moves can be attributed both to supply-side factors such as the availability of landlords willing to rent to voucher households, and the availability of housing units that meet movers' needs. These data also suggest that housing authority administrative regimes and actions during the portability process play a large role in influencing both the housing search of porting households, as well as the outcomes experienced by these households in their new residential locations. These results suggest that in order to achieve HUD's goal of promoting opportunity moves through voucher mobility, program design, regulation, and research must pay more attention to the ways in which local administrative practices and landlord actions shape program outcomes. Results also suggest that the reduction of administrative barriers to portability via regional cooperation between housing authorities may significantly increase the power of voucher portability to serve as a means of promoting upward mobility and opportunity for low-income households. |
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