concentrated poverty 8 Flashcards
(9 cards)
What are the two broad policy approaches for tackling concentrated poverty?
People-based mobility programs: move low-income households out of high-poverty areas into better neighborhoods. Place-based revitalization programs: invest directly in high-poverty neighborhoods to improve conditions in situ.
What key lesson from MTO emerged about families’ use of low-poverty housing vouchers?
Only about 47% of families assigned to the experimental (low-poverty) voucher group actually leased in those neighborhoods, despite receiving housing search assistance.
How did the <10% poverty tract restriction affect voucher uptake in MTO?
Requiring families to lease in census tracts with <10% poverty increased voucher non-use by over 40%.
Why did many MTO families experience large reductions in poverty exposure without moving to the ‘best’ neighborhoods?
Their biggest gain came from leaving uniquely impoverished, dilapidated public housing, not necessarily from settling in the highest-opportunity areas.
What does the broader evidence say about simply giving vouchers to people in high-poverty housing?
Studies find that just issuing vouchers rarely induces moves to higher-opportunity neighborhoods.
List major barriers that keep voucher recipients from moving to significantly better neighborhoods.
Voucher payment standards may be too low. Landlord discrimination against voucher holders. Scarcity of affordable units in better areas. Lack of information about available listings. Desire to remain close to friends/family. Trade-off between neighborhood quality and unit quality or rental probability.
In the Differences-in-Differences study of small-area FMRs, what change did Dallas implement?
Dallas switched from a metro-wide Fair Market Rent (FMR) ceiling to zip-code–based FMRs for voucher payment standards.
What served as the control group in the Dallas FMR study?
Neighboring Fort Worth, which retained the original metro-wide FMR ceiling.
Why does the Dallas/Fort Worth comparison identify a causal effect of small-area FMRs?
The court-ordered shift in Dallas (treatment) versus no change in Fort Worth (control) creates a natural quasi-experiment to isolate the impact of local rent ceilings on voucher moves and rents.
