American Murder Mystery Revisited: Do Housing Voucher Households Cause Crime?

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Gould Ellen ◽  
Michael C Lens ◽  
Katherine M. O'Regan
Keyword(s):  
Housing Voucher

scholarly journals How Do Changes in Housing Voucher Design Affect Rent and Neighborhood Quality?

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Collinson ◽  
Peter Ganong
Keyword(s):  
Household Income ◽  
Neighborhood Quality ◽  
Minimal Impact ◽  
Metro Area ◽  
The Government ◽  
Housing Voucher

US housing voucher holders pay their landlord a fraction of household income and the government pays the rest, up to a rent ceiling. We study how two types of changes to the rent ceiling affect landlords and tenants. A policy that makes vouchers more generous across a metro area benefits landlords through increased rents, with minimal impact on neighborhood and unit quality. A second policy that indexes rent ceilings to neighborhood rents leads voucher holders to move into higher quality neighborhoods with lower crime, poverty, and unemployment. (JEL I38, R23, R31, R38)

scholarly journals Association of Receipt of a Housing Voucher With Subsequent Hospital Utilization and Spending

JAMA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 322 (21) ◽  
pp. 2115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Evan Pollack ◽  
Amanda L. Blackford ◽  
Shawn Du ◽  
Stefanie Deluca ◽  
Rachel L. J. Thornton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hospital Utilization ◽  
Housing Voucher

Moving From Inequality: Housing Vouchers and Escaping Neighborhood Crime

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lens
Keyword(s):  
Public Housing ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Subsidized Housing ◽  
Neighborhood Crime ◽  
Housing Vouchers ◽  
Housing Developments ◽  
Moving To Opportunity ◽  
High Crime ◽  
Housing Voucher

The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program is the largest housing subsidy program in the United States, serving over 2.2 million households. Through the program, local public housing authorities (PHAs) provide funds to landlords on behalf of participating households, covering a portion of the household’s rent. Given the reliance on the private market, there are typically many more locational options for HCV households than for traditional public housing, which has a set (and declining) number of units and locations. The growth of this program has been robust in recent decades, adding nearly 1 million vouchers in the last 25 years. This has been a deliberate attempt to move away from the traditional public housing model toward one that emphasizes choice and a diversity of location outcomes through the HCV program. There are many reasons for these policy and programmatic shifts, but one is undoubtedly the high crime rates that came to be the norm in and near far too many public housing developments. During the mid-20th century, when the vast majority of public housing units were created, they were frequently sited in undesirable areas that offered few amenities and contained high proportions of low-income and minority households. As poverty further concentrated in central cities due to the flight of higher-income (often white) households to the suburbs, many public housing developments became increasingly dangerous places to live. The physical design of public housing developments was also frequently problematic, with entire city blocks being taken up by large high-rises set back from the street, standing out as areas to avoid within their neighborhoods. There are many quantitative summaries and anecdotal descriptions of the crime and violence present in some public housing developments from sources as diverse as journalists, housing researchers, and architects. Now that the shift to housing vouchers (and the low-income housing tax credit [LIHTC]) has been underway for over two decades, we have a good understanding of how effective these changes have been in reducing exposure to crime for subsidized households. Further, we are beginning to better understand the limitations of these efforts and why households are often unsuccessful in moving from high-crime areas. In studies of moving housing voucher households away from crime, the following questions are of particular interest: What is the connection between subsidized housing and crime? What mechanisms of the housing voucher program work to allow households to live in lower-crime neighborhoods than public housing? And finally, how successful has this program been in reducing participant exposure to crime, and how do we explain some of the limitations? While many aspects of the relationship between subsidized housing and crime are not well understood, existing research provides several important insights. First, we can conclude that traditional public housing—particularly large public housing developments—often concentrated crime to dangerously high levels. Second, we know that public housing residents commonly expressed great concern over the presence of crime and drugs in their communities, and this was a frequent motivation for participating in early studies of housing mobility programs such as Gautreaux in Chicago and the Moving to Opportunity experiment. Third, while the typical housing voucher household lives in a lower-crime environment than public housing households, they still live in relatively high-crime neighborhoods, and there is substantial research on the limited nature of moves using vouchers. Finally, while there is research on whether voucher households cause crime in the aggregate, the outcomes are rather ambiguous—some rigorous studies have found that clusters of voucher households increase neighborhood crime and some have found there is no effect. Furthermore, any potential effects on neighborhood crime by vouchers need to be weighed against their effectiveness at reducing exposure to neighborhood crime among subsidized households.

scholarly journals Moving to Improve?: A Qualitative Meta-analysis of Neighborhood Violence and Residential Decision-making among Housing Voucher Holders

2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Graves
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Primary Factor ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Housing Choice ◽  
Neighborhood Violence ◽  
Neighborhood Factors ◽  
Constrained Choice ◽  
Housing Voucher

Many people poised to move through housing choice voucher programs cite violence as a primary factor in their decision-making. This study synthesizes a body of qualitative data to explore how participants recount their experiences with neighborhood violence and analyzes its relationship to residential decision-making. We find that while participants expressed a desire to move to improve their circumstances, they also recounted how neighborhood violence constrained choice by influencing a multitude of factors in the decision-making process. This shows the stress neighborhood violence places on households and how neighborhood factors constrain housing choice.

Helping families move: Relocation counseling for housing-voucher recipients

1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Varady ◽  
Carole C. Walker ◽  
Kirk McClure ◽  
Sherry Larkins
Keyword(s):  
Housing Voucher
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document