Moving to Opportunity
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing (MTO) is a program sponsored by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) which gives Section 8 housing vouchers to low-income families and gives them counseling and assistance to help them move to low-poverty neighborhoods with better resources than the usual high-poverty neighborhoods that Section 8 voucher holders usually move to. The pilot study was implemented by public housing authorities in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City.
The initial results show that the parents in families who moved to low-poverty areas had lower rates of obesity and depression, and their female children were more likely to graduate from high school, and less likely to engage in delinquent or risky behavior. The program was carried out during a period of economic expansion and welfare reforms which required all welfare recipients to work (1994-2004), so nearly all participants in both high-poverty and low-poverty were employed.
Moving to Opportunity was modeled on the Chicago Housing Authority's Gautreaux Project.
