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Do Housing Choice Voucher holders live near good schools?

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  • Horn, Keren Mertens
  • Ellen, Ingrid Gould
  • Schwartz, Amy Ellen

Abstract

The Housing Choice Voucher program was created, in part, to help low income households reach a broader range of neighborhoods and schools. Rather than concentrating low income households in designated developments, vouchers allow families to choose their housing units and neighborhoods. In this project we explore whether low income households use the flexibility provided by vouchers to reach neighborhoods with high performing schools. Unlike previous experimental work, which has focused on a small sample of voucher holders constrained to live in low-poverty neighborhoods, we look at the voucher population as a whole and explore the broad range of neighborhoods in which they live. Relying on internal data from HUD on the location of assisted households, we link each voucher holder in the country to the closest elementary school within their school district. We compare the characteristics of the schools that voucher holders are likely to attend to the characteristics of those accessible to other households receiving place based housing subsidies, other similar unsubsidized households and fair market rent units within the same state and metropolitan area. These comparisons provide us with a portrait of the schools that children might have attended absent HUD assistance. In comparison to other poor households in the same metropolitan areas, we find that the schools near voucher holders have lower performing students than the schools near other poor households without a housing subsidy. We probe this surprising finding by exploring whether differences between the demographic characteristics of voucher holders and other poor households explain the differences in the characteristics of nearby schools, and whether school characteristics vary with length of time in the voucher program. We also examine variation across metropolitan areas in the relative quality of schools near to voucher holders and whether this variation is explained by economic, socio-demographic or policy differences across cities.

Suggested Citation

  • Horn, Keren Mertens & Ellen, Ingrid Gould & Schwartz, Amy Ellen, 2014. "Do Housing Choice Voucher holders live near good schools?," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 28-40.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jhouse:v:23:y:2014:i:c:p:28-40
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jhe.2013.11.005
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Dionissi Aliprantis & Hal Martin & David Phillips, 2019. "Can Landlords Be Paid to Stop Avoiding Voucher Tenants?," Working Papers 19-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    2. Robert Collinson & Ingrid Gould Ellen & Jens Ludwig, 2015. "Low-Income Housing Policy," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume 2, pages 59-126, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Dionissi Aliprantis & Hal Martin & Kristen Tauber, 2020. "What Determines the Success of Housing Mobility Programs?," Working Papers 20-36R, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, revised 19 Oct 2022.
    4. Aliprantis, Dionissi & Martin, Hal & Phillips, David, 2022. "Landlords and access to opportunity," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    5. Phillips, David C., 2017. "Landlords avoid tenants who pay with vouchers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 48-52.
    6. Kole, Kyle, 2022. "Housing vouchers reduce residential crowding," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    7. Dionissi Aliprantis & Kristen Tauber & Hal Martin, 2022. "What Determines the Success of Housing Mobility Programs?," Working Papers 2022-043, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    8. Keith Ihlanfeldt & Tom Mayock, 2019. "Affordable Housing and the Socioeconomic Integration of Elementary Schools," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 567-595, May.
    9. Yana Kucheva, 2018. "Subsidized Housing and the Transition to Adulthood," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(2), pages 617-642, April.
    10. Ihlanfeldt, Keith & Yang, Cynthia Fan, 2021. "Single-family rentals and neighborhood racial integration✰," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    11. Ihlanfeldt, Keith & Yang, Cynthia Fan, 2019. "The Impact of Rental Housing on Neighborhood Racial and Social Integration," MPRA Paper 93485, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Kirk McClure, 2015. "The Future of Research on Assisted Housing for the Poor," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 802-805, October.
    13. Brain, Isabel & Prieto, Joaquin, 2021. "Understanding changes in the geography of opportunity over time: the case of Santiago, Chile," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 109915, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Lang, Bree J., 2015. "Input distortions in the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: Evidence from building size," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 119-128.
    15. Eerola, Essi & Saarimaa, Tuukka, 2018. "Delivering affordable housing and neighborhood quality: A comparison of place- and tenant-based programs," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 44-54.
    16. Bostic, Raphael & Ellen, Ingrid Gould, 2014. "Introduction: Special issue on housing policy in the United States," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 1-3.
    17. Eerola, Essi & Saarimaa, Tuukka, 2015. "Who Benefits from Public Housing?," Working Papers 68, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    18. Céline Grislain-Letrémy & Corentin Trevien, 2022. "The Long-Term Impact of Housing Subsidies on the Rental Sector: the French Example," Working papers 886, Banque de France.
    19. Michael C Lens, 2018. "Extremely low-income households, housing affordability and the Great Recession," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(8), pages 1615-1635, June.
    20. Ihlanfeldt, Keith, 2019. "The deconcentration of minority students attending bad schools: The role of housing affordability within school attendance zones containing good schools," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 83-101.
    21. Ellen, Ingrid Gould & Suher, Michael & Torrats-Espinosa, Gerard, 2019. "Neighbors and networks: The role of social interactions on the residential choices of housing choice voucher holders," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 56-71.

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