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Can Housing Mobility Programs Make A Long-Term Impact On The Lives Of Poor Families And The Health Of Middle-Class Communities: A Policy Simulation, Michael P. Johnson, Jonathan Caulkins

Michael P. Johnson

Housing mobility programs enable families living in high-poverty neighborhoods to relocate to lower-poverty neighborhoods using tenant-based subsidies. Recent research indicates that these programs improve participant outcomes on a number of economic and social outcomes. Can such programs be run at a scale sufficient to help a large proportion of eligible families? Would doing so change the character of lower-poverty neighborhoods or have other macro demographic or economic effects? This paper applies policy simulation to a stylized representation of a housing mobility program to give a sense of scale and proportion for what a “full scale” mobility program might entail.

Results …