Each year the United States spends approximately $20 Billion to provide rental assistance to low-income families through Housing Choice Vouchers.
What? You’ve never heard of Housing Choice Vouchers? Perhaps you know them by the more common name, Section 8 Housing.
Under the law, this money can be spent in any neighborhood within a Housing Authority's jurisdiction. But most of the 2.2 million families using vouchers continue to live in high-poverty, low-opportunity neighborhoods.
The question is why?
Research shows that living in high-opportunity neighborhoods means better outcomes for families. Every year a child spends growing up in a better neighborhood improves their outcomes in adulthood. These children are more likely to graduate from college. They are more likely to get married before they have children. They will earn more. They even have better health outcomes.
So what keeps families from moving?
Why do they stay?
What barriers exist?
From a governing perspective, we have a couple of policy options.
We can (and should) invest in strategies to improve existing low-opportunity neighborhoods.
We can help families with younger children move to higher-opportunity neighborhoods.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
- NOTE: The author, Representative Andy Fugate, is a member of theOK25by25 Early Childhood Legislative Caucus sponsored by thePotts Family Foundation. He is sponsoring a legislative Interim Study on Housing Choice Voucher Mobility that will be heard on Wednesday, October 7, at 1:30 in the House Business & Commerce Committee.
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