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FAMILIES IN TRANSITION: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE MTO EXPERIENCE

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The Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration
Program (MTO) provides a unique opportunity to test the
premise that changing an individual's neighborhood
environment can change his or her life chances. Further,
MTO provides a means to better understand which mediating
factors in an individual's neighborhood may lead to such
changes.

The report "Families in Transition: A Qualitative
Analysis of the MTO Experience" is part of the MTO
interim evaluation and is designed to provide a
qualitative analysis of the MTO program that can be used
to inform both the design of the quantitative data
collection and to help explain the outcomes from that
quantitative analysis, which is due to be released in the
first quarter of 2003. HUD expects to conduct the final
evaluation data collection in 2005 or 2006 -- 8 to 11
years after participating families first entered the
program.

The report is based on in-depth interviews conducted in
early 2001 with adults and children in each of the five
cities where MTO operated. The MTO demonstration provided
housing subsidies (vouchers) to very low-income residents
of high-poverty public housing developments to assist
them in moving out of these neighborhoods. One group of
program participants received additional mobility
counseling to help them locate and lease suitable housing
in low-poverty areas. These interviews were designed to
explore participants' experiences with MTO and the nature
of the mediating factors that can influence outcomes for
participants.

The main hypothesis underlying the MTO program and
evaluation is that relocation of families to low poverty
neighborhoods will lead to improved well-being for adults
and children. The evaluation is collecting evidence on
possible MTO impacts in six domains:
o Housing mobility and assistance;
o Adult education, employment, and earnings;
o Household income and cash assistance;
o Adult, youth, and child physical and mental health;
o Youth and child social well-being, including
delinquency and risky behavior; and
o Youth and child educational performance.

This qualitative research can make three broad
contributions to the overall evaluation of MTO. First,
the interviews lead to an understanding of the complexity
of participants' lives and the variations in their
experiences since joining MTO. Second, these
contextualized examples suggest hypotheses to test using
the larger-scale quantitative data being collected for
the evaluation. Finally, these data enrich the overall
evaluation, allowing for a more comprehensive story of
how the program has affected participants' lives.

The findings of this research suggest that, five years
into the MTO demonstration, families have experienced
important incremental changes, particularly increases in
neighborhood safety. Improvements in schools and access
to new economic opportunities were noted as well. Most
interviewees believe that moving has dramatically
improved the quality of their families' lives, though
they continue to face significant challenges.

A complete copy of " Families in Transition: A
Qualitative Analysis of the MTO Experience " is available at
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/pubasst/mtoqualf.html
or through HUD USER.

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